When I was a little girl, I wasn’t sure I ever wanted kids. I can remember outgrowing my baby dolls fairly young.
I didn’t dream of weddings and babies and all that most little girls dream of.
I didn’t really want to take care of others. I didn’t want the responsibility of having to teach and train another person to function in society. Especially since I felt I was failing at it so miserably.
Fast forward to a few years later…
I’m being wheeled through a hospital puking what feels like my guts up! I’m grabbing trash cans as we make our way down the halls. I’m in the most physical pain I’ve ever been in in my life! The nurses are helping me change. I’m like a cd on repeat mumbling “I can’t do this” to myself!
Within 3 hours, I’m holding my baby girl (whom I was CONVINCED was a boy) in my arms, marveling at the fact that I am in deed now a mother!
I drug my husband to every birthing and parenthood prep class that hospital had to offer! I was going to go into this motherhood thing fully prepared!! (I wasn’t!)
My little girl and I figured this thing out. I learned to be a mother to this perfectly created being! She learned to roll and talk and crawl and walk! I was teaching her things! Important life changing things!
She learned to feed herself with a spoon, and to say yes ma’am and no ma’am and please and thank you. She learned to say she’s sorry and to ask for forgiveness. She learned about forgiveness and about God! I felt like I was on top of this motherhood thing!!
Soon life threw me a curve ball! A blessing in disguise really. My older handicap brother was in need of a new home. He needed someone with less health problems to take care of him, someone who could focus more on him!
I grew up with Joe, he’s always been there! We didn’t even talk too much into detail about it when Henry and I agreed. I mean how hard could it be? I grew up helping take care of Joey!
Well let me tell you! There’s a huge difference between helping take care of your brother as his sister and caring for him as his main care giver! It became my job to make some of his bigger decisions in life. It feel to me to make sure he was staying safe. We switched some rolls, I wasn’t just the little sister anymore. I was who was going to make sure he thrives in life! Help him not lose the life skills my mom and aunts helped him learn. When he was a baby the doctors didn’t think he’d ever walk or talk! And boy let me tell you he talks (especially when he doesn’t want to do something!)
I found myself figuring out things I didn’t think I would have to learn at 22! Like all the behind the scenes stuff for his insurance and what not.
I’ve had 2 more babies since Joey came to live with us! And I can’t tell you how many times he’s been mistaken as my husband because he goes everywhere with us! (Can you say awkward?)
But I have to say it’s been amazing watching him and his nieces and now nephew grow together! Watching the child like excitement on his face as well as theirs when they do things like play in the pool or on the trampoline. Listening to my youngest daughter ask Joey to hold her hand as they walk through the sand to the lake!
Motherhood is a journey! It often catches us by surprise with some of life’s curve balls! And for a journey I wasn’t sure I really even wanted to take, I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else but right here right now!
Xoxo
Drena
Enjoy this pictures of Joey with his date at the special needs prom last month!!
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