A Bit About Me

I am Shannon. I just recently hit the big 3-0 milestone, the dirty 30. I am married to an early college professor, and we have two beautiful children together. I am a history fanatic, the family historian, the family photographer, and the family chauffeur. I’m also a self proclaimed nerd who loves BBC shows, comic book movies, Tolkien, Star Wars, The Walking Dead, Star Trek, and anything Science Fiction related.

I met my husband, Ryan, in 2005 but didn’t get an opportunity to date him until 2012. We were married on my sister’s birthday October 25, 2014. We love to be giant nerds. We enjoy cooking together, discussing life and hypothetical topics, discussing zombie apocalypse scenarios, watching British Television, watching documentaries, and going to the cinema. He is mostly blind because he was born with a genetic condition called retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease. Despite this, he teaches English Composition and Philosophy to high school students at a college prep school. Since he has only a 13% window of vision I have to drive us everywhere. Every weekday morning, I get up and drive him with our two children in tow to the school where he works; it’s about an hour drive there and back.

My son, Dylan, is a typical boy: he loves video games, superheroes, Legos, TMNT, Dr. Who, Star Wars, Batman, playing music on his guitar or his piano, and teasing his little sister. He is our family’s clown, always trying to make everyone laugh by acting goofy. He’s already a nerd and that makes Ryan and me so proud! He is also one of the most caring and polite little boys ever; I always get many compliments on how well behaved he is. If I could only get him to do some homework every once and a while, he’d be an absolute perfect child. And I may be biased but he is also super handsome! I mean, I think we’ll be in serious trouble when the teenage years get here. We recently discovered that he may have dyslexia and are in the process of having him tested. We are currently working to have him held back in 1st grade since we are just now learning that he has problems with his reading, comprehension, and difficulty with his writing. As parents, we just want to make sure he gets the support he needs to master all of the skills needed to pass 1st grade.

My daughter, Gabrielle, is. . . well she is a drama queen. She loves to be bossy, is incredibly stubborn, and beats up her older brother. We found out recently that she has high functioning autism/Asperger’s. We have known that she was “different” since she was about 9 months old. She simply wasn’t meeting the milestones we thought she should be meeting. She had very delayed speech: she was 3 years old before she could call me mommy, and she would just whine or cry to address her needs. She was a late walker, was often clumsy on her feet, and had other delayed motor skills. At the advice of a fellow mom, we took her to the school system to be tested. They immediately wrote her an IEP (Individual Education Plan) and enrolled her in Developmental Preschool. It took us two additional years to get the pediatrician to finally diagnose her as being on the autism spectrum. Apparently high functioning autism is pretty hard to diagnose. She is super intelligent, so there is nothing delayed mentally, but she has a really hard time dealing with and understanding other people. We are reading lots of books and learning how to adjust our parenting to accommodate all of her behavior issues. It’s been really tough and stressful, but I’ve discovered that many of her autism behaviors make her really special and unique compared to other kids. I don’t know anyone else who has a kid so obsessed with Frozen that they memorize all the songs in other languages or who can draw such detailed artistic drawings (all of Elsa, of course)! It’s sometimes difficult to understand many of her behaviors and it’s even more difficult to explain to people who don’t see her everyday that she acts the way she does because she is on the spectrum. Every day with Gabby is a new day, filled with new challenges. Sometimes we get things right and have zero meltdowns and sometimes we have days with many explosions of emotions. On the bad days I tell myself, “we just have to take a deep breath, count to ten, and move forward.”

Our lives are super busy keeping up with behavioral therapy, transporting people here and there, and still finding time to spend as a family on the weekends. Sometimes I just want a break from all the chaos that goes on in our day to day lives. However, I am beginning to accept the fact that my life is probably always going to feel like living in a jungle.