Dreamer

Early one morning a few days ago, I woke up to find Alyssa standing beside my bed. She whispered, "Can you come lay with me for a little while?"

I think I mumbled something and then followed her back to her bed. As I pulled her against me and pulled the blankets over us both, I whispered, "Are you okay?"

She whispered back, "Yeah, I just had a bad dream."

I wanted to ask her what the dream was but she was already falling back to sleep.

When we were on our way to my mom's I asked A about her bad dream. She gave me a grin and said, "You'd forgotten to pack my lunch."

Ahhh, sweetie. I hope that's the biggest of your worries for years to come.

The day our developmental pediatrician gave us O's official diagnosis, one of my first questions to her was, "Will she pass it on to her kids?"

It hadn't occured to me yet that Olivia might not be mentally capable of raising kids.

And honestly? I still harbor that dream for her. If it's what she wants, I hope she can do it.

Note, the answer to the question was that O has a 50/50 chance of passing the deletion on to her own children. Of course, who knows what advances there will be in assisted reproduction twenty years from now.

All parents have big dreams for their kids. We want the best for them. We want them to have great, happy lives in which all their dreams come true.

For as long as Olivia has been aware of her own reflection, she's loved clothes. She will stand in front of a mirror for timeless moments, gazing at her reflection. She turns back and forth, checking her profile and doing her best to see her own back.

One afternoon last summer, she was checking herself out in a new swimsuit that has crisscross straps in the back. She LOVED the back of that suit.

I said to my mom, "When she goes to prom, she's going to have to have a dress with a fancy back."

My mom agreed.

It doesn't matter to us what O's diagnosis is. We're still dreaming for her. We're still encouraging her to dream for herself. Of course, at four years old, her most ambitious dream is to stand on her hands like her sister. But with work and persistence, we'll do all we can to help her achieve that dream too.

Yeah, bad dreams suck and I'm so glad that I get to be the one who chases them away for my girls. But good dreams....ahhh, those are the things that sometimes get us through the day.