Give Her a Hand

Polly got Zoya’s cold.  She has been sick for two days.  Doctors have explained to me that Polly’s air passages are teeny tiny, which means she gets stuffed up quickly, and then her nose and eyes just drain and drain.  It’s not pretty.  It also explains why when Polly was a new born, her nose was almost non-existant.  Anyway, we have had a surplus of Kleenex, warm baths and cuddles around our house this week.

But the cold has not slowed down Polly’s new found passion.  She loves to clap.  She claps at the end of Itsy Bitsy Spider, she claps in church while the rest of us sing.  In the midst of her mode of rolling and crawling for toys and interaction, she sits up wherever she is in the house and claps along with people clapping on television.  And she claps whenever someone around her, in her opinion, deserves it.  It’s contagious clapping that could lure people in to standing ovations without really knowing why. 

I like this.  I like that she is an encourager.  I love that she has joy.  Polly’s smiles were slow coming when she was an infant.  My smiles were slow coming when she was an infant.  But these days you’ll find Polly breaking out into applause for important things like breakfast, or a rousing round of tickling, or when Lainie and Zo come home from school.  And these days, her smiles are wide and toothy.

When we were waiting for those smiles, I could easily get myself in to a funk, worrying about her.  How come she isn’t smiling?  Dozens of well meaning family and friends had told us when she was born that people with Down syndrome were so social, so friendly, so happy.  It was easy to convince myself that Polly was not going to follow suite.  I would work through it, pray, come to the conclusion that Polly is who God intends her to be and that ultimately I am OK with that.  But still, I really wanted to see her smile.

I have been smiling more often myself, lately.