Disability, Inclusion, Recreational Activities, Special Needs

The Words That Stopped Me In My Tracks

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We were hiking with 2 of Sabrina’s friends when I heard the words.

We had stopped to take a snack break. Sabrina was hoarding the can of Pringles, and we were all laughing about how she had pushed her friend’s hand away when the friend tried to get in the can (Sabrina’s can, apparently). As we laughed, Sabrina’s sister gave her a huge hug. And then heard the words.

“Sabrina, you are so loved.”

I stopped what I was doing and looked up and just stared. I stared at her friend’s face, the one who said it. She was looking at Sabrina with a huge smile on her face. I looked at her other friend’s face, and it was completely unmoved, like those words had been casual words, and nothing out of the ordinary. I looked at Sabrina, who was nonchalantly chomping away at her Pringles, unaware of how huge those words were. Then I looked at my younger daughter’s face, Sabrina’s little sister. She too was staring at the friend who said it. I could tell it made an impact on her. She looked back at Sabrina, and then gave her another hug.

Those words had a big impact on me. I flashed back to 3.5 years ago, before Sabrina was at our neighborhood school, and how the thought of hearing something like that from one of Sabrina’s typical classmates would have been a complete dream.

Sabrina’s sister and I talked about it later, and she repeated the words to Sabrina. “Mama, she said ‘Sabrina, you’re so loved’! It was so sweet!” They had a big impact on her, too.

This is why I love sending Sabrina to school every day. Because Sabrina is building a little community of kids who see what a sweet little soul she is. A community of kids who know her, who warmly greet her in the morning and say “Come on, Sabrina, let’s stand in line together.” A community of kids who are excited about and proud of her accomplishments, no matter how small.

Isn’t that what any parent wants for their child?

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Disability, Recreational Activities, Special Needs, Tagged: Disneyland, Uncategorized

We Finally Did It — Our Trip to Disneyland (with lots of pictures!)

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There are a lot of people who love Disneyland and get excited about going often.

I am not one of those people.

I don’t remember what finally got me to change my mind about going, but I think it was a blog post I read where someone described their trip and it got my rethinking the experience we could have.

And so a couple of weeks ago we, along with my parents, took the kids to Disneyland for the first time. My parents came with us. Up until the night before we weren’t even sure we were going to make the trip, since Sabrina had been sick. We ended up deciding that she was well enough to go, and that if we waited for everyone to be sniffle-free, we’d never go.

We had a wonderful time. I wasn’t sure how Sabrina would do with all of the sensory stimulation, but she did great. I know she wasn’t feeling 100%, but was just a trooper, anyways!

Here is a sweet moment between the girls while waiting to visit the fairies.

I loved the characters at California Adventure, like Doc McStuffins and Sofia the First. Something about the fact that they’re in our living room so much – they’re probably Alexa’s 2 favorite shows right now, and we allow her to watch TV in the morning after she gets up and before getting ready.

Alexa and I stood in line to meet Elsa and Anna, and when it got to be our turn, Sabrina walked up to them. She was very hesitant, but Anna was really sweet, gave her a huge smile, and reached out to her.

Snow White was sweet and sensitive to Sabrina, too, although I didn’t get a picture of that.

Sabrina loved the street dancers and the music in the streets.

My plan was to enjoy the moments and not feel pressured to do and see everything. And we did just that. We went with the flow and put no pressure on ourselves to see or do anything in particular. It worked well for us.

There has been a lot of controversy about the new DAS pass. The new system is that you go to a kiosk to let them know what you want to ride and they give you a time to come back to that ride so that you can go through the Fast Pass/alternate entrance and not wait that time in line. It totally worked for us. I can see that if you go often and have a routine down with the old system, that the new system is a change, and that can be difficult for people. But honestly, we found it to accommodate our needs perfectly.

We definitely stuck to the younger rides, more due to Alexa than Sabrina. At one point we went on the Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin. You can choose to spin the wheel in order to spin the car. I was in the same car as Alexa, and Sabrina was with Ken. We were right next to each other, so we could yell over to each other. Alexa was a bit scared and wanted me to keep the wheel steady. I looked at Ken and Sabrina and he was spinning the wheel like crazy. “Do you remember who you have in your car?!”, I yelled to him. “Sabrina loves it!”, he responded. Yes, she loves movement. But had he forgotten that she also gets motion sick?! 🙂

We went swimming on our last morning there.

The indoor heated pool was nice, but Sabrina LOVES HEAT. So after swimming in the pool for about 20 minutes, Sabrina suddenly ran out and jumped into the hot tub. The huge smile on her face was priceless. Of course, we all had to follow.

Great trip, great memories. We may even go back soon. I’d love the excuse to do this again.

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Disability, Inclusion, Recreational Activities, Special Needs, Uncategorized

Some soul searching

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As I eluded to in my last post, I haven’t spent much time blogging here since the summer. I’ve been feeling a lot of different callings and not sure what direction those were going to lead me in. Sometimes it’s tough to figure out what you want to do when you grow up. 🙂

I think for a lot of us, and certainly for me, life is about constantly questioning, learning, trying your best to fulfill the callings and the passions that show up in your life. For many years I wasn’t living in a way that allowed me to have the confidence to listen, go forward, and pursue them.

Obviously, I have since found a passion in inclusion.

For the past 6 months or so I’ve felt an intense need to do something else, something more.

Maybe call it my mid-life crisis? 🙂

I’ve been trying to work out how to fulfill the passion I have for advocating and for being “mom”, while at the same time honoring that I am my own person outside of those roles.

I want to be involved in the community. To Connect. To Gather people. So much more to do on a lot of different fronts. While still being present for my family.

Ooh, that elusive “balance”, right?

As a result of much of that soul-searching, and feeling deeply that it’s time for me to do something more, at the end of the year I launched Nelia Nunes Events. I’m excited about the possibility of merging my passions, while at the same time exploring options that aren’t related to inclusion and my kids. And seeing where it’ll take me.

Time to plan some cool stuff.

For starters, I’m working on putting together a “Topics In Inclusion” mini-series. Look for more on this coming soon.

It’s been an interesting journey, I know it’ll continue to be. Can’t wait to see what it brings. Thank you for coming along on the ride.

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Disability, Recreational Activities, Special Needs

Back From Maui

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We are back from our 1 week trip to Maui, Hawaii. It was amazing. We all such had a wonderful time, and we really enjoyed spending that time with Ken’s family. Before we left I posted photos of 1 of the 2 social stories that I made for Sabrina. This was the first time that I had done something like that, but I’ll definitely be doing it again. I think that she really got a lot out of it. She clearly enjoyed looking at it, and I think it really helped her be comfortable with the trip.

Our condo had a view of both the beach and the pool, and Sabrina set her sights on the pool. When it was finally time to go down and swim, she ran ahead of us and jumped right in.

I was able to get away for a few morning walks on the beach.

We had some “ears” as we call it (after all, there were a lot of new sounds, etc), but overall Sabrina was very happy.

Ken’s parents and a family friend watched the girls so that we could go parasailing with Ken’s sister, brother-in-law, and nephews.

This was right before Sabrina zonked out for the entire flight, which was a red-eye.

We were all sad to leave Maui, but if I had to guess who was the saddest it would definitely be Sabrina. In Maui Sabrina was able to enjoy warm weather, she got to be outside all day and evening, and she got to swim all day. Her dream vacation. 🙂

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