Like Me

I touched upon a moment in my pictures of our trip to the Museum of Science and Industry but the story means so much more then the few words that I used to describe it before.

We went to the museum a few weeks back and hung out for the afternoon. We had been there back in November and will probably go a few more times this year because we have a membership (gotta love groupon) In Novmember we did not go into the space area... honestly I did not know it was there. We stumbled upon it this time looking for Seth figuring that would be the place to find him.
It was later afternoon at the this point. We were all getting sleepy and had not had enough fluids/food for all of the walking we had been doing. We had hit the afternoon slump. We had decided we were going to head to the food court to have a snack. On the way there Jillian spotted a big space replica and wanted to look at it so my mom walked over with her. Jillian came back with a new energy and a NEED to show me what she just looked at.
She took me by the hand and walked me over to a life sized replica of an astronaut and excitedly pointed to his backpack. She had joy written across her face at the moment and she kept pointing to her backpack and the astronaut's backpack.
She was showing us they both had backpacks.

Have you ever been in a moment where you watch someone realize there is someone just like them?

Jilli is starting to get old enough to notice differences. She notices that her friends sit at the table and eat and she does not. She notices that they don't have backpacks and she is probably hitting the point where she notices how many more gross motor things they can do because she tries so hard to do them herself. She is going to notice the differences.
She will probably notice the difference at some point that her shoes are going to be a little different after Monday when she gets fitted for orthotics. We notice how much quicker she tires out then other kids her age (this is becoming a bigger concern and there are questions right now about her O2 level and talk with doctors and therapists trying to figure out what we need to do)

But in that moment Jillian saw someone just like her. She noticed a backpack on a replica of an astronaut and it meant the WORLD to her at that moment. It is one of those time that are hard to explain but the look on her face and the excitement that she had spoke the thoughts that must have been going on in her head.
We talked about how what was in the astronaut's backpack made it so he could live and how what is in Jillian's backpack makes it so she can do all of the fun things she gets to do. She just stared in amazement.

We have friends with kids with different disabilities but she has not met a kid like her with a feeding tube and a backpack. My students wear backpacks as they come into school but whenever she sees my students their backpacks are on their hooks. To her she is the only one who wears a backpack like that... until that model at the museum. I never thought a replica of an astronaut would mean so much to my two year old but...

 He had a backpack like her... a backpack to keep them alive.