glimpses

     It's often hard to know what exactly to write in our blog. I know our friends and family probably don't care exactly what we write--they just want more updates! And they are right. We need to do more short posts or just pictures. We say this cautiously, but we do hope to add more posts on a regular basis. Pictures, videos, quick stories. What's funny, though, is that sometimes it seems easier for Leah or me to write something reflective.
     Anyway, the hard thing is to know how many of our struggles as parents of a special needs child to write about. If we are always talking about all the valleys we tread through, it may come off like we're complaining and never happy. That's far from the truth--we feel so blessed to be Cayla's parents. Besides, parenting is hard for everybody. Special needs parents don't own the market on difficult times--all parents have their own valleys.
    On the other hand, if we avoid those times because we don't want to sound like we're complaining, we are not giving a realistic voice to what our journey with Cayla has been like. Our hope is that other parents of children with special needs would be able to relate to what  we're going through. To know it's okay to admit frustrations. To know that the valleys don't last.  We don't want to give the impression that our life with Cayla is easy or we run the risk of someone in our same boat thinking, I can't relate to this at all. My situation seems hopeless right now; I can barely survive the day. We've been there. More than a few times. And I guess we think it's important for us to share those times, too.
     All that to say we want to share why the video clip below is so exciting. It's been pretty hard for Cayla to accept Eliana into the family. She really has had no idea how to deal with her jealousy. The attention was not all for her all the time anymore. And there was a cause for that. And that cause was right over there. Within scratching distance.
     During the worst days, this would happen multiple times. We raised our voices loudly, we did timeouts, we did flicks on the hand, we did spanks, and we tried logic (don't laugh). And some days within minutes of letting her out of her room from a timeout, she did the same thing again. What do you do when nothing you do seems to make a difference? There were times I said to Leah that maybe we should just save our effort, not do anything, and just let her pound on Eliana. Nothing we did was working anyway.
     It seemed like months later we noticed Cayla was no longer scratching Ana. That was pretty cool, but Cayla still pushed her over and took things from her. A few months later Cayla had pretty much stopped pushing her over (rarely happens these days) but constantly took things from her and generally bullied her when she felt like it. And one day Ana snapped. She was watching Elmo on the couch and Cayla (who had been pushing her buttons all morning) came up behind her and elbowed her. Sweet little Ana turned around and proceeded to smack Cayla 7 or 8 times in the face. Whap! Whap! Whap! Whap! Whap! Whap! Whap! Direct hits. And then she turned back around to watch Elmo like nothing had happened.
     Cayla looks at me like, "Who was that?" I'm thinking, "Who was that?" Ana's thinking, "Elmo."
     It's been a long process of Cayla accepting her sister, and as crazy as this may seem, the "Elmo Incident" may have done more than almost a year and a half of various discipline methods we tried. We  have prayed many prayers that our girls would become close friends. That Ana would become fiercely protective of her big sis. That we would hear them laughing from the other room some day. There have been days these prayers seemed so far away.
     Last night Leah took video of Cayla and Ana sitting in a chair. Ana is reading a book. Cayla is a bit giggly, perhaps exaggerating some of it. There is a moment when Ana realizes that whenever she says, "baby" Cayla starts laughing. She says it again and looks at her sister. I love that moment. I also love the moment when Cayla gives her a subtle little hug toward the end. It might not seem like a big deal, but for us it was absolutely huge. And the girls love to watch it, too. Ana fake laughs along with Cayla and puts her hand over her mouth like Cayla.
     Little glimpses like this get us so excited about their friendship. Glimpses of what could be. Glimpses of two girls who know and love each other with a special bond.
   
 

note: pause the music at the bottom to hear the girls better.

     And now this is Leah, and I experienced one of my firsts last night...  We were at Cayla's dance practice, and a 3-year-old came over to us as we were putting Cayla's tennis shoes back on before going home - she was very close to us and pointed at Cayla's face and asked, "Why's she like that?"  I knew exactly what she meant when asking this, though I tried to somehow avoid this question for a short time, but then I got up the courage that I knew I needed to have though had never really had to find it like this before...  But I quickly remembered a blog I recently read about how to explain this to your child with Downs - though of course I have no idea who this was or where I found it - but it SURE came in handy last night!  So I said that Cayla is like this because she is SPECIAL!!!  I smiled away as I explained to this young girl all about how Cayla had an extra SPECIAL chromosome and all, though of course she had NO idea of what this meant!  I told her that Cayla had some challenges but these all made her VERY special, and THAT is why she is like THIS:)