There's a photograph on the O'Brien family shelf of Odhran, then aged 22 months, with his brother Kealan, then four and a half. Odhran still has that soft, bulky baby look while Kealan is already more boyish.
Yet it is Odhran who holds out his two arms to Kealan to give support as his older brother tries to walk. Odhran is now eight and Kealan is 11. "Kealan is not much of a problem to me, he doesn't really annoy me at all," says Odhran. "I think I'm the oldest, I'm treated like the oldest. I do look after him sometimes, I would know when the bus is coming, I get him out of the bus into the wheelchair and walk him to our door.
"I like the responsibility, I feel protective towards him. I know when he gets upset because he quivers his lower lip. It's kind of fun having Kealan and it sometimes isn't."
Odhran doesn't mention the hurtful whacks he receives as they are spread-eagled together looking at television - not intended to injure, just part of Kealan's behaviour pattern. Nor does he talk about the birthday parties and outings he's had to miss because their family life is geared around one person's timetable and needs.
Sitting on her Dad's (Adrian) knee, six-year-old sister Aoibheann is less forthcoming about what it's like to have Kealan in the family, other than saying tentatively that the weekends are nice now because Kealan isn't around.
Kealan O'Brien was born in 1989. His mother, Karen Canning, is a midwife. "It was a difficult delivery; he looked perfectly normal, but the next day, I noticed his hands were fisting, which made me suspect something was wrong. But the consultant said no, there was nothing to worry about.
"He was a great baby. But at nine months we knew he was not meeting his developmental milestones and at 14 months he was diagnosed with cerebral palsy which was later amended to mental handicap of unknown origin."
Today Kealan can drink from a two-handled cup, pick up finger food, walk indoors with difficulty, though he is just as frequently on the floor. He needs to be spoon-fed, washed and dressed; he is doubly incontinent; doesn't talk and uses a wheelchair outside. He now weighs five stone and has a mental age of 10 months. "The diagnosis was awful. The news just seemed to get blacker and it was the first time I ever saw Adrian cry," says Karen. "One of my big worries was what will become of us. We knew each other only 10 months before we married, and had been together for only two-and-half years. What strain would this put on us? Would we survive?
"There was a sense of bereavement; you lose the child you planned for, expected and thought you had. I was angry too. I was 27 years old, this was my first child, I always wanted a boy, why did this happen?"
Adrian was more pragmatic. "My approach was what's the point of challenging it, it's not going to change it, let's get on with it. I didn't like it, but there was nothing we could do about it. I knew we would survive. I was more worried about what the diagnosis would mean for Kealan, there was a great unknown."
Despite their early differing responses, theirs is a total partnership. They parent together and have stayed emotionally close in the ups and downs since.
Three years later Odhran was born. Their enjoyment as he grew was tinged with sadness as they experienced more fully what they had lost.
"Religion is gone out of our lives because of Kealan," says Adrian. "If there is a God and I now doubt there is, why did he do this to Kealan? Why doesn't he cure him or take him? Kealan's life has never started, and we're lucky, because he is well and healthy. Think of other parents whose children have multiple handicaps. Sometimes we go into the (day-care) unit and see a child banging his head in pain. I can't relate that to a loving and caring God."
As parents with a child who is different, they run the gamut of well-intentioned remarks. "People say he's God's gift," says Karen. "That you'll get your reward in heaven, that God makes the cross to fit the back, that he's your little angel who will make you very happy. We've heard them all and they make me furious. I think people feel they have to say something, but don't know what to say. "If you want to help, say you're very sorry, ask if there is anything you can do and mean it. Offering to take the child, or the other children to give them a break, would be a real help, but parents with handicapped children will generally tell you that family and friends don't offer."
The O'Briens' current schedule sounds fairly relentless. Monday to Friday Adrian is up at 6.30 a.m. and gets Kealan washed and dressed. Karen leaves at 8.30 a.m. to deliver the three children to school and the day-care unit, respectively. She works mornings as a research nurse in a GP's practice and collects the children from school on her way home at 2.30 p.m. They have more than an hour together before Kealan's arrival home.
"I am wrecked and often fall asleep at this time for a few minutes," says Karen. The fatigue may be a legacy of depression which hit last year for which she's still taking medication.
"You are on duty all the time Kealan is around," says Adrian. "You can never relax. Like the farmers, it's a 365 days a year job."
"He generally likes to be where I am, and went through a phase where he was absolutely in my face all the time, but he's got over that," says Karen.
As we talk, Kealan is hovering round beside me, laughing and smiling, often putting his face very close to mine.
His mealtimes are a moveable feast. "I am not running a restaurant so he either eats a mashed version or what we eat, or he goes hungry," says Karen. "He has food and feeder fads in which he will eat certain foods or be fed by someone for months then close his lips and go off food and feeder completely. I feel this is the only decision he has, one of the few places where he has some control over his life; I don't know if he goes hungry rather than eat, we have no way of knowing."
Family outings are limited by time, accessibility and Kealan's behaviour. "There are so many things we can't do as a family," says Adrian. "You can't take a wheelchair on to the beach. . . you can't go to the pictures."
"You can't be spontaneous, even now everything has to be planned like a military operation," explains Karen. "As a family we have to split up, maybe Adrian taking them somewhere, with Kealan and I staying at home. It means you can't chill out."
Thanks to Karen's mother, who Kealan adores, they have managed two family holidays without him in recent years.
"We discovered things about ourselves we didn't know," says Karen. "Odhran learnt to swim like a fish; Aoibheann was able to be more independent. They both had experiences they never had before. It was bitter sweet, seeing how things could be, seeing what other families take for granted as the children are growing up. When we were leaving, Aoibheann said `wish we could stay'.
"You become very selfish if you have a child like Kealan; you want your time, you need space, you demand space. It takes so much away from you, your life is not your own, you become very tired. For 10 years we've been up a few times a night every night because if he kicks the clothes off, he can't pull them up again. He's now in an all-in-one sleeping suit partly to keep him warm and partly because, in conventional pyjamas, if he had soiled himself he could put his hand down his nappy and smear stuff everywhere."
How do his siblings treat him? "Both of them tend to ignore him, though Odhran is the more caring," says Karen. "Aoibheann really ignores him, and I wouldn't mind but he adores her. I say to her `say good morning to Kealan' and she might give a grunt. It's hard, it hurts me for him, but he's not really aware of it.
"Odhran is growing up quicker than he should. He's not yet nine, I expect a lot of him, and forget sometimes the responsibility I'm putting on his shoulders. He'll stand up for someone being picked on in school. He has a social conscience - one of the few good effects of our situation. He explains to his friends that something happened Kealan's head when he was born. Aoibheann is different, I find her friends don't want to go into the room when he is there.
"Looking to the future, I don't want them to feel responsible for him. It has taken hugely from our lives, it is not going to ruin their's. They didn't ask to be born, they have the right to their lives, their own partners and children. I'm not going to expect them to be saddled with Kealan."
Since last September, Kealan has the use of a weekend residential bed which means he is away from Friday to Monday. "It was like a huge weight coming off my shoulders," says Karen. "When he went for the occasional respite weekend, it was very frenzied and we felt we had to pack everything in. Now we are much more relaxed, because there is always next weekend. It is also good for Kealan, preparing him for full residential care."
Do they love him differently to the other two children? "Our love for him is very protective," says Karen. "We don't love him less."
"It's different because there's nothing back," says Adrian. "He couldn't care less about us, we're the constant, he takes us for granted. He's very tactile but he's the same with everyone who shows him attention."