Thanksgiving Day!

 Happy Turkey Day! Actually we should change it to Happy Pumpkin Day!

In Canada we celebrate Thanksgiving on the 2nd monday of October. Just in time to dress in fall colours and enjoy the brightly coloured leaves before all the trees are bare for 6 months! The perfect weekend to sit and reflect about how great life is and how thankful we are for the little things.

We started some new traditions this weekend. Pumpkin patch, wagon rides and petting farm! The original rule is supposed to be that you can't get a pumpkin that you can't carry - but I think we can make an exception for the next couple of years. Kyle got a little overzelous - I think the rule this year was that the pumpkins had to be smaller than the kids. I don't think we were off by very much!

Katheryn really enjoyed carrying around her pumpkin. I think she would have slept with it if we let her!

Katheryn didn't go out to the pumpkin patch - who wants to look for pumpkins when there are rides and things to bounce on. anyways playing in the dirt is for boys!

So off I went on the wagon ride with the Ridding boys - papa, daddy and baby Nick! I have no problem playing in dirt - or more realistically - putting Nickolas in the dirt so I can get all kinds of pumpkin pictures.

On a weekend that we celebrate what we are thankful for. This picture says it all.

 Beleive it or not, they were happy

So we celebrated family, fall and fun we also tried to get some photos. Mommy was very optomistic when buying the special Thanksgiving outfits. Kiddies had their own ideas. We tried to get pictures of all the Ridding children - including Madison (she had the same outfit as Katheryn only in pink).

So picture this with another child crying beside Nickolas - who is just a little faster climbing down than the other two.

And it is the spontaneous pictures that turn out the best anyways...

Stay tuned for Nick's first turkey dinner (not pureed)

A gift of spina bifida

It is easy to focus on what I am missing by having a son with spina bifida. (This is a followup to my last post - A Moment of Grief) When talking about 'a different kind of perfect' I might think and imagine what I am missing, how things are worse now that we have spina bifida in our lives. Concentrate on the worry, the appointments, and the hardships.

But thanks to a friend, fellow mother and blogger Joanna for reminding me that there are things that I have gained by having spina bifida in my life. I have been given a gift. Yes, you read that right. It might seem that gift is a strong word to talk about our diagnosis, but it really isn't.

It has brought me the gift of celebrating each little milestone, to recognize the amazing capacity children are born with. It has shown me that my child is stronger than I could ever be. It has given me the gift to realize that some things in life are important, and some things are not.

Spina bifida has brought me clarity.
It reminds me of when I first got my glasses. I commented to my mother that Now I could see the leaves on the trees when we were driving. I never knew before that I couldn’t see the leaves; I didn't know I was missing anything. But now that I had seen I didn't want to go back to the blurriness.
Having a child with spina bifida has given me glasses that I never knew I needed. It has opened up a life for me that I don't want to give up.

It has given me the clarity, time and opportunity to enjoy and marvel at little things (even during physio). To be thankful for every movement, every laugh, every smile and to marvel at the love that I see and feel every day. We celebrate each exploration of our world. I have less moments of mundane and more moments to bask in the joy of my son's accomplishments.

It has given me a voice to ask questions and seek current research. It has made (ok maybe I'm not quite there yet), I should say, it is making me into an advocate. Confident that I am a strong mother who has good instincts.

It has given me the gift to realize the strength of my partnership. That we have been to the bottom of the pit and have risen higher than we realized that we could. That we are stronger now than before we knew what spina bifida was. I have been given the gift to realize that we are four individual pieces of a puzzle that produces a beautiful picture.

 

It has brought me a gift of a family of mothers and their children that understand exactly where I am and what I am thinking. It has given me children that I have followed and will follow being born, growing older, rolling, standing, walking and running. I have found a whole community of people who have been there, and share their experiences to help you when you feel alone.

Let me finally say that it has given me to opportunity to realize how wonderful, loving and caring my family is. Who read about my moment of grief and reached out to see how I was. To reinforce their love and confidence in my ability to be a mother of a son with spina bifida.

So today I celebrate the gift of spina bifida. That I have been given many little gifts with this diagnosis that I didn’t know that I needed, but that I am not willing to give up. I do have moments of grief and negativity but these are more than balanced by gifts of clarity and love, moments of joy, realization of faith and appreciation of my many blessings.

OK hand me a tissue.