We have had quite the amazing summer that seems to have flown by.
Vinnie turned three June 29th and has started preschool. At the three year mark his weekly therapy sessions discontinued and we enrolled him in special needs preschool. This allows him to have 16 hours of learning and therapy with specialists a week rather than just 3 hours a week. The goal is to catch him up verbally and socially to his age. Therefore he would be able to begin kindergarten with children his age. If he doesn't make it by then that is a ok. Thankfully now days there are plenty of options to assist him through school!
His teachers are amazing and he loves it so much. On the weekends he will even bring his backpack to us because he wants to go. For the first school year he will go Monday through Thursday in the mornings. The preschool follows the same schedule as the K-6 classes so it is a good adjustment for Joe and I to prep for the long haul. When Vinnie first started school in August I was not your typical mom saddened that my baby was going off to school, but was mostly concerned about the bus ride he would be taking from school to daycare! Needless to say adventurous Vinnie loves the bus ride and his bus driver is really great.
Vinnie is still not talking yet, but has started learning sign language. So far he has please down the best, but we are also working on eat and more. We'll continue down the path of learning sign for now to better communicate with him, but will continue to work on verbal skills also.
Health wise he is doing very good! We were somewhat apprehensive of putting a permanent shunt in, but are so happy that we did. He has really advanced since having the surgery a year and a half ago. He will likely need several revisions in his lifetime, but after he is fully grown he will probably only need revisions once a decade.
Also, in new news we were happy to announce in July that we are expecting Karnes baby #2! My due date is March 18th, but I will actually deliver in the end of February (between 36-37 weeks). I will spare you the minor details, but basically since Vinnie was so early I had to have a classic C section during the emergency delivery. With subsequent pregnancies I will have to always deliver between 36-37 weeks to avoid potential health risks to the baby or me.
This weekend marks 20 weeks along with baby Karnes the second. My water broke at 19 weeks with Vinnie so I am very happy to report we are past that point and all is going very well. The only intervention I am having is weekly progesterone shots and I will likely have one extra ultrasound than a woman would typically have. So I don't have to go back to the doctor every week for the shots Joe went through training with nurse practitioner on how to administer the shots. Thankfully he is pretty good at it!
We feel very blessed with how this pregnancy has gone so far and are thankful we were given the chance to expand our family more.
