Why did I decide to start blogging again? For my kids! I want them to have a place to come when they're older to read about our family and know our history. There are so many important things that I wanted to remember so I could tell them later on that I've already forgot! I want them to be able to come here for a recipe of their favorite food if I'm not around to give it to them. I want them to be able to see pictures of themselves along the way. I want them to remember all of the fun things they got to do and the lessons they learned. I want them to ask the question, "Did my mom really write that in a blog?" I plan to share portions of our every day life and the yummy food we make along the way!
For now, here's what has happened in the past several years...
Several years ago I blogged almost every day on xanga. I blogged about my dating relationship with my now husband, I blogged about our engagement, I blogged about my marriage.... until it got rocky. That's when I stopped. It was fun to blog when everything felt like a fairytale, but I didn't like the idea of letting my fellow bloggers know that my marriage wasn't as strong or happy as I hoped it would be so I stopped blogging. I wish I would've at least kept the blog so I could go back and read it now. I wonder what the new me would think about the old me.
What I didn't realize then was pretty much every other newlywed couple goes through what we were going through. Marriage is a huge adjustment... especially when you move away from your family for the first time all the way from Texas to North Carolina and live in the complete ghetto! Thankfully we didn't live there for very long! Over the next four or five months we moved from one ghetto to the slightly nicer ghetto to a gated community with several lakes and a golf course. We were most definitely "the poor kids" in the neighborhood, but we didn't care, we were just happy to be IN the neighborhood! After renting that house for a year we decided to buy it. It was the perfect little house. It was definitely little, but we didn't need anything huge, it was just the two of us. We moved in in March and Ava was born in November. We had some not-so-great things happen during those nine months, but looking back we're both thankful things turned out the way they did. I'd share the details of that, but they're not my details to share. I'll just say our world was turned upside down, our plan was shattered and we had no clue what was next. As a couple we came out of the situation much stronger than going in. That's one reason I wouldn't change it.
Ava was born at the Army hospital on Ft. Bragg. Brent had worked with my midwife in the weeks leading up to her birth so my midwife actually let Brent deliver Ava. That was a really cool experience for both of us. We were in love with being her parents from the first moment we saw her.
We lived in North Carolina until the following June when we moved to Fort Campbell, KY. I never cared much for Ft. Bragg (besides a few good friends I had made) so the move to Ft. Campbell was really exciting for me. I loved my time there. I love the city of Clarksville and I LOVE (most of) the people I met there. We moved into an apartment close to the river when we first moved to Tennessee. We lived there until Brent deployed the following January. The day he deployed we got to take him to the hangar and spend some time with him before they bussed him away. My heart and my body hurt so bad I don't even know how I was functioning. By that point, Brent was my best friend in the entire universe and I depended on him for everything. Now we had this baby who was barely over a year old and he was leaving with the possibility of never coming back. My dad came the day Brent deployed and we started driving back to Texas almost as soon as he left. I remember crying for hours. My poor dad, he tried to comfort me, but I couldn't be comforted. I hate change and my life was changing in a way I didn't want it to for an ENTIRE YEAR!
Once Ava and I adjusted, the year wasn't too terribly bad. It's that initial adjustment period that hurts the most.
That year, we lived in Texas with my parents. I really never worried about Brent much. I had a peace about the deployment. It helped that he was stationed at a pretty big FOB and we got to talk regularly. Even though we spent a year apart, the deployment brought us together like never before. We learned a new kind of respect for each other. One big lesson we learned was that we couldn't compare our situations... it was like comparing apples and house shoes. Anyone who knows me very well at all knows there is NO WAY I could ever survive a day in the military and (though I disagree a little bit) Brent thinks he'd go crazy if he had to stay home with the kids every day.
He got home from Afghanistan the following January and we settled into a crappy little apartment in Clarksville, TN. I chose the place and rented it before I actually saw it.
The worst part had to be the paper thin walls. We heard EVERYTHING that our neighbors below and besides us did. I mean EVERYTHING! I got pregnant in February, found out in March and spent the next few weeks really sick. We decided to break our lease for the apartment because there was no way we could possibly stay there and have another baby. So we bought another house. I loved my house in Tennessee! Of course there were a few things I would've changed about it, but for the most part, I loved that house. It was big, it was new, it was in a good neighborhood, I had great neighbors. We bought the house in March or April. Brent had lots of out of state schools that year so he spent a lot of time away. Ava and I spent quite a bit of time in Texas. During one visit curiosity got the best of me so my mom, sister and I went to find out if I was pregnant with a boy or a girl. I wanted to wait for Brent, but he wanted to know just as much as I did so he encouraged me to find out. We found out that I was carrying A BOY! We were so excited to have a little boy. I was a little nervous because I knew when this baby was only a few months old, Brent would be deploying again. Brent got home from one school on my birthday, July 2nd, and left for the next school at the beginning (or maybe it was the middle) of August. Ava and I stayed in TN for a little while, but after a month or so we ended up in Texas again. While I was in Texas I was seeing an OB doctor, that was the only way my doctor in Tennessee would agree to me going in the first place. I went in for an appointment one day after having what I thought were Braxton Hicks contractions. The doctor felt my belly and said, "You're having REAL contractions!" He checked me and I was dilated to a three at 33 weeks. He sent me up to Labor and Delivery to start the most horrible thing I've ever experienced in my life... MAGNESIUM! I stayed in the hospital off and on for several days then went home to be on bedrest. Thank GOD I decided to go to Texas. I had the help of my family to take care of Ava so that was one less thing to stress about. Brent was in the final phase of Ranger School at the time. I got a hold of one of his friends who was an instructor there and asked him to tell Brent what was going on. Before that message made it to him, someone from his old company had already called and told one of the other instructors that I had delivered Blake. Brent was able to call (usually during Ranger School they only get to call at the end of each phase for a few minutes at time.) As soon as he talked to me he started trying to get to Texas to be with me, but I was trying to convince him that he should stay. He was in the final phase, two weeks away from being FINISHED with one of the Army's hardest schools that he'd been at since August, it was now mid October, he couldn't quit! It wasn't that I didn't WANT him to be there with me, I wanted him to be there more than anything, but I knew if Blake was born he was only estimated to weigh 3 pounds so he'd spend more time in the NICU than it would take Brent to finish Ranger School. Eventually my labor was stopped and Brent was close to graduating! Against my doctor's recommendations, my parents and I drove from Texas to Georgia to see Brent graduate! Two weeks later, Blake Allen Schneider was born!
He was born at 37 weeks, one month after I went into premature labor. He weighed 6 pounds 2 oz and was absolutely beautiful! When he was born he had a knot in his cord and the cord was wrapped around his neck twice. My doctor said that he had an angel on his shoulder for sure and that most likely solved the mystery of why he was so eager to get out of my belly! What I didn't realize was, that knot (which the doctor said was caused by him being crazy in the womb) was just a small indicator of what my future with this boy would be like!
After Blake was born, he was completely attached to me. The only time he wasn't touching me in some way was when I was in the shower. He slept with me, I held him all day every day. If I put him down, he would scream. My mom would say, "You're going to reget this later," but I just thought of it as, he's probably my last baby, he NEEDS me and I'm going to soak it up. It wasn't too long before we discovered something wasn't right with him. He ate constantly, but he wasn't growing. He cried all the time. He didn't sleep. We took him to his pediatrician so many times and she just seemed uninterested in helping. I left her office in tears and headed straight to the ER more than once. At the ER they'd tell me all sorts of things. One time they told me I was overfeeding him and that made him fussy. One doctor asked me if I just WANTED something to be wrong with him because they didn't see anything wrong. As much as those things hurt me to hear, I KNEW something was wrong.
Brent deployed in late April of 2010.
The day he left could've easily been classified as the worst day of my life. Ava was devastated which made my heart hurt so much worse. She didn't understand what was going on. I didn't know how I was going to survive. I had a baby who cried nonstop, all day every day and a 3 year old to take care of. Brent would come home from work every day and save me. He would take over with Blake and let me shower or let me take a nap. He'd be there to just take over if I needed him to so I wouldn't lose the small amount of sanity I had left. When I dropped him off at his company, I was okay. I really was. I think I was okay because there were so many people there, lots going on, I wasn't focused completely on him leaving. As only three members of my family of four drove away, I cried a little bit, but I was still okay. It wasn't until that evening, about the time Brent would come home to save me, that I lost it. I was a wreck. I realized that for the next year I would be on my own and I had serious doubts that I could do it.
I decided to move to Texas (surprise surprise) but this time because of Blake. I had a great pediatrician when we lived there when Ava was a baby and she agreed to see both of my kids this time around. I needed answers and I knew she'd work to get me some. During our first visit, she agreed that something wasn't right with him. THANK YOU GOD! Finally, someone agreed with me! Over the next few months we went through a lot. Lots of blood work, lots of tests, lots of traveling for tests. She quickly labelled him as "failure to thrive." This broke my heart. The sweet baby that I brought into this world was "failure to thrive." Did I do something wrong? Would he ever be okay?
The first thing we did was change his formula. We put him on Nutramigen. That was costing us $20 every other day. I didn't see a ton of change in him, but he seemed a little less fussy so that made it worth the money. He was tested for Cystic Fibrosis, the pediatrician and his pulmonologist thought that was the answer. He had so many of the symptoms, failure to thrive, breathing issues, salty tasting skin, etc. We tested for it and it came back negative. They were so convinced he had it that they sent us for a different test in a city 3 hours away. It came back negative too. We were back at step one. There were days when I honestly wondered if my baby would live to see his 1st birthday. When Brent would call from Afghanistan, I would just cry. I cried every time he called me for months. He did what he could to comfort me from so far away. I knew he was hurting too. He was hurting because he wanted to be there to help me, but he couldn't be. I know he was having some of the same fears as I was.
This picture was taken when Blake was 6 months old. He weighed 13 pounds.
At one point, my tiny baby was taking two different inhalers multiple times a day, a steroid and breathing treatments every 3-4 hours. I felt like I was neglecting Ava because Blake required so much of me.
In June of 2010, my parents ran into my teacher from kindergarten. They told her about Blake and everything that was going on. She told them that her son, a chiropractor, had a new type of treatment that might be able to help him. By this point I had tried EVERYTHING that anyone had recommended to me so I thought, "Why not? What do I have to lose?" We visit Dr. Reimer at Reimer Family Chiropractic twice before I noticed a difference in Blake. I decided to take him off of his inhalers for a day and see if he'd be okay. That day in July of 2010 was the last time Blake consistently took an inhaler! Sometimes he still gets sick and he'll need one for a day or two, but he can LIVE without them most days! Dr. Reimer uses a laser treatment called Bioveda and to our family, it was a Godsend! I took Blake to the doctor about a week after our first Bioveda treatment and he had gained THREE POUNDS! My failure to thrive baby who just couldn't get over 13 pounds now weighed 16 pounds!
Over the next few months, Blake became a happier and healthier baby. He's now almost two and happy and active as can be. He's a healthy weight and his development is where it should be. He keeps me on my toes!
During Brent's deployment, things weren't easy. I was so busy trying to be a decent mother to Ava while having to focus most of my attention on Blake. The deployment was ROUGH. We started losing soldiers pretty early on. That set the tone and reminded me that I wasn't guaranteed to get my husband back. There was one point in June, I believe, when I got information about injured soldiers before I was supposed to. I got the information because I was the point of contact for their families and these families called me to tell me about what was going on. I was so thankful that they called me and I could help them through this really difficult time as much as I could, but I was a wreck myself. I tried to make them think that I was rock solid, but the truth was I've never been so broken in my life. I knew that something huge was going on, I hadn't talked to Brent in days and now I'm hearing of all of these injuries. I paced the entry hall of my parents' house for two days. I was TERRIFIED that I was going to get a knock on my door letting me know that my other half, my best friend, wasn't coming home. I looked out the door or the window probably once every minute just to make sure a government vehicle hadn't pulled up.
A couple days later I decided I had to get out of the house so I took the kids to the pool. That's when I finally talked to Brent. He sounded exhausted, but in decent spirits considering what had happened. Out of respect for the families of fallen soldiers, families of unaffected soldiers are notified of deaths before we're allowed to talk to our soldiers about them. They do that so a husband doesn't call his wife or other family member and tell them about a death before the affected family is properly notified. Brent told me that one of his friends had been killed. I can't imagine how hard it has to be for the guys over there when they lose someone they're close to. I'm sure that's why they say the bonds made during war are bonds that can never be broken.
Brent returned from his deployment at the end of March 2011.
The kids readjusted to him being home flawlessly!
We've had our struggles since he's been home. He was used to living in a warzone with a bunch of guys, not in a house with two active and VERY LOUD children. I could tell he was overwhelmed by them at times, but shoot, so am I! It took a little extra time to adjust, but now I think we feel a lot closer to "normal" again.
In June we made our way to Florida where Brent is working as a Ranger Instructor. We should have (I think) three years, deployment-free here! He's had to work a lot lately, but it's comforting knowing that, even though he doesn't always get to eat dinner with us or sleep at home, he's safe. I don't have to worry about him if I don't get to talk to him at all during the day.
Florida is FUN! We love living here! We don't go to the beach nearly as much as I thought we would, but when we do, we have a blast! The kids made friends quickly, Ava's in a good preschool. I've met some great people. I have a fantastic grocery store close by and like Ava says, "it's so cool to smell the ocean even when you're not AT the ocean!"
