Hellobee

Hello everybody! I’ve missed you all a lot! It’s been over a year since I blogged here, and it’s been a topsy-turvy, rollercoaster of a year (for me, and everyone!).

A little refresher: I’m a 29-year-old mom married to my college sweetheart. We are one-and-done parents with a now 6-year-old only daughter. We live in rural Ohio and have 3 cats. I live with multiple chronic illnesses, including Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, POTS, Chiari malformation, Cyclical Vomiting Syndrome, psoriasis, and probably others I’m forgetting, and have had severe anxiety and panic disorder since childhood.

A lot has changed since my last post, so here’s a little update!

A recent picture of Snowy and I, masked due to the pandemic, at the social distanced zoo reopening

I became a stay-at-home mom for a summer. 

Because of my health, I decided to step down from my full-time job. I had no other plans, and so I was a stay at home mom for the summer. It was Snowy’s last summer before kindergarten, and my last chance to spend extended time at home with her (…so I thought). It was a great summer, and the amount of stuff we did floors me compared to our mostly stay-at-home life now. Her highlights were learning to swim without floaties and jump off the diving board. I’ll write more about her development in a future post!

I got accepted into, and started, a PhD program! 

I have a Masters in Divinity, and have always wanted a PhD. I switched fields and enrolled in a PhD in Higher Education with a specialization and assistantship in accessibility and disability. I have now finished one year of coursework (and somehow, miraculously with everything else that has happened, maintained a 4.0), and have likely one more year of coursework, comprehensive exams, and then probably 2 of dissertation until I am Dr. Snowflake!

Snowy started kindergarten. 

We live in a small rural town, and Snowy attends a public elementary school ten minutes away from our house. There is one elementary school centralized for the whole rural district, including several surrounding small towns. The district is great and her teacher was amazing.

But of course COVID-19 changed all that, and I became her main teacher, while balancing my coursework and assistantship, from mid-March until she “finished” her kindergarten year in late May. It was wild but we all survived!

I was hospitalized…a lot. 

This semester, I’ve spent 8 nights total overnight in three different hospitals. I passed out at school twice, causing two ambulance rides. That made over 20 nights overnight in the hospital in 2019.

Then COVID-19 struck, and it’s been a mixed bag for me and our family. My mental health took a downward spiral along with my heart rhythm and I spent 3 days in the hospital. I am now, somehow, literally the healthiest I’ve ever been. I am exercising most days after being very unmobile for years and even having to use a wheelchair for most distances. I have ridden over 100 miles since April 4, which was for me a big deal! I also had been struggling with self-medicating with alcohol and an eating disorder and am proud to say I’ve been in recovery for nearly 4 months now! I just started a rebounding workout along with my cycling and it’s been the best thing for me, along with therapy and psychiatry. I am thriving and it’s definitely having a positive impact on my family! And I haven’t been hospitalized, even for an ER visit, since March!

Snowy turned six. 

Snowy turned six in January and we had an awesome celebration! It was back in January and we had no idea what would follow. Other than her party, her present was a family trip to a water park hotel.

Mr. Snowflake & I celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary! 

Mr. S and I were married back in 2013. We’ll have been together 10 years this September. I can’t imagine being with anyone but Mr. S. He still remains my rock and Snowy and I are both so, so lucky to have him.

It’s been a wild fall, and the Snowflake family has been hanging on tight! Now that I’m settling into some sort of rhythm as I enter my 2nd year of my PhD, I hope to blog more often. I’ve missed you all!

Some things I hope to blog on in the near future:

• Snowy’s dino-mite 6th birthday party
•  Christmas in July
• Addiction/self-medicating and recovery
• Exercising as a total beginner (and as a chronically ill mom)
• Parenting while in grad school
• Media reviews of some of our favorite shows/movies/etc. we’ve watched during the pandemic
• Snowy’s big-girl room renovation
• Sharing an interest (dinosaurs!) with your child
• Raising a budding vet/animal rescuer
• Making time for reading for fun as a busy mom
• Diverse book recommendations for 6-year-olds
• My spiritual practices that started during COVID-19
• And a lot more!

I am glad to still be here and hope you’ve all been weathering this time well. All my love!