Having a child with special needs is really hard, but having twins who have vastly different levels of ability makes it that much harder.

People are constantly asking me if the girls are running circles around me, assuming they can both do the same things. I get it, you don’t assume someone has special needs. But, you know what drives me absolutely crazy? When we go out to eat and I ask for one high chair and I’m asked one hundred times by one hundred different people if I need two high chairs.

Nope. I really just need one, thanks.

This happens every. single. time we go out to eat, even at restaurants where they know us, and it digs into me each time.

Ella still can’t sit up on her own, and even if we filled a high chair with sweaters or blankets, she would just flop over or arch back. I have a special harness chair for her that sometimes she’s okay using, and sometimes she cannot stand. Even when I bring the chair with me out to eat, I still get asked if I need two high chairs, and sometimes as I’m attaching the harness to a chair, they still ask me.

Sometimes people stare at her special pink chair, and I see them out of the corner of my eye, wondering why we don’t just have two high chairs, but I really don’t need two high chairs, I just need two happy girls and their big brother to all be able to be at dinner together, and the rest doesn’t really matter.

Ella having dinner in her special pink chair

Raegan and the watermelon