Was sitting at church with my family and the sweet lady next to me was making small talk. She asked if it was hard taking care of Allison. I smiled and said no, then thought for a second and laughed and said yeah. In my head I was thinking this girl is 2 and into EVERYTHING. Girl can reach anything on the country no matter how far I push it back. If she can’t she’ll go look for something to push up to the country to climb. She try’s to unlock the door and sneak outside. She’s always demanding we go for a ride on the 4 wheeler. She’s a busy bod. The lady said something else and it was then I realized she was asking because she noticed Alli had Down syndrome. I quickly explained we live a very “normal” life. I often forget Allison has Ds and when I look at her I don’t even see it. To us she’s just our girl. Not our girl with Ds. She doesn’t get life handed to her we make her work for everything we push her and the results have been mind blowing. This girl AMAZES me all the time. I honestly don’t think I could be any prouder of her. She works twice as hard to go half the distance but she wants to be independent and we let her. She’s my world.

For a long time I would look at her and in my head I would just hear Down syndrome Down syndrome. That’s what I seen and I hated this about me. I didn’t want to see my girl just this way. So when I totally missed the question about Ds it made me so happy. I’ve taken a huge step in completely excepting this diagnosis. And just see our life as a typical one.

My girl will be 3 in 2 weeks.