Five Queens.

Every parent looks forward to the future of their child and has hopes and dreams for them.  All mothers want their children to be loved, successful, happy, well liked, and just an all around "good kid". 

And then we have those little "extra" dreams for them...the ones that we know aren't really important but things that we would like to see our children do.  Like not only wanting little Timmy to play football...but secretly, wanting him to be captain of the team, to score the winning touchdown, to hold the school state national record for number of yards thrown. 

We all know these kinds of dreams for our children are silly...that they don't really matter...but I can't think of a single parent that doesn't have them.

I have one of those dreams for Miss Banana.  Not only do I want her to be included in her classroom, but secretly? I want her to be popular.  I want her to have friends, boyfriends, be on the cheerleading squad, sit at the "cool" table at lunch. 

And I don't want her to be cool because she has Down syndrome, I want her to be cool just because Miss Banana is cool, extra chromosome or not. Is that expecting too much?


Is this little dream shallow of me?  Perhaps. 

But it's there.

When Miss Banana was first born, I thought there was no way that little extra-dream of mine would come true.  But after seeing Miss B rock the tests in the interpersonal relationships catagory; it's come back.  And just in the past week or so, there have been girls sporting an extra chromosome that are living that extra-dream. 

Here is Katelyn Simpson, Homecoming Queen for Northwest Rankin High School (Mississippi).

Photo taken by  Kevin Williams
Special to The Clarion-Ledger

And Emily Niedrich, Homecoming Queen for Birch Run High School (Michigan)

Photo taken by Brittney Lohmiller
The Saginaw News

And Sydney Blum, Tarkington High School (Texas).

 
And (the reaction at the end of this video is AWESOME), Mariah Slick from Azele High School (Texas)

 
Or read about Madi Sanju of Desert Hills High (Utah).  The cool thing about her story?  Her sister, also with Down syndrome, was the Homecoming Queen in 2010.
I hope that by the time Miss B gets to high school, these stories are commonplace. 
 
And that my little extra dream isn't so far-fetched after all.