Re: The story behind the picture(kind of long, sorry)

[Guest guest]

Sorry so late but these pictures of danny are great!! What a brave little guy.

Sherry

[Guest guest]

Don't apologize for it being long!! Wasn't long enough IMHO, have any more vacation stories to tell??? How long did it take you to find him? That would have scared me silly. I just can't believe how BIG he has gotten!!! And brave is right!! Besides battling his auditory sensitivities, look at those scary guys he is standing next to!! Scared ME. ;-) Who said , Courage is not the absence of fear, but doing what is needed despite the fear.... or something like that. I agree, that defines our kids. :-) They have true courage, every day.Kathy Ratkiewicz <Kathy_R@...> wrote: Hello everyone;-) My family took a vacation to the Great Smoky Mountains last week (beautiful!) and while we were there, we hit some of the tourist traps, including Ripley’s Believe it or Not! Aquarium in Gatlinburg. I never even thought about it being too loud for Danny there until after we got in and I couldn’t find him…none of the others in our group had him,either…I soon found him running through the tunnels of exhibits w/his hands over his ears..every now and then he would crouch

down in an effort to get away from the noise (it really was loud) he was almost frantic, and I had to practically force him to come back to the entrance with me so I could try to find some ear plugs for him(I usually carry some, but in my misguided attempts to make my purse lighter before the trip, I took the ear plugs out along with a bunch of other things and left them at home) Anyway..the front desk didn’t have any earplugs or cotton balls, so I ended up using toilet paper;-) It worked..he still held his hands over his ears, but he wasn’t frantic anymore…he could actually look at the exhibits. (an interesting sidelight to the

front desk thing was that a lady stopped to talk to my husband while we were up there..said she had a son?nephew? (I can’t remember now) w/Ds who used to have the same kinds of problems w/noise when he was a kid. He recently graduated from high school and is currently in college) Anyway..once Danny got interested in the exhibits, he took the toilet paper out of his ears and gave it to me,,,the noise wasn’t any less, but he was able to tolerate it. After awhile,we went to an

exhibit where you could pull down on a pirate cutlass that was mounted on the wall…Danny wanted to do it, but I told him that I wasn’t sure what it did..it might make a loud noise…he thought about it for a second, then put one hand over his ear, tucked his shoulder up next to his other ear, and pulled the cutlass. For some reason, that just really caught my heart….what a brave little kid he is. The pictures are of Danny firing the pirate ‘cannon’ , which also made a pretty loud noise. At first, he didn’t like the noise, but by the time we got around to taking pictures, he was able to fire it with only one ear covered…then he was able to do

it with both ears uncovered and loving every minute. There were a lot of kids at the aquarium that day…when we first went in, I was envious of the other kids who could just waltz through there without any problems….but I ended up admiring Danny, who was scared and hurting and could have just quit,(I was ready to just take him out) but instead, he stuck it out and tried new things even when he was afraid. Our kids w/Ds could teach the rest of the world a lot about courage, I think. KathyR(proud mom of Danny, 8 yrs old w/ds and his 6 older sibs) Carol in

IL Mom to seven including , 6 with TOF, AVcanal, GERD, LS, Asthma, subglottal stenosis, chronic constipation ( cured now ) and DS. My problem is not how I look. It's how you see me.

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