My name is Dani Socher. I am a normal 13 year-old Jewish boy living in Cleveland, Ohio. I go to a private Jewish school, and have and have always had plenty of friends and a loving family. In 7th grade, my mother was announced pregnant, and my entire family waited for the baby's arrival with joyful expectation: what would he or she look like, what would the new baby's favorite food be... All of the usual speculations. We were showered with congratulations, and  Then, on February 24th, Bayla was born with congenital heart defects and Down Syndrome. The Doctors told us she would need one surgery almost right away, and anoither later on. My seemingly perfect world had come crashing around my ears, or so its seemed. All the people that had once been saying, "Congratulations!" were now asking if the surgery had been successful. My caring friends gave me a wide berth, mistakenly thinking this was what I needed. However, companionship was my greatest need at the moment; in fact, anything to take my mind off the present situation would have been most welcome. I walked around for several weeks in a sort of funk, forgetting assignments I normally would have completed, failing easy quizzes and ignoring everything happening around me. Funnily enough, the turning point for me came from a children's book. If I hadn't come across "Our Brother Has Down Syndrome, I don't know how long it would have taken for me to snap out of it. It is written by two girls whose brother, Jai, has Down Syndrome. Most of the book describes what Down Syndrome is and things the girls' brother does, but it's the final line that really got to me: "Jai may be a little different (we all have different things about us), but mostly he's just like the rest of us."     This quote brought me the revelation that however different Bayla may be, she is still part of our family, which connects her to us deeper than anything else ever could.  A joyful year passed, and the deadline for Bayla's second surgery approached. This time we were much better prepared. The meals were frozen, the clothes washed and the meetings (regarding the surgery) completed. The day of the surgery went by agonizingly slowly, with the minutes seeming like hours, the hours like days. But it did end, and happily. The surgery was a success. Bayla was in the hospital for a week or two after, but they, at least, went by swiftly, with visits to the hospital every day. Bayla has persevered through all of this with a smile on her face, and I cannot imagine our family happier with another baby.