Ponderous Simplicity

Once upon a time, back when the dinosaurs still roamed the earth...ok, ok...it wasn't THAT long ago :) It all really began on December 7th, 1981 during the morning I believe in Payson, Utah. Whenever anyone asks my birthday I always tell them it is Pearl Harbor Day - to all of you who didn't know December 7th is Pearl Harbor Day I hope you remember it from now on. I haven't ever been told specific stories about my birth so I assume for the most part it was uneventful. However at some later point, not in the too distant future I was diagnosed with Port Wine Stain. For more information about it click here - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002446/. Thankfully, I don't have any port wine stain on my face or anywhere where you can actually see it given the clothes I choose to wear :P However, the Dr. was concerned about my development as it can contribute to developmental deficiencies. My mom told me after this for a couple of years they pushed me harder than normal always telling me - "You can do it." I'm pretty sure this is the foundation for why I always try to find some other way to do something if at first I can't figure it out or it isn't working. In addition, though never technically diagnosed by a Dr. given that it didn't manifest the rest of the symptoms until later, I don't just have port wine stain but actually a syndrome called Klippel-Trenaunay (you can find more information here - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002446/. For those of you who have never seen my hands held up in comparison ask me to show you sometime as my left hand is about 1 1/2 inches longer and bigger than my right. My left leg also has the privileged of dealing with all of the symptoms such as abnormal bone or tissue growth and varicose veins. However, for the most part the syndrome doesn't affect everyday functioning and hasn't inhibited me in anyway.

I am the 3rd oldest in my family with a older brother and sister. Obviously, the majority of the first couple years of my life I don't really have any memory of but a couple things of note - sometime in my 1st year I caught pneumonia. My mom says she came in to check on me and my lips were blue. So they rushed me to the hospital where I spent time in air tent. Thankfully I fully recovered from the pneumonia and have no memory of dealing with it. Also, when I was about 2 years old and we were now living in St. George and my younger brother Adam had been born, I was pushing him around in the baby walker and pushed him over by the stairs that went down. Needless to say I left him there, which resulted in him tumbling down the stairs, biting through his tongue and have to be rushed to the Dr. My family and brother still give me a hard time about this, saying I was trying to get rid of him :) but obviously at that age I didn't quite have a grasp on what would happen by leaving him there unattended. Nor do I even remember the event.

My first memories though are from St. George where we lived until I was about 3. My main memory is of the large snails that inhabited our yard that my two older siblings and myself would throw into the road and wait for a car to drive by and squish them because they made quite the crunching noise - makes for an interesting first memory. I also remember we had a fabulous playroom in our house and I remember the older lady we stayed with while my mom had my younger brother. But each of those memories is pretty fuzzy with just a vague recollection.

So those are the first few years of my life. Not a whole lot of detail but obviously with more memories comes more detail so stay tuned for the next entry!