You Are Anything But Ordinary

I've written in this space before about documenting life, and not just the happy times. I struggle with this, though, because I don't always remember to take pictures when things are bad.

Today my 6-year old said to me, "Mommy, I wish I was ordinary." What?!? What could she mean by that? She said, "if I was ordinary, I wouldn't have to take all this medicine." This made my heart sink, but I also told her, (after I explained that other kids do take medicine, probably more than we know) that "If you were ordinary, you wouldn't be a Kindergartner who reads chapter books." I kept thinking about last week's Grey's Anatomy episode (hence the title of this blog entry) and how she needs to know how extraordinary she is.

But it also got me thinking about how her doctor appointments and medication have been such a huge part of her young life (hopefully not her whole life, we're hoping to get all of this under control at some point) and how we really haven't documented any of it in her album. How am I supposed to do that? Should I have taken pictures of her getting blood drawn when she was anemic? Should I take a picture of her sitting in one of the doctor's bathrooms trying to pee in one of those stinkin' little "hats" so they can check for another bladder infection? (we've done that more times than I care to count) Should I take a picture of all of her medications lined up on the bathroom counter? All of that seems ridiculous.

Maybe it's something we don't document. Maybe it's something she should just forget about as she gets older. Maybe she needs to be "anything but ordinary" for other reasons.