Wow, hi, it's been awhile since we've talked to each other. Some of it was unintentional, but then the time apart turned intentional. Let me catch you up on a few things that took place while I was away.
One, I had twins! That was the highlight of my time away and the unintentional part of my leave. Pretty shortly after we found out we were having twins, things turned from happy to anxious real quick. I started bleeding and had to be put on bedrest for the rest of the pregnancy. On top of that, I had to drive an hour away for weekly checkups on the twins. My baby B (Peter) was always measuring on the smaller size and had some other things come up during the scans. Baby A (Daniel) measured small too, but right on track. I delivered them at 36 weeks and both were really small. So we had about two weeks of NICU time. It was so gut wrenching going through that and would never wish that experience on anyone. Having our babies in a NICU felt to helpless. Once we got settled as a family everything was going great and we were loving being a family of six.
Then, we all got sick and this is where it became intentional to not post. My tiny Peter took the brunt of it and we were in and out of hospitals all winter long. We all started out with RSV, then I got hand foot mouth disease as well as bronchitis. The twins then developed bronchiolitis and that started the first of many hospital visits. Fortunately Daniel never had to stay in the hospital, but Peter did. There were a few times that we didn't know if he would make it and we would be up all night making sure he was breathing well. It was a struggle that lasted for the entire flu season and well into spring. What also was hard about it, was that my eldest son was in public school at the time and would routinely bring home colds and illnesses. But, we eventually got out of the loop of sicknesses and Peter is fortunately doing a lot better now.
During that whole fiasco, my husband applied to and got accepted into a medical program through the USCG. Then just as everyone was feeling better we sold our house and moved ourselves to Virginia over the summer. It's been a whirlwind of a move, but we love it down here and have been having a lot of fun exploring a new area. The boys have more friends to hang out with and will ride their bikes all day long, even once the sun goes down.
Lastly, and probably the scariest thing, we accidentally found a tumor in my chest. The whole story is chaotic in itself and maybe one day I can go more in depth with how we found it and what's happened since. But we found it two days before we left CT. It rocked our world as you can imagine and there were a ton of unknowns. But, most importantly, I had a surgery to remove it. It was huge, about 5 inches all around, and sitting right next to my heart, pushing it to the right as well. They also found some nodules on my ribs. Fortunately nothing is cancerous now, but I do have to be monitored for the next 10 years. Recovery has been an uphill battle with its ups and downs. It's been about 3 months now and things haven't healed fully, but I am making do.
So there's what's been going on the last two years. It's been a lot and we are still working through some of it, but we are moving forward and keeping our eyes on the horizon. I do hope to try and make posting here a regular thing, but we started homeschooling this year and I still need to balance that with blogging. I'm going to try and set aside some time to work on here, maybe once a week for now, but I still love inspiring you and there are somethings I would like to share with you as we adapt to our new house and state.
Love to you all and hope you are having a healthy fall!
With love,
Brittany