My Path To Motherhood and a Big Reveal!

Every mother has a story; the story of how she became a mother, the story of how being a mother has changed her.  Today I’m writing about my path to motherhood over at The Happiest Mom.

I’m very excited about writing for Meagan; her blog (and book) is an inspiring, calming influence on me when my fears, worries and concerns about motherhood get me worked up.  So being selected to guest post on her site is an honor and a thrill!

I hope you’ll go read it, and I hope you’ll keep visiting her for your own dose of comforting, “you’re doing a good job” inspiration!

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Prompted by my first foray into ‘being published elsewhere’, I’m flinging off the cloak of anonymity and making the bold move of Revealing Our Identity!

When I began blogging, the Geek and I had concerns about privacy and security.  What can I say…we’re parents, and fairly private people to start with!  That’s why I started out using pseudonyms for my family.

But then the Geek started a blog to support his growing photography passion, and I started featuring his photographs (occasionally) on my blog…with his business logo watermark on them!

And I wrote a few posts that made mention of things in my local area.

And the Geek started sharing and liking everything I did on Facebook with this blog.

And we both started realizing…you know?  The truth is, anyone who really  wanted to know could figure out who we are.  Besides, the odds are against anything weird or bad happening to us because I write this blog; after all, newspaper columnists and book authors reveal their names and photographs and somehow only rarely deal with any negative fall-out from that.

So why are we being all hush-hush secretive about ourselves?

We couldn’t think of a really good reason, so with the Geek’s approval, we’re “coming out”!

HI!

My name is Carrie Summers.  I’m a Flight Attendant for a Major International Airline and have been working for them since I was 19 years old.  I’m based in the New York/Newark area, so I have a lot of experience with New York and New Jersey.  (Really neat places, both of them!)

I’m 35 years old, and originally from Houston, Texas.  As I mentioned in my anniversary post, when I met the Geek I chose to move to his location: Northwest Arkansas.

It’s a pretty interesting area, actually.  I mean, it’s Arkansas; being from Texas, we made disparaging jokes about Arkansans all the time!  But it’s also the headquarters for Wal-mart, JB Hunt and Tysons, and there’s a major university near us, to I sort of live in the perfect mesh of wealthy-big-business, college town, and country living.

I’m very happy here.

The Geek is my husband, Darrel.  He really is a computer geek – a DBA (Database Administrator) at the local university.  He’s also a fairly new photographer that is quickly growing in his skills.  (He’d grow a lot faster if he had more time to practice and more money for better gear!  But, you know, we have kids.)

In fact, he started his photography blog to force him to devote a little bit more time to his growing art by doing a “365” project: one picture and post per day for a whole year.  I’m not even a photographer (as you can tell from many of my blog pictures!) and I find it interesting, as he discusses the thinking and technique behind the pictures he takes.  Check it out, if photography is interesting to you:  SumPics Photography.

He’s originally from this area, but left as a young adult and lived in lots of places around the country.  After joining the military, he even got to live in Italy for two years!  Once he was done with his military service, he came back here to finish college, and settled down for lack of any better ideas about where to live.

Then he met me, and the rest is history!

Mr. Charm is our sweetheart Jed.  I didn’t just come up with our pseudonyms out of thin air; he really is an incredibly charming kid!  He’s full of spunk and has a natural joie de vivre that I’m actually a little envious of at times.

He’s fun, love, giggles, sweetness, and stubborness all wrapped up in an adorable nearly-three-year-old package.

Mr. Happy is our adorable Zac.  Again, his pseudonym came from his personality – he is absolutely the happiest baby I’ve ever seen!  While Jed is a happy kiddo, too, Zac is a more mellow, easy-going happy; he rarely gets upset.  Even with the many days he must be uncomfortable, or even in pain, he really only ever cries if he’s hungry, tired, or has a ‘reaction’ poopy diaper (he won’t cry if he has a normal poopy diaper – funny, huh?).

He’s probably at least as determined as his brother, and we think he might even be physically stronger than his big brother, which is a scary proposition.  Jed is pretty strong; Zac can almost hold his own with Jed, and they’re 23 months apart.

It’s going to be so much fun watching these boys grow up together!

So, that’s who we are.

It’ll be a lot easier to write without the fake names – though I’ll probably still use them on occasion.  They fit my boys so well!

It’s nice to meet you!