Well, here we go...

            For the longest time, I was anti-blog. I couldn’t imagine what so many people had to say that other really wanted to read. I know it sounds horrible but that was what I thought.  My best friend had to take an English Comp class and their medium was the blog. Really? It was just a little crazy to me. When I think English Comp I think long nights spent typing and re-typing the same sentence because you can’t get the flow just right. Or sitting there with ten pages of notes for one paragraph of work. Analyzing literature or writing a personal essay. Not blogging.

            But in the twenty-five or so months since my niece has been alive, I’ve learned through my sister that blogs aren’t just about whining and complaining about the world around us. You can build a community through blogs. And I know that’s why my sister started her own blog (see The Adventures of My Little Ladybug Girl). So maybe somebody who also has a person in their family with Down Syndrome can read my sister’s blog and feel that connection. I’ll be honest and say that before my niece was born I didn’t really think all that much about disabilities or people with special needs. It just wasn’t on my radar. But once Emery came into our lives, we all changed. I hope for the better.

            I hope we are all more aware of the people around us and how what we say can affect them. I hope that I’ve learned enough to understand that people with disabilities or special needs aren’t a class of people or a group that I just don’t think about. And I have discovered things about my sister that I never knew, the foremost being that she has taken on the role of advocate for Emery like she was born to it. And maybe she was. Maybe her whole life was heading to that moment in the hospital room when the doctors told her and my brother-in-law that Emery has Down Syndrome. I know she didn’t pick this life but I also know none of us would change one chromosome in Emery’s body. She wouldn’t be Emery then. And I also tell people that we’re lucky because there is just a little bit extra of Emery for us to love.

            I haven’t started this blog as another DS awareness blog or anything like that but because my niece does have DS it’ll definitely come up.  I decided to start writing this because writing is what I do, who I am. I want to publish my words and have other people read them. I want to leave something in this world when I’m gone. I’m not exactly sure how this all works yet since I was anti-blog for so long, but we’ll learn together. I do know that not only will I write about my life and the things going on in my world but I’ll post installments of the book I have written. So stay tuned for that and I look forward to sharing pieces from my little corner of the world.