hello, world

This is my first attempt at blogging. After sitting here staring at the screen for the past 10 minutes (after several hours of blundering around on the blogspot site to start with), I'm still not sure how I'm going to start. I have so much I want to type, but it all can't come out my fingers at once.

The epic journey I want to share starts almost 6 years ago, with the much-anticipated birth of our first son, Jacob. The Map Man and I had been married for 12 years, a little bit late in starting a family I suppose, but that made it all the sweeter. But the story didn't really get interesting until nearly 2 1/2 years later, upon the arrival of our second son. Within an hour of his birth, we looked at each other and said "so, what's wrong with Jacob?" After months of stumbling around looking for answers, we finally found it where we least suspected it -- Autism.

I want to capture all my thoughts and feelings and rationalizations and fears from that time forward. Hopefully I'm not starting so late that the emotions, the confusion, and the worry have faded. We are on a really good road now, with every bit of hope for Jacob's future as we had the moment he was first laid in our arms. But from there to here has been quite a journey, we've all undergone a massive transformation, and that adventure is only just beginning. And I need a place to put it all down, try to make sense of it for myself, and refer back to later to say "look how far we've come". All of it -- the joys and tears, the hopes and fears (uh oh, sounding like a bad country ballad....), the moments of clarity and the flickers of insanity.

And if anyone finds it interesting to read along the way, or even (if possible!) learns something about themselves or their child(ren), all the better for it. But really this is for me. And for Jacob.