In the beginning...

I have no idea where to begin this blog, but I guess I will start with the brief (but probably not really) summary of my life and how I got to my current position in life.  I was born to my mom and dad in November of 1983, which I have no memory of at all, but I am sure it was great.  Ha.  My parents got divorced when I was still a baby and I have been with my daddy ever since.  Long story and not public blog appropriate.  It was only my dad and I, living very humbly in a trailer on my grandparents’ farm.  It was this way until I was two weeks shy of the ripe old age of 7, when Dad married my stepmom, Judy.  I gained 2 stepsisters, Amie and Misty, who were already grown (well, Amie was a senior in high school, so we lived together for a year.)  I’m going to go ahead and skip to college, where I attended and graduated from Jacksonville State University in Alabama with a degree in Communication/Public Relations.  For a year and a half in there, I got a little lost, moved home, hated it, and promptly moved back to Alabama where I belonged.  It took me six years to graduate, but hey, I got there. 

I met my husband, Ryan, in my church youth group while I was in high school.  I am three years older than he is, that doesn’t make me a cougar, right?  ;)  Ryan went to Georgia Southern University to college and we were 5+ hours apart.  That made for an interesting relationship/engagement.  After getting engaged in July of 2007, we FINALLY got married in October of 2009 on my grandparents’ farm and it was the most beautiful, wedding I could have imagined for us. 

Our wedding day

Then, only 5 months later, we found out we were expecting a baby!  When we found out, I cried. Funny, I will NEVER forget that feeling of sheer terror!  I was supposed to be responsible for someone else?  I couldn’t even take care of me!  Scary!!!  While I cried, Ryan ran around our apartment, jumping on the furniture and screaming so loud that our neighbors heard and knew before anyone else.   After a long and very fat pregnancy, by emergency C-section one cool October day, our precious, magical little boy, Colt Thomas was born at 37 weeks, weighing 8 pounds and 6 ounces.  He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and still is to this day.  I am so stupidly smitten and head-over-heels in love with this child.  Yes, I am That Mom.  My kid does no wrong.  Just kidding… sort of.  ;) 

Newborn Colt.  Look at those cheeks!

Colt has had his share of obstacles, but nothing too scary and for that I am eternally grateful.  At around 4 or 5 months old, we noticed his eyes were shaking side-to-side, really quickly.  A lady we knew said “My grandson’s eyes do that.  It is called Nystagmus.  You need to call his doctor right now.”  That scared me, so I immediately went home, called the pediatrician, made an appointment for the very next morning, and googled “nystagmus.”  Don’t ever do that.  It will terrify you.  Anyway, I will try to make this short, but we got him in, found out the diagnosis was correct and were sent to a pediatric ophthalmologist a few weeks later.  A lot of people are born with nystagmus, but sometimes when people acquire it later, it usually has a cause, such as a brain injury or a brain tumor.  We knew he hadn’t had a brain injury, so that left the other.  We got an MRI scheduled at Vanderbilt University within a week to find out what was going on.  That was really hard on us because they had to put him to sleep for over an hour to do the test.  Having to pass my precious 5 month old over to people I didn’t know but knowing they were going to stick him with needles, stick tubes down his throat, and run hour long tests on him was probably the hardest thing I have ever had to do.  BUT his brain was perfectly normal!  Praise God. J  They still don’t know what caused his nystagmus, but we’re dealing with it.  He didn’t walk until 18 months and now at almost 21 months still isn’t talking.  Colt also has strabismus, where his eyes do not line up.  They used to cross in, but we have had two surgeries and now they go out too far.  It is terribly frustrating and I am currently trying to get him in to a doctor in Akron, Ohio, who is supposed to be the best nystagmus/strabismus doctor in the country.  At around nine months, he even wore glasses for about five months to try to straighten his eyes and it was the cutest thing I have ever seen!  They did not work, nor did the patching of his eyes, so now we’re waiting, trying to figure out what to do next.  We obviously have a few more surgeries to go, but hopefully this doctor can minimize those. 

Colt's glasses. ;)

Hanging out on the porch

Now my husband, Ryan, and I work together (yikes!) at my family’s ice company.  I only work 2 ½ days a week and the other days get to stay home with my boy.  I like to cook, read, go to concerts, watch baseball (Go Braves!) and college football(Go Dawgs!), shop, and recently, do crafty stuff.  Thanks to my obsession with Pinterest for that one. 

I will keep you guys updated on how Colt’s eye stuff goes and our journey through life with this blog and I SWEAR, I will not post another blog this long. I was right, not so brief.  If you made it to the end, congratulations.  If you didn’t, well….thanks for giving it a shot.  ;)

Jessica