Happy ICLW!!

This being my first, I have gathered that I should post my story.

I can't remember why I started a blog. I had a livejournal back in the angsty college days for my poetry and "I hate everything" tirades but then outgrew it... abandoned it and forgot about the online blogging community.

In that time I met the love of my life and married him 100 days after we met. Got pregnant on accident, but we were thrilled despite poor timing. Then, at our first prenatal appointment at around 8.5 weeks found out via ultrasound that our little angel was no longer with us.

Devestated doesn't begin to cover what we felt. It was a rocky, dark next several months, but in the end it gave Donnie and I an unbreakable bond and has carried us through many tough times since.

About 4 months after the miscarriage, we decided to start trying again. We figured since it happened so easily the first time it would be a cinch now that we were actually making an effort to get pregnant.

Nope.

Somewhere in the rollercoaster of TTC, I started this blog. I was a terrible blogger, spotty at best. But with work and life itself, I was lucky to remember to brush my teeth some nights.

Finally got my BFP on cycle 12, barely making the cutoff for the "normal" range of healthy couples, but not before I had become something of an expert on all things TTC.

So then, my ramblings about TTC turned into ecstatic and nervous posts about the little life I was growing inside me and also into a way to document all the beautiful moments of pregnancy that I feared I might forget. After a beautifully smooth pregnancy and a eye-opening natural birth center, midwife attended birth, the blog evolved once again into the blog of a mother. Quinlon Jade joined this world on March 30th, 2008 at 4:01 AM, forever changing our lives.

To date, mother has to be my favorite role. I love being a wife/daughter/sister/friend but there is just something about being a mother that still, to this very day, takes my breath away and puts tears in my eyes.


But the evolution was not near complete as we made our plans to move to China to go to TCM school and teach English. Donnie, you see, is a kung fu master whose master himself lives in China. I could go into boring details, but unless you are in the martial arts world, his prestigious titles mean very little. Just know that he has dedicated his life to the art and it has paid off in his accomplishments, so it means the world to him to be near his master.

In February of 2009, we finally succeeded and boarded a plane to China with our 10 month old in tow all of which you can read on my blog in past entries.

So, here we are. A young, hip American family in China trying to carve out a happy, successful place for ourselves in a sinking economic world.

Pleased to meet you all. I can't wait to learn about your lives.