I’ve been MIA since November…possibly my longest break from blogging since I started. Anyway I wanted to share a quick little update since a few things have happened.
First and foremost, our sweet baby girl was born on February 12, 2013. She was 7 pounds 7 ounces, beautiful and perfect. Her name is Charlotte Caroline. The kids have all adjusted wonderfully to our newest little bundle. They are so loving and gentle with her.
Here is Charlotte (or Charlie as we usually call her) on the day she was born:
This is the day we left the hospital (Valentines Day 2013):
And this one is a bit more recent, one of her first smiles:
Adrian had a first today, I heard him compliment his sister which was pretty awesome. When he got home from school he came in and told Nevaeh “nice dress.” Wow. That made me smile.
Sanura and Nevaeh are doing well, we’re still homeschooling and it’s challenging but good.
Lincoln is progressing. We have his transitional meeting for kindergarten next week. I can’t believe he’s going to kindergarten. It seems like he’s still a baby, it’s going to be tough. I’m curious to see what everyone thinks his plan should be for kindergarten. Nervous.
Glen and I are great. Same ol’ same pretty much. I’ve shared a little bit about my weight loss journey and that is still a work in progress (as it always will be for me I think). I did well with my weight during pregnancy and I have about 8 pounds to go to get to pre-pregnancy weight. Not too shabby for only being about 8 weeks postpartum. Then I will continue working and losing. I have a couple fitness goals and a weight goal in mind for myself and it’s so exciting to make these changes.
On Wednesday morning I had my first meeting with Lincoln’s new teacher. I had him in a good mood and I had him fully clothed which is a rare occurrence when he is at home. When they got here it was his new teacher whom we only met at the open house the night before and the teacher aide who he had in his classroom last year. He was excited to see her. She asked him if she could have a hug and he jumped right up on her lap and gave her the sweetest hug.
Ok, I was happy because Lincoln doesn’t usually like people coming in the house, we’ve had some major meltdowns when teachers come to the house.
It was all going well until the teacher aide asked Lincoln “Did you go swimming this summer?” I bought the kids a little kiddie pool and it was on our patio. They swam a lot this summer and Lincoln loved swimming. When the teacher asked “Did you go swimming this summer?” Lincoln heard “Lincoln do you want to go swimming right now?!” And he started tearing his clothes off excitedly ready to go swimming. He took off ALL of his clothes and started looking around for his swim trunks. You’d think I’d be embarrassed, I wasn’t at all. I figure they’re used to seeing toddlers strip down and I wasn’t concerned.
I convinced him to at least put his boxer shorts back on but he was mad at that point and was beating on the patio door trying to get out.
His teacher seems nice and I’m hoping it will be a good school year for him. He starts on Monday.
Adrian has a new teacher this year too. It’s been really good so far. I’m still feeling out how it’s going to go but I feel good about it right now.
Adrian did so awesome with his tooth extraction yesterday. He was so calm and held so still while they did his work. It was amazing.
When you have children with special needs like our family does I think it makes the decision to have more children infinitely more difficult. Our chances of having another child on the autism spectrum, I think, are extremely high. Frankly, 75% of our children have issues. I’m almost positive Lincoln will be diagnosed on the spectrum, Sanura very mildly on the spectrum, and Adrian very much on the spectrum. Our chances just aren’t that great to have a neurotypical child.
So I’m sure there are some people, perhaps many people who want to ask but are too polite to ask “Why would you have more children when you have children with special needs?”
If there is anyone who understand the seriousness of autism like Adrian’s autism it’s me and my husband. It’s terrifying. I don’t know what his future will hold but then again, no parent knows what any of their children’s futures hold anyway.
I find myself thinking about the new baby, hoping it’s a girl so our chances are better for not having autism to deal with, or at least hopefully having a higher functioning autism to deal with. I find myself thinking about all the things I can do to “prevent” the autism. I’ve found myself much more emotional about autism whether that’s fear that the new child will have autism or if it’s hormones I don’t know.
I can answer why we’d want more. Each of my children have been a blessing to me. I love getting to know each of their little personalities. Autism hasn’t made my quality of life low, it hasn’t made Adrian’s quality of life low, it hasn’t made Sanura’s quality of life low. Adrian is a happy boy, Sanura is a happy young lady. Does autism present me with difficulties? Of Course! Does it make me feel depressed at times? Of course! As a mother can autism break my heart? Of Course! Is Adrian worth it? Without a doubt. Is Sanura worth it? Without a doubt. Will the new baby be worth it if there is some disability? Absolutely.
The Lord will send me exactly the child I was meant to have and God doesn’t make mistakes.
It’s been one of those very emotional weeks for me.
Now I’m no developmental pediatrician or psychologist but to me Adrian is showing some signs of OCD. Maybe it’s just the autism but these are new things that he’s doing that have been very hard for me and they seem like OCD symptoms to me.
Adrian loves Spiderman, there is a new Spiderman movie coming out in July. Adrian knows about this and is extremely excited. This is not an exaggeration…he literally tells me 50+ times per day “Amazing Spiderman in July”. I can’t just not say anything to him when he says that or he will continue to say it over and over until I respond with either “yes”, “ok” or if I repeat “Amazing Spiderman in July” and then he will stop for a few minutes. It’s been so difficult because that can start to really wear down your patience by the end of the day. It seems obsessive to me.
The other thing he’s doing that makes me wonder about OCD is he will “check” the bathroom door every time someone uses the downstairs bathroom. He has to go and make sure they’ve put down the seat and lid and then he opens and shuts the door a couple times. Sometimes even when nobody has used the bathroom he goes and checks it.
In the grand scheme of things these behaviors aren’t that big of deal over all. His other issues are going to be far more debilitating then the recent issues but they have been things that are hard for me to deal with in some ways I guess.
Then also this week I got a report from Lincoln’s school and I wasn’t very thrilled with some of the stuff in it. It’s an old report though and much of what was in it was from data that was collected almost a year ago and he’s come a long way in that amount of time but it was just hard to read so many areas that said his functioning was “moderately low”… lots of tears and fear this week.
Adrian started summer school this week. He was so happy to get back to school. His nightly routine when I say it’s bedtime is to ask “school tomorrow?” and the couple weeks he had off were kind of confusing for him. Summer school doesn’t last long though so we’ll see how he handles it when we’re back to summer break.
Our first year of homeschooling the girls went really well and I’m glad we did it. We are going to continue on with the girls at least for next year. I would love to bring the boys home and homeschool them but with the special needs involved I’m just not sure I have the energy. At least for right now that’s not in the cards.
Lincoln has really come along speech wise. I think we’ll still end up with some kind of autism diagnosis for him, probably PDD-NOS I’m guessing but I’m impressed with him. His new thing is asking “Where’s Daddy?” or “Where’s Nevaeh?”, this is especially impressive because for quite a while I could get him to repeat basically anything but as far as him coming up with his own stuff to say it was slow going. Asking questions like that is pretty awesome to me.
And Glen and I have some news, we’re expecting baby number 5. We are absolutely thrilled!
Lincoln only has a few days left of preschool and this is his first year of preschool. Lincoln has an IEP and is in a special needs preschool classroom but he hasn’t been formally diagnosed with anything yet although I suspect he’ll also be on the autism spectrum. 3 of my 4 kids on the spectrum, I think we can make a case for genetics in our family.
I got an update on how Lincoln’s doing on his IEP goals and he’s done really great this year. He’s made progress on everything.
I decided I’m keeping him home from summer school this year even though he qualifies. Firstly, he’s little, he’s only 3 years old and I want him home with me. They’re only little for so long. Secondly, he needs potty trained. I’ve taken a run at potty training with him a couple times but it turned out he wasn’t ready. When school is out this child is getting potty trained and it’s just easier to do it when he’s home with me the majority of the time. Lincoln did pee in the potty at school today though woohoo!!
I don’t worry about Lincoln the way I’ve worried about Adrian but we’ll see how he does with time. He reminds me a lot of Sanura and she’s doing really really well now so I guess no sense worrying about the future too much. We’re doing everything we can to move him along development wise.
Here is Lincoln at school, they were having a picnic:
There are a few phrases that Adrian gets stuck on and he’ll say them several times a day. I’m not complaining, I love listening to whatever he has to say to me!
Lately it’s been “Tell me a secret!” and then I’m supposed to make this “pst pst pst” sound in his ear. We do that at least 5 times a day.
The other thing that he says often is “Are you happy?” Anytime I get upset with him about something like when he was in a very bad mood one morning and was refusing to get on the school bus. I sternly told him that he needed to get on the bus and he says “Are you happy?” or any time we say anything sternly he will go through the emotions “Are you happy?, Are you sad?, Are you mad?” That one he has taught to Lincoln and both Glen and I laughed, and looked at each other, and wailed a dramatic “Noooooo!”
Speaking of Mr. Lincoln…he is talking so much better. It’s really amazing how far he’s come. I’ve said it too many times but Lincoln’s development mirrors Sanura’s in so many ways. Sanura turned out ok with no intervention so the fact that Lincoln’s development looks like her’s and he’s getting intervention really puts me at ease.
I checked out a book from the library about manners and Sanura and I are reading it together during our homeschooling hours. Today we talked about introducing yourself to others, introducing your friends to each other, and shaking hands properly. I’m so glad I have opportunity to work with her on things like this. We had some good laughs when I made her pretend that we were strangers and introduce herself to me. She’s a really fun kid.
So far there are only 2 entries to win the one year membership to LessonPix so you have a good chance of winning so head over to that post and leave a comment if you want in on that one.
I’m getting very close to 40 pounds lost on my weight loss journey. I love how I have this exciting journey going on in my life right now. I love trying on clothes that didn’t fit and they are fitting or starting to fit. I have dumped some excess baggage in my life that was fueling only negativity and I feel so hopeful for the future.
Homeschooling is going well. I had a little burn out last week. My children’s education is so very important to me and sometimes I get overwhelmed trying to make sure we’re doing everything we need to do.
Things with Adrian have been good but also hard in some ways. He loves sitting with me and loving on me, which includes pinching me, twirling my hair, rubbing my arms…I have to say as much as I don’t want it to…it gets annoying. Sometimes I just want everyone to get away from me. Sounds horrible right? It’s just hard sometimes. He loves on Lincoln by pulling on his ears and Lincoln hates it. I’m not sure what to do about that (besides telling him to stop), he used to play with Nevaeh’s toes constantly and he outgrew it so hopefully the same thing happens with Lincoln’s ears.
Firstly because my niece was born today! I cannot wait to meet her, if anything is going to make me homesick it’s going to be seeing sweet pictures of this baby girl but not be able to hold her! I’m so thrilled for my brother and sister in law, this is their first daughter.
Secondly today is good because Lincoln had his follow up hearing testing today. He was cooperative and the audiologist was amazing. She wants to recheck him in 4 to 6 weeks because he still has a bit of fluid in his right ear but overall she was not concerned about his hearing.
I truly think something has cleared up in his ears within the last 2 weeks because his language has blown up like crazy. Starting to talk in 2 and 3 word sentences are you kidding me? Amazing.
I haven’t written in a little while. I guess there hasn’t been a whole lot going on. Kind of just doing the day to day stuff lately and preparing for Christmas. We got our tree up and I’ve started to wrap gifts. I love Christmas time and of course the kids do too.
I have had a couple amazing emails this week reminding me why I blog and share about my family in the way that I do. So thank you to the people who sent me those, I treasure them and it helps me remember why I’m doing this in the first place.
Lincoln has his follow up stuff for his hearing this week. The paperwork said to have at least 2 to 3 hours to spend at the hearing clinic so I’m hoping we really find out what is going on. I think we will. Lincoln has been talking so much more lately. Sometimes I don’t understand what he is saying but he’ll keep saying it over and usually I can catch on. Today he was running full speed through the living room and I had a newspaper on the floor that he had kind of spread out across the living room like little kids like to do and he slid on the paper and fell flat on his back. He ran up to me for a hug and he was crying a little and saying “You ok?! You ok!?” which was just precious. Then when he’s leaving for school or when we’re getting ready to leave the house I’ve heard him saying “See ya! Bye!” so I’m thrilled with the direction his communication is moving. We’re gaining words! We were at Target, I think yesterday or the day before and there was a little girl getting out of the car next to us with her grandpa and Lincoln kept saying “Hi” to her. Lincoln’s struggle has been very different from Adrian’s struggles so I am praying that Lincoln’s issues are not going to be as severe as what Adrian has to deal with. I’ve said before, his development reminds me a lot of Sanura’s so if he ends up with just mild Aspergers like her I will be a happy camper!
Adrian has had good days and not so good days at school. He runs away sometimes at recess if he doesn’t want to go inside which is terrifying to me. He refuses to go to some of his classes outside of his classroom. I question how much he’s really being pushed to work hard. It’s a delicate balance I think to keep him where he’s moving forward academically but yet the teacher is trying to keep him happy and cooperative. It’s tough, I have trouble getting him to sit and listen when I try to do stuff with him at home. Adrian is talking more at home I think, when he feels like it. He is still asking for the playdoh toy that he wants for Christmas each day which I have carefully wrapped and hidden in the basement already. We would love to put the presents under the tree but I have a strong feeling that I would wake up one morning and come down to find Adrian opening all the presents so they will stay hidden until Christmas Eve.
The girls are doing really well. Nevaeh is doing addition and starting to read more and more. Sanura is excited about science recently and has told me she wants to be a surgeon when she grows up. She asked to research what types of surgeons there are so we did. It’s fun to watch her dream about the future and watch her pretend to be a surgeon.
For me, not too much new. I’m just trying to keep up with homeschooling. It’s a lot of work, I knew it would be and it is but I really love it and I’m already coming up with ideas for next year to build upon what we’re doing this year. I keep debating starting a homeschooling blog where I can share more about what we’re doing, still deciding if I want to maintain two blogs.
I’m sure I’ll have an update about Lincoln’s hearing in the coming week.
Did you see this video yet? My friend shared this on facebook:
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