Where we are

Hello! Hello! Hello! Anyone out there? Probably not. But for my own record keeping I though it time to pop into the old bloggity blog and dust it off a little bit. There’s a very good chance it will get dusty again pretty fast but oh well.

So where to begin. I don’t even know. So I guess we will start from the beginning.

 February 5, 2012. Super Bowl Sunday. The Giants beat the Patriots and I won the football pool in Brett’s office. Oh yeah, we also found out Baby #2 was on his way. I’m the worst at surprises and I don’t keep things from Brett well. I pretty much blurted it out the second he walked in the door from the gym that morning. 

Baby #2

And so it began, our reassessment of everything that we knew to be true in our life. Work, family, money. Everything. The conclusion was that we needed a change for our family. We wanted to be in a smaller town. Brett needed more time at home.  I missed my family. And so our journey began. When I say journey maybe that’s not the right word because we had no idea where we would end up. Brett looked into a law license in Pennsylvania, made some contacts and interviewed for a lot of jobs. What it came down to was that nothing was going to change. He was interviewing with big firms in Pittsburgh and we didn’t want to live in Pittsburgh. So instead of sitting on the train for two hours every day, he would be driving for two hours every day.

Fast forward to October 2013, Brett had flown to Pittsburgh again, had another interview, meetings, etc. and came home with a different plan entirely – he was starting his own law firm. It was a Friday night. The boys were home with our babysitter and we were sitting at a bar. As Brett laid out this plan in front of me it evolved from a crazy sounding idea into something we thought may actually work. So we slept on it for a few nights and eventually decided that yes this is in fact what we would do. From there, things got crazy. Due to the opportunity that Brett had found, him moving to Pennsylvania in January was a necessity, but it didn't make sense for me to move in the middle of the school year. So on Friday June 10, as I left for work, Brett got in our loaded up Uhaul #1 and moved to Pennsylvania by himself. The boys and I spent the next 5 and a half months on our own. That is a whole post in itself. What a difficult, humbly, exciting experience it was being a full time single working mom to two amazing little boys. To say I learned a lot about parenting and myself is an understatement. It did go by fast. Before I knew it, I was putting PJS on these two by myself for the last time and on June 20, the boys and I anxiously waited for Daddy to come home to get us. 

Our last night without Daddy

The boys drove back to PA with my mom and a good friend and Brett and I spent the next week packing up our first home. We took advantage of being back in our first home just the two of us again – we laughed a lot and cried a little. While we knew it was the right decision, packing up our life and leaving everything we knew was difficult.

One last date night in Wheaton

Saying good bye to the house we made our home - two puppies and two babies later 

We are now settled into our “home”. Most of our stuff is in storage and we are living in my childhood home. I was fortunate enough to find a job for this school year as a part time high school special ed teacher, exactly what I wanted. We found a new babysitter – she certainly couldn’t replace our Emma, but she is doing great with the boys. Owen started preschool –yes, our baby started preschool  -  and LOVES it. So for now, we continue to build our new life together in a new state!

First day of school

Always smiling

The Law Office of Brett A. Clancy - we are so proud!

Dealing with Allergies

I’m not allergic to anything. Brett has had seasonal allergies off and on, but nothing serious. So we are relatively new to the allergy family.

Declan was diagnosed around a year as having a moderate allergy to eggs. We had a strong suspicious when he was ten months old and had scrambled eggs for the first time. What started out as “looking a little red” turned into full blown hives on his face, head and neck. We have a good prognosis that he could grow out of it by the time he starts school. Fingers crossed. When he was tested, he was tested for both eggs and peanuts. Eggs were a relief. Eggs are easy to cut out with only a little creativity and a lot of reading labels. We’ve only had one “accident”; a few weeks ago I gave him less than a teaspoon of Ranch dressing. Who knew Ranch dressing had eggs in it? He had a worse reaction than the first time, but still nothing a little Benedryl couldn’t handle.

Our latest dealings with allergies happened to be with Owen. After being on Amoxicillin for almost a week, he started with hives on his little behind one night. It cleared up with Benedryl. The next morning his stomach and chest were covered with hives and within a few hours they were spreading over his whole body. Two days and a few doctor’s visits later, we found ourselves in the ER with a diagnosis of Erythema Multiforme with a trigger of Amoxicillin. He had to undergo blood tests, urine tests, and needed lots of fluid due to dehydration. His hives spread and turned into a red rash with welts, and hives, and circles and all sorts of very scary looking marks. A scary site to see on your baby. He was so itchy and looked like he could crawl out of his skin; he was so uncomfortable. Talk about a mama just wanting to make it OK.

We are lucky. I have friends who have dealt with anaphylaxis and have to avoid places entirely due to allergies. Ours are relatively simple, but still just as scary. You never know when there could be cross contamination or that a reaction will be much worse than the last time.  That’s the scary thing about allergies…you just never know.

Not Yet

On Super Bowl Sunday, two years ago, Brett and I found out that we were having another baby.

Super exciting. Super scary. Super surprise.

What ensued in the weeks ahead was a lot of soul searching by two scared parents. I knew I wanted something different for our family. Needed something different actually. It was then that Brett and I decided to pursue the option of moving back to Washington, PA - a much smaller town and the place where I grew up. I must take a moment to give Brett a lot of credit here because at this point in our decision there was nothing for me to do. He took it upon himself to acquire his PA law license and eventually his WV license to make himself more marketable. The unfortunate part of all of his hard work was that any job out there didn't change a whole lot about what our life would look like. We couldn't escape a long commute and city "living". In October 2014, with the help of some people that had been "at it" much longer than Brett, he decided to open his own law firm. The Friday night he returned from his WV swearing in, we sat for a long time while he laid out this plan. My initial reaction was obvious - that while this seemed exciting it wasn't something we would not actually consider. The more we talked and the more excitement that I saw in him about this decision, I knew this was it. We had prayed for so long that an opportunity would come. We felt like all we were being told was no. What I came to realize was this was all part of the plan. God hadn't been telling us no, he had been telling us not yet because something bigger and better was on the horizon. Fast forward to today, our family is in the midst of some major changes. Brett is all in, starting his own law firm in small town Washington, PA while I tie up loose ends here and finish out the school year. It' not ideal and it's not exactly how we saw things working out, but again God is simply asking us to be patient and put our faith in him that this is exactly how things are supposed to be.

Follow">http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/5998703/?claim=pybcvnmuuk3">Follow my blog with Bloglovin