Our story

Well I have finally jumped on the bandwagon and decided to "blog."

I guess I will start with our journey.

Jim and I met in December of 2003, he joined the Navy in April of 2004, and we got married in August of 2004. I moved to Charleston, SC to be with him there while he was completing training/schooling for the Navy. We were there for a year and a half and it was such an awesome time in our lives. We made the very best of friends there!! The beaches were great! The friends were great! Needless to say we miss it...

Then he got orders to WA state. He was on the USS Lincoln. He deployed three weeks after we got orders there, so I decided to just go up there with him for three weeks and then come back home to KC while he was gone. Before he left we were pleasantly surprised with Alex! :) I found out I was pregnant the night that he left, so poor Jim was one of the last people to know because I had to wait for him to call me and well.. I have a big mouth and couldn't keep the news to myself!

Alex was born October 31, 2006. Needless to say, we were over the moon for him! And we still are! ha ha! :) He is two and is one of the sweetest kids I know. He DEFINITELY has his moments, but overall, just a really sweet little boy.

After a year in WA, we decided to move to VA to be part of the USS Bush. It didn't really matter to us where went, we just wanted to be able to be together as a family as much as possible, so moving to VA would allow us to that. The Bush was just being built and so that meant no sea time for at least a year and a half. Great, we will take it! So we packed up and headed back east!

I decided to go to school to become a medical transcriptionist so that I could work from home and still get to stay home with Alex (some days I am not sure I made the right choice)!! But I have been doing that for a year now, and I really enjoy it.

Jim got sick with mono back in April. It was a VERY severe case of it. He was in the hospital for a total of 11 days. To make a really long story short, it is possible that he will be getting a medical discharge this year. Overall, he is recovered, but he still gets very tired and his muscles are twitching. They are not all bad, but some of them are and he cannot return to his field of work not knowing when/if he is going to start twitching. The Navy won't let him cross rate, so he either has to be 100% done twitching by April or he is out. It is a weird thing to think about, because this whole time we joke about how we can get out and what we can do to make it happen, but now that the opportunity has presented itself it is a little scary. The economy is shot, where are we going to live, when will he find a job?! Ya know, little things like that to worry about.

Alex is so smart and funny in so many ways, but he does have a speech delay. My whole reasoning in starting this blog is to keep track of progress and to share our experiences with others. He is in speech therapy right now and has been doing a few signs regularly. He is signing more, drink, eat, and bubbles. We are really working on getting him to sit and play. He likes to wander from toy to toy. I am calling tomorrow for him to be evaluated by a developmental pediatrician just to get some more ideas on what we can do to help him. It has been an emotional struggle for me to make this decision. I have had the referral for almost three weeks and they are only good for a month. I am not sure WHY I struggled with it so much. I guess it is because no one wants to admit that something might be wrong with their perfect baby! All the what if's and society labels are just very overwhelming. BUT, I am going to make the call and we will see how it turns out.