Oh I really have not kept up (or you should have been reading my LiveJournal)

I abandoned this blog almost two years ago. I had big hopes for blogging about my pregnancy and how I dealt with my Type 1 Diabetes while I was pregnant. Unfortunately, I didn't keep up with that.

I also realize that I have yet to actually type out my son's "birth story." I think that there are still aspects of his birth and my subsequent hospital stay that I am still coming to terms with. Of course over a year out from that looking at my boy and how healthy he is and how well we overcame our nursing problems (to the point that he is still happily nursing several times a day) I tend to forget all about the disappointments that I had at that time.

Also, my life changed dramatically very soon after my son was born. As if the wee one's birth was not enough, my husband left (after some severe pushing by a horrible supervisor) his job when our son was six weeks old.

That is what resulted in me going from leaving my son home with his father when he was merely 12 weeks old and going back to work as a mental health case manager; to moving across three states to my childhood home moving into my grandparents' home and caring for multiple generations of my family while my husband goes to work.

Did I mention that this past week was also the one year anniversary of "The Fire." About one year ago, I was woken up around midnight (the baby sleeping on my chest as I reclined on the couch) by the phone. It was my sister telling me that her abusive, soon-to-be ex-husband had violated a restraining order, broken into her house, stood over my sister and her two children (ages 3 and 6) with an ax and threatened to kill them before he set fire to the house with my sister and her children inside.

The months leading up to my son's birth were tense ones. I was terrified by the horror stories of babies born to diabetic mothers as well as the phone calls from my sister relating the threatening phone calls that she was receiving from her estranged husband. Directly after his birth, we had problems with my son's lack of weight gain and difficulty nursing. Just when that started to be resolved, my husband was pushed out of his job and my sister's house burned to the ground with everything she owned.

A month after the fire we came to my home church to have my son baptized. Only after my ex-brother-in-law was apprehended and we new that it would be safe to visit. My other sister was home from the Peace Corps and we just tried to be a family for a few days.

When my husband and I returned home we made the decision to move back to the farm that I grew up on. We left our house and became a statistic of the collapsing mortgage industry. My husband was out of work for almost six months and nearly went crazy. Staying with my grandparents was supposed to be temporary, but it grew into a win-win situation for all of us, so we have stayed here. My husband is working in a job that he enjoys and I get to spend every waking moment with my son.

My son know and loves his great-grandparents, his great-aunts and uncles, his grandparents, his uncle (my brother), all of his aunts, and his cousins. He also loves tractors and constantly wants to be outside. My family is over-joyed that we are here.

I finally am as well.