Introductions

My name is Hannah, and my three year old just discovered this, so he's been saying it a lot. My son, Myers, is an incredibly bright child. I don't say this as a doting mother (although I absolutely am); I say this as an educator who is blown away by his abilities to recognize letters and their sounds and to read and spell words my fourth graders can't. His number sense is astonishing too, but we'll get into that another time. As briefly mentioned, I am an educator. I've been a teacher for nearly 20 years now, which sounds insane because I remember parts of my first year of teaching like they happened yesterday. 

Here's my real brief bio. I was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina (technically I lived in the small city just north, Hanahan, but I spent a lot of time in the Historic District with my family). I went to the College of Charleston after graduating high school and although I'd traveled, I had never lived anywhere outside of a maybe 30 mile radius around the Lowcountry. I took my first teaching job at a low income school near home, and after one year, moved to another public school with less challenging students. My heart was forever changed by the first group of kiddos though. These students were primarily African American and Hispanic, and after that year, I started work towards my Masters Degree so I could better reach those English as a second language students. After a few years of teaching in South Carolina, and after losing my dad to Cancer in 2010, I moved to Europe. I hopped around a bit for a year, then moved home, to China, and home again. That's the short story. We will come back to China as it plays a HUGE role in where I am now, where we are now. 

Who do I mean by we? My three year old, Myers, my husband, Chance, and myself make up the "we." Chance and I met Valentine's weekend in 2016, shortly after I moved home from China. We were on House Hunters, which was a fun start to our relationship. He made a cameo appearance at the end of the show. I figured if we were on TV together...I might as well keep him around. Just kidding of course, but he did in fact "stick around" and we got married that Christmas, on December 18th, 2016. 

Now you need to learn a little about Chance. All of this will make sense later, and it absolutely relates to what you will learn about Myers, if you stay with me. Chance has Crohn's. The short version is, in our first year of marriage, he was in and out of the hospital every few months. He had a major resection that first year and was lucky, because the ostomy bag he woke with after surgery didn't have to stay in place after a few months of wearing it. Chance lost so much weight that first year. He was really down, and it took a lot to get him back to health. If you don't know about, or believe in, gut health, stick with me. It will come back to play a major role in our story. 

After Chance was back to health, we took our first international trip together. Chance had never been to Europe so I showed him around England and Ireland for a couple of weeks. This was during the summer of 2018. It was there that Myers came into the picture. When we got home from the trip, I was expecting! We were overjoyed, and with my love of the UK, I was thrilled to say that my baby was "made in England."

Myers joined the picture on March 5, 2019. He was two weeks early; he was the bluest eyed, blondest child I had ever seen, but Lord have mercy, he had the craziest cone head!! He was a c section baby after Momma naturally labored for over 18 hours. The story doesn't end here of course. There is SO much more to tell, but now you know a little about who we are, and I hope you'll come back for more. Our lives changed once on the day Myers was born, and then again, in a challenging but good way, at the end of June in 2022.