Guess what we're having?!?

No, seriously, guess- because we don't know yet!!!

Here's the most recent belly pic I have - from New Years Eve, but I've gotten much bigger since then! I'll have to snap a fresh one soon!

I'm getting an ultrasound tomorrow to find out the sex! But, we're going to have the tech seal it in an envelope and have Dunkin' Doughnuts frost up some pink or blue doughnuts for Saturday morning after Rich gets in town. We're going to have a coffee and doughnuts "sex party" after some of the family and I do a 5k (and the boys will be doing the kids race too)!!! Since we're always in STL when we find out Rich's family has never gotten to be a part of the process, so we're taking advantage of being down here at this time, especially since this is our last. SO... what do you think we're having? Visit the poll to the left :)

FIVE!

Sometime in June we'll officially be a family of five!

Our family is growing... by one more baby! As of today I'm 13 weeks along with our third.

Since we've never gotten to share the news with Rich's folks in person we told them super early while they were still in town... "Smile and repeat after me... Lindsay's pregnant!" And this is the response we got :)

It was so fun telling them that way, that we shared thenews with my Dad that way too!

It kind of looks like he dropped Dexter in the process, but he did manage to set him down nicely, haha.

My doctor has monitored this pregnancy pretty closely since we had a loss earlier this year. Below is a pic of our little one at 6 weeks 3 days, with a nice strong heartbeat. We got to have another ultrasound at 8 weeks confirming that everything is developing like it should, and heard the heartbeat at 10 and 12 weeks. After hearing the heartbeat at 12 weeks we sighed a bit of relief!

When I was pregnant with the boys I had constant nausea but didn't end up actually throwing up a ton... this pregnancy has been way different (girl maybe? Clark seems to think so!) For almost 6 weeks throwing up was a daily (and sometimes multi-daily) occurrence. Thankfully last week the sickness has stopped although I'm still pretty much constantly nauseous (WHY do they call it morning sickness when it lasts all freaking day)? Cold and flu season has hit our house too which has compounded this joy, but hopefully that corner has turned. And the bonus of everybody getting sick this month, is hopefully we'll all be healthy by the time Christmas hits!!! Two more weeks, I can't believe it's already here!

So... when I ran the Rock N Roll Saint Louis Marathon I was in my 5th week. I figured it would be fine (and confirmed that with my doctor) especially since I didn't really feel too pregnant yet. I did underestimate how exhausted I'd get! So at mile 16 I sat down and took a break with my kids, haha. I took my time, per doctors orders, and finished in under 6 hours... not exactly my initial goal time but okay considering the circumstances! I walked a lot towards the end- my back was hurting and I didn't want to overdue it. Especially since, during the race Rich had to leave town for work and I knew I'd be on my own with the boys the next couple days with barely any "downtime" to recover.

I snapped this pic this morning so you can see how large my belly is already. We were going to wait until the official start of the second trimester before telling anyone, but I couldn't really hide this, haha. Thankfully the two ultrasounds have confirmed only one heartbeat, and my doc said it's normal for the third pregnancy to show so much earlier!

And of course Clark has officially decided he has a baby in his belly too. We've tried to explain to him that mommies are the only people who get to have babies in their bellies but that hasn't prevented his little "miracle" haha. He makes very astute observations about his imaginary baby...

During breakfast one morning: "Mommy, my baby is eating all my eggs. I need to eat a LOT of eggs so I don't get hungry."

OR... "Mommy it's dark outside. That means my baby is sleeping, and when it gets light out again, my baby will wake up."

I love him :)

Clark, ASD and a great photographer

Clark goes to an awesome preschool. We've been thrilled with them, their honesty and open communication- he has been in great hands. Last year they brought some concerns to our attention, and we had some of our own. They had a special testing company come in and do a full observational day with him at school and he ranked as high as you can rank on the Gillian Autism Rating Scale. So after a lot of battling and being incredibly annoying and persistent, we were able to get him into the top Pediatric Neuro-Psychologist in our area. He confirmed the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder and we started the long Individual Educational Plan (IEP) process with Saint Louis Special Schools. In February when we get back from Florida Clark will begin several different services including occupational therapy, speech therapy and ABA therapy.

At first we didn't really say anything to anyone. I guess we were a little afraid that this would become some sort of label for him... that people might discount him in some way. When in reality, he's the same little dude he's always been. Nothing has actually changed. He struggles with some things that come easily to other kids. He has a problem regulating his emotions, making eye contact when he's spoken to, responding to questions with appropriate replies, and playing with most kids beyond parallel play. But he'samazingly smart, knows more about dinosaurs than any kids his age that I've ever met. (The people who work in the dinosaur section at the Science Center here know him.) He is incredibly kind and snuggly... and he's got a really powerful and accurate pitching arm, just like his Daddy. Every single person out there has something that they struggle with, are challenged by- some kind of issue. Clark's challenges just have a name. A name that I think will be helpful getting him services that will hopefully make this world easier for him to navigate.

Over the summer my high school friend and amazing photographer Emily with Emily Lucarz Photography did our family pictures. In her former pre-baby life she was a Speech Pathologist working with kids with all different special needs. She has decided to do something pretty wonderful for the families of these kids, since she's so equipped to work with them. I think it's wonderful, and she asked if she could use our session as an example. I said yes without really considering that it would be on Facebook and all over the web. I've got to say, it was a little bit of a shock seeing it out there like that. Not that I didn't know in some way that was coming, but I think it made it feel more real. Anyway- HERE is a link to her blog post about what she's doing. Any families in the Chicago and Saint Louis area would be lucky to have her photograph them, special needs or not... I know I already posted some of the pics she took, but these three below are a few of my favorites!

Carol

Hope everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!! We have been so blessed, that even with this being a rougher year than most we still have so much to be thankful for. And, we were reminded of that while snuggling our cute dudes yesterday and eating a DELICIOUS meal with friends and family that left us stuffed. What more could we ask for?

BUT, bring on Christmas. I love the holiday season, so so so much. Yesterday we got out the boxes of Christmas goodies from the basement, and plan on doing some decorating today. And I seriously CANNOT wait for family movie night tonight... The Polar Express. Our friend Madeline got us the book as part of our wedding present, and we have been reading it to the boys nightly for the past week. They're obsessed. Can't wait to cuddle up on the couch tonight with mugs of hot chocolate and watch it.

And last night the DiTore house was visited by an Elf. I've wanted to do THIS for SO long now, and last year managed to hold out until after Christmas to get our family Elf on sale :) So last night, Carol came to visit our house. He'll be around each day until Christmas, and he'll fly back to the North Pole each night to let Santa know how the boys have been. The little guys were in AWE of Carol when he showed up. We read the book he brought with him, and they were so excited to see where Carol was going to be this morning. We've got some fun Elf shenanigans up our sleeves for this December, I'm going to have fun with this!

Beef!

We bought a cow! Well, half a cow, from a local grass-fed organic cow farm.

I had been wanting to do this for a long time. We've known that corn fed cows, and grocery store beef just isn't too good. And two years ago we joined Fair Shares, a local CCSA (Community Supported Agriculture) where we get a food pick up from local organic farms. As soon as we tried the meat we got from our CSA we noticed a world of difference. But buying organic meat is even more expensive than the regular stuff... so I started looking into buying it in bulk.

Tower Grove Farmers Market is in the park right by our house, and one of our favorite destinations in the summer and early fall. It was actually the first outing Dexter had after he was born! While it's not nearly as large as places like Soulard Farmers Market, each and every vendor here is local, quality, organic and delicious. While, some of the larger farmers market vendors sell produce that's imported and you have to be careful.

I met a guy there through Missouri Grassfed Beef and we started looking into buying a cow from his farm. Early this fall we pulled the trigger with a couple friends and bought half a cow together. We got to choose the cuts we wanted and how the cow was processed for us. This Friday we got a delivery of 222 lbs of fresh local organic beef. YUM! This is what all that meat looked like spread out on our dining room table...

I'm excited we were able to do this for a variety of reasons. Check out the Missouri Grassfed Beef's website if you want to learn about why buying local meat is an amazing thing to do, nutritionally, environmentally and culturally. And a big bonus for buying bulk... it was only $3.20/pound. That's an amazing price for local organic ground beef, not to mention we got some beautiful roast cuts and amazing steaks too.

Last night we grilled up some burgers and they were DELISH. And better yet we'll be able to eat off this meat for the next year.

If you're interested in finding a local CSA, quality farmers market, or local farms you can buy from direct LOCAL HARVEST is an amazing resource. You can search by your zip code to see what's available in your area.

Fall

A few pics of the boys in this beautiful fall weather...

Typical boys- Clark full of spunk and Dex just sweet and chillin'

Clark's moody look

Totally our boys- goofballs :)

Kisses

Halloween at the DiTore house

Halloween is one of my favorite nights of the year. I love everything about it, decorations, carving pumpkins, chili and hot dogs, the costumes, the kids excitement as they run from house to house. Everything. I think it's the great memories I have from childhood that endear this holiday to my heart- and I never knew it would be just as fun experiencing it with my kids.

Our super kids wanted to be super heroes for Halloween. Dexter wore Clark's old Superman costume (with the awesome cape Aunt Lisa made) and Clark was Spiderman.

And the adorable witch Gabi joined us. She wasn't down with wearing her hat though. Even Grandpa came by and hung out with us that night...

We were so lucky to have nice weather that night!

The boys loved trick-or-treating at John & Shannon's house... aka Adam's house.

Our pitiful pumpkins. I baked the seeds just like my mom did when I was little. YUM!

The boys were excited to check out their loot when they got home.

Pics with Grandpa

After they were finished, they got a kick out of handing out candy to the rest of the ToTers. We had a ton of kids come through and our 300 pieces of candy did not last. We even got rid of all the "bad" candy the boys got :)

Family Pictures

Before we went to FL we had family pictures done... and here they are! One of the girls I was friends with in high school is now a photographer, and a damn good one at that. She used to be a speech pathologist before she had her adorable little boy, and now she uses her awesome kid skills from behind the camera. If you want to stalk her, you know you do! Visit her WEBSITE or her BLOG or her NEWBORN BLOG or her FACEBOOK PAGE... Thanks Emily Lucarz Photography for our new family pics, here are some of the ones we were given. It's SO hard to narrow down, she took awesome shots...




This one melts my heart


The boys were against the arch in these pics

Riverfront

On the steps near the arch

And, I can't narrow these down at all...

Clark's been a big kisser lately

And gives the BEST hugs

Sauce faces

Dex looks like a little angel here