A Bit of Background

I decided since not everyone knows what has been going on lately in the lives of the Coakley's, I would give a little background so other posts actually make sense.

My name is Melanie and I am currently the ripe old age of 28. I graduated from Doane College in 2002 with a degree in Information Systems and a minor in English. My first job out of college was at a company called ITI and we just won't go there. I was only at ITI until December of 2002, during that same time I lost my grandmother, which I still have problems with even today. So let's just say it was a very bad holiday that year.

In January of 2003, I started work at a wonderful Christian based company called FACTS as a Higher Ed Technical Support Specialist. I worked at FACTS up until April of this year. I was really sad to leave but some things happened and we ended up moving back to my hometown.

Since then it seems to be an uphill battle finding a job. At first I tried to find jobs in my field and they are very few and far between around here. I was so close to getting a job with a company similar to FACTS but my confidence was lacking a bit in my second interview. After not finding anything for about 4 months, I decided a career change may be in order.

So in September I decided that Nursing might be something I would like to try. The thing my old job lacked was working with customers hands on, and I really like getting in there with people. And so since my hometown has a community college with a good nursing reputation, I decided to go for it. I applied to the college and to the nursing program. They have lots of requirements for the program. In a couple of weeks I get to take the ACT, not looking forward to that since I've been out of high school for 10 years. I also just completed a class to become a Certified Nursing Assitant. A couple weeks ago I registered for some general education classes, I only had 2 classes transfer from Doane. I will be taking Elements of Chemistry, Intro to Sociology, Developmental Psychology and Nutrition.

Now I guess it's time to talk about Dave, not that he is very interesting. Dave is my husband of about 4 1/2 years, we were married on August 7, 2004. We have be together for almost 7 years. It's a bit funny how we met. We met in college obviously if you do the math, but we actually had an english class together. The class was Romantic Literature. Any way I was taking the class for my minor and he was majoring in english.

In May 2006 he finally graduated from Doane College with a degree in English with minors in Psychology and Sociology. After graduating he had a pretty hard time finding what I call a 'real' job, basically something that requires a degree. Any way, earlier this year he had the opportunity to possibly start a restaurant in my home town. He was really excited, and since some other things weren't working out where we were, we decided to move. While the beginnings were still getting worked out, he got a job at the local country club. And what guy could pass up free golf once a week, not mine that's for sure. As we got to around July the whole restaurant thing finally fell through. We thought the second backer really wanted to do it, but we never heard from them again. So now he just continues working at the country club.

On May 12, 2006 we had a beautiful baby girl named Alexandria Taylor, also known as Lexie. My pregnancy definitely wasn't something to brag about, it was bad enough that I'm scared to be pregnant again. I was sick all 9 months, and even ended up in the hospital for severe dehydration. I tried just about anything to stop being sick and nothing helped. The last 2 months weren't nearly as bad, but I ended up having pretty bad acid reflux, since I got sick so much for so long.

Now the delivery on the other hand was probably something more braggable, is that even a word. Start to finish it was only 4 hours, from my water breaking to Lexie being born. I never went through the whole contractions before my water broke. There were the typical braxton hicks, but those weren't anything and half the time I didn't even know I was having them. It is actually kind of funny, a co-worker who was also pregnant at the time dropped me off at home and my water broke not 10 minutes later. She was glad it didn't happen in her car.

So here we are 2 1/2 years later, and I sometimes wish I could skip this stage. There are some good things about it though. But any way, since we moved back to my home town I have kind of been a stay-at-home mom, which I am definitely not cut out for. So needless to say her recent reentrance into daycare has been less than stellar. We even got asked by our first daycare in town to find a new one because they think that she just wasn't happy, and that very well could be. Today she started a new daycare, so we will see how it goes. I sure do love my baby now matter how terrible she can be, she gives the best kisses and hugs around.

Well I think that's enough for now since it will take awhile to read this novel.