I have had a busy year. When I actually stop to think about everything that has happened, it's no wonder that I'm so tired all the time. I need to share some things that have have been percolating for a while in my brain. Things I haven't been able to share because I haven't been able to.
I have had plenty of emotional roller coasters since I was
married in 2005. I had a hard time leaving everything I knew and moving
to a foreign country. I loved being there and loved being with my new
husband, but it was hard. He worked long hours and had long weeks and
months in between days off. I often felt alone, I don't make new friends easily. I remember sitting on my
bed looking out the window wishing I had someone to talk to. Then we
found out we were expecting. I was so excited! I had always wanted to be
a mother and I was happy that I had accomplished enough in my life at that point that I felt like a well rounded person and could give the most to my new baby. But I didn't expect to feel so depressed when he was born. I didn't anticipate or know that I would wander around in a zombie-like state for a year before realizing that how I felt wasn't "normal". Postpartum depression sucks. There is no other way to say it (well there actually is, but I don't say those kinds of words).
I began to suspect that there was something different about Jeffrey when he was 2 years old. I know kids go through the terrible twos and I know they all throw tantrums but I just had a gut feeling that his were different. I can't tell you how many times I heard people tell me that all kids acted out, that it was just him asserting his independence and I shouldn't worry. I spent countless hours trying to make him act like other kids. To accept a time out and to sit in the corner until the 2 minutes were over and then have learned his lesson. Then we'd apologize and hug and make up. I didn't expect that I'd have a child who seemed to shut down and become violent and scream for 20 minutes or more but who didn't want me to leave him alone. I wanted to be a mom, but I didn't expect that it would be so hard.
A year or so later, I was happy with my life, I felt complete and felt like things were getting back on track after a particularly horrible year when Cory was injured in Afghanistan. I was teaching with the dance school in Denver, I was enjoying time with friends and didn't feel like anything needed to change. When Cory and I would sit in the Celestial room in the temple I never felt like anything was missing, there wasn't any other baby waiting up there to join our family. Things were going great. (Insert eye roll.)
Then Cory called with the next bit of life changing news. Fort Riley, Kansas. Yep. Kansas. I had driven through exactly once and felt like that was enough for me. I had no desire to die in a tornado and didn't want to live in a flat prairie. There are NO certified dance schools in Kansas and I knew ONE person in the entire state. But you see, the Lord always knows what's best. In my life, he always has and always will.
After the trip to Colorado, where I broke my foot and had surgery, I came back to Kansas to a husband who was preparing for a year long deployment. I had suspected that Jeffrey was Autistic for some time. One night I was watching the show Parenthood when the boy on the show (who has Asperger's) did something I had seen Jeffrey do before. It was like a light bulb clicked on and things began to make sense, the more I read about Asperger's Syndrome the more things began to click into place. I began asking for help to find out who could help us find out if I was even close to being right. I started looking on his 4th birthday, almost two years later we are still trying to find the right help for him.
In the midst of all of this I was sitting in sacrament meeting when a sister bore her testimony about how she had been an only child growing up and she had longed for a sibling. Right there in that meeting it hit me like a ton of bricks, "It's time to have another baby." I leaned over to Cory and said "I think we better talk about a baby when we get home." On the drive home he said he was 100% on board and had just been waiting for me to on the same page. (sometimes I think the Spirit has to beat me over the head with things...) I knew he would be deployed and that I would be having the baby without him, all while Jeffrey was starting school and dealing with daddy being gone.
We have to back up for a minute for this part of the story. When we were looking at houses in Kansas we had a hard time finding anything we liked. We looked at one house that was just too small and the landlord said, "I have an even better place for you guys," we drove right over to look at it and were impressed with it at once. This was all happening on a Sunday after we had attended stake conference with my friend at her ward so we were still dressed in our Sunday clothes. The next door neighbor girl walked up to us and started talking to us. She bluntly asked why we were in our church clothes, we told her we had just gone to church. She asked where my mom was from and then asked if we were Mormon. (I love my sweet little neighbor's honesty, she says things just like they are but never means to offend anyone.) When we went back in the house the landlord asked what we thought about it. I gave Cory a look that I thought said, "let's go to the hotel and talk about it," but he saw as "get this house quick!" and he said "We'll take it!" At the time I thought he was crazy.
Fast forward again to this spring and summer when it was often over 100 degrees and this pregnant mommy couldn't go outside for more than a few minutes at a time. The neighbors would often be out playing and would let Jeffrey jump right into their games. (I hadn't said anything about him to them even though they knew more about him after two months than I knew in two years.) He had a few instances in church when he would have a "meltdown" and shut down and start screaming or hitting. They would come to my rescue and calm him down without my ever asking for help. I was thankful for them and glad that we had moved next door to them. Little did I know how strongly the hand of the Lord had been guiding us to this exact location.
(That is way more than I wanted to write but I wanted to get it out, stay tuned for part two later.)
