Integrating Christina into our lives

As you can imagine and from reading our blog, caring for baby Christina is very time consuming and could easily consume our lives. Knowing this was a likely outcome, soon after Christina was born Brian and I discussed if that was avoidable. We have since come to learn that some of her care is needed and required, but daily we make conscious efforts to think of our marriage and the family as a whole. We choose to integrate Christina into our lives, rather than have her take ours over. This in no way means that we love our little Christina any less, but rather we truly value our entire family as a whole and every member has a voice. I think even families without a handicapped child still need to consciously protect their family and continually work on their marriages, we are just very aware of the dangers of not being proactive in this manner with a child with special needs. So if I'm going to Target and lunch with friends, baby Christina comes along as would any other baby with her mom on errands. Our whole family still goes to church together every Sunday, even though it would be a lot easier to stay home and avoid having to feed her with her feeding tube during services. And Brian and I still go on weekly date nights and ditch the kids with a babysitter. Life goes on as usual and we try not to make a big deal about Christina's issues, even if we are getting funny looks at our baby in the line at Costco.

So all of this to say, I took baby Christina with me to visit my family in their new beautiful home in Oklahoma. My family wanted me to come visit and so baby girl came along with me. Her pediatrician was a little nervous at first, but as I explained that I wanted our lives to be as normal as possible and she is a member of our family, he was okay with her to fly and go out of town. 

We had a wonderful time and we are already planning our next visit! 

Brian had no fun and stayed in Las Vegas because, well, he had to go to work! So James went to visit Brian's parents in California and had such a blast! He didn't even get homesick the entire week. Grandma Peggy said he asked about us a few times, but didn't seem to mind being away on his own vacation! 

So cute with Grandpa Hal!