The Beach

While we were in FL we got to hit the beach a couple times. Rich and I went and stayed a night at one of the hotels in Cocoa Beach for a nice date night and then his folks drove the boys over in the morning so we could play with them on the beach... they had SO much fun so we took them back another time on the trip. Luckily the weather was warm enough in Jan for us to do this with them! I couldn't narrow the pics down so here are a ton of them to check out!

Playing with Daddy in the waves

Rich's 95 year old Grandma thought that Dex caught a fish :)

Splashing in the waves

Dex was chasing the seagulls on the beach

And we got to grab lunch on the beach too-

Building sand castles

Clark had so much fun running on the beach. In this pic you can even see one of the surfers that was out that day...

A way-late update

Okay, these took me a long time to post but I couldn't skip them. This December right before Christmas Clark had his first Holiday Program for school... and he did AWESOME! He sang all the songs, did all the motions and had a great time. Maybe we have a future performer on our hands.

A typical story Clark tells.

After his Rudolph song

Even Gramme got to come watch!

And Santa visited...

It's a...

GIRL!!!! And here's the video of us finding out :)

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!