1st Day of School 2012-2013

I can't believe today was the first day of school! It's cliche, but really! Where did the summer go?

We actually planned to start school last week, but unfortunately after fighting it for over a week I came down with an infection last Sunday afternoon and was out of commission for a few days. The kids were especially disappointed to miss their first day of co-op, which is a new addition to our routine this year. They valiantly overcame their disappointment, however, and we spent our extra week in needed preparation for Take 2.

Yesterday we successfully made it to co-op, which was felt like a major accomplishment. Class starts at 9:00, which, considering the 30 minute drive, is a bit early for this crew. But we pulled in the parking lot at 8:48 and had everyone in class by starting time! Yay us! The kids all had an absolute blast in their various classes. The dinner table last night was a buzz as they told story after story about all the fun things they did. Benjamin and Talia are in the same 4 classes (Math Concepts, a literature class called "Five in a Row", PE, and Science: Birds & Butterflies.) Leila is in preschool classes (Letters/Numbers/Phonics, Music, Learning Through Senses, and Creative Movement) and to my surprise did quite well with the long day. I was in the nursery with Channah most of the day, which was actually kind of nice. Mamas of newborns are all assigned to work in the nursery so we each were able to sit and rock our own littlest ones and chat. You know that doesn't happen very often!

Today was our first day of school at home. Seth was able to go into work late so he could be here for breakfast and give the principal's beginning of school address. :)

We took our traditional First Day of School pictures:

 Note the half-grown-in front tooth (the other is also very loose)

SO proud to be in Kindergarten! (Talia told me yesterday as we were driving to co-op, "my heart is beating fast because I'm so excited!") 

 Happy girl, as usual :)

The goofy gang 

Mrs. Rodriquez with her class (I love that Benj & Talia are holding hands. :) )

The school kids with Channah before she went down for her morning nap

Well, here's the real deal: our first morning could have gone better. Channah slept for about an hour, but woke up about an hour early and screamed, despite my efforts to comfort. She flatly refused to nurse while I taught math, which lead to another hour of screaming. (And really, who can't learn place value while an irate baby cries?) On the other hand the big kids had positive attitudes and were cooperative so that was encouraging. After lunch Channah did finally go to sleep and we had a great afternoon, despite the fact that we didn't finish up until 3:00 (an hour and a half later than I planned).

I am excited about what I have planned for this year and I am encouraged that the kids are enthusiastic as well. I'm just praying that Channah will learn to adjust to our new routine and that soon we will be in a good groove. At the very least it should be interesting. :)



A New Learning Opportunity and a Request

We are participating in a homeschool co-op this year. We will go once a week and the kids will have a chance to participate and learn in a group. They will have classes like PE and music that are much more fun in a larger group setting. Even Leila will be able to participate in classes such as Letters, Numbers & Phonics and Learning Through Senses. I will mostly be in the nursery with Channah and the other tiny ones, but I also get to help with Leila's preschool music class. We are all excited for this addition to our homeschool routine!

Which brings me to the "Request" part. We are able to pay some of our registration fee with Box Tops for Education. I know lots of students collect Box Tops for their schools, but anyone does not currently collect them for another purpose and would be willing to collect them for us we would be grateful. They are found on all kinds of products (GM cereal, Pampers, Kleenex, Yoplait yogurt to name a few). The logo looks like this:

"Watching Our Baby Grow" School Activity

I had been waiting to post this until I got a picture of the completed project, but things started falling off the wall before that happened. Then my intentions were to put everything that fell down back up so I could take the picture, but, well it just never happened. So here we are going for 90%. Good 'nuff. Right?

The beginning of last school year was also the beginning of our sweet fourth child's life in my womb. The first trimester (plus some) was pretty difficult with trying to establish our school routine and simulaneously experiencing some pretty wicked morning sickness. So to help the children connect more with what was happening and why Mommy was so sick all the time we started a "Watch Our Baby Grow" wall.

Every Monday morning we would look up information about how the baby was growing and developing that week. The website we used also gave some fun comparisons to illustrate how big the baby was growing each week. (Disclaimer: I'm not giving a blanket recommendation of everything on this website. Some content is inappropriate, especially for small children. I have two readers so I would read the information to them and not allow them to read along.) We didn't always have the item indicated by the website so sometimes we made up our own. Our items were:

5 weeks - a mustard seed
6 weeks - a grain of rice
7 weeks - a rice krispie
8 weeks - a kidney bean
9 weeks - a penne noodle
10 weeks - a mini ice cream cone ("kid size")
11 weeks - a splenda packet
12 weeks - Mama's pinky (traced on the poster)
13 weeks - a peach (I drew a circle of the right size & had one of the kids color it orange)
14 weeks - a wrapped piece of Laffy Taffy
15 weeks - Mama's cell phone (traced on the poster)
16 weeks - Mama's mascara (traced on the poster; you could tape/glue an empty bottle if you had one)
17 weeks - a potato (traced on the poster)
18 weeks - a big deli pickle (freehanded a pickle of the correct length)
19 weeks - a 6" sub sandwich (I printed a clipart of a sub sandwich, enlarging it to make it 6" long)
20 weeks - a banana (traced on the poster)
21 weeks - a salad fork (traced on the poster)

Note: I explained to the kids that up to this point we had been measuring from the baby's head to her bottom. From this point on we would be measuring from the baby's head to her heels.

22 weeks - the length of a piece of paper (drew a line along the long side of the paper and wrote "as long as this piece of paper" above it)
23 weeks - a Harry Potter book (freehanded a book shape of the appropriate size and the cover artwork)
24 weeks - a ruler (freehanded a ruler)
25 weeks - a recorder (as in the musical instrument you learn to play in elementary school - traced on the poster)
26 weeks - a burpcloth
27 & 28 weeks - a bread bag (to represent a loaf of bread).... Yep, running out of ideas. :)
29 weeks - a churro (freehanded)
30 weeks - a mini Yorkie Terrier (remember, we're only comparing length here, not overall size :) - I printed a huge clip art which covered several pieces of paper and pieced it together on the poster)
31 weeks - a 16" costume necklace from the girls' dress up accessories
32 & 33 weeks - a knee boot (traced my calf and foot and freehanded a boot shape)
34 weeks - a build-a-bear (traced on the poster)
35 & 36 weeks - a Sam's sheet cake (I just drew the edge of a cake on our poster since I didn't have the room for a replica of a whole sheet cake on my wall.)
37 weeks - a largemouth bass (freehanded a fish of the appropriate length)
38 weeks - a handbag of appropriate length
39 weeks - Channah was born. I hung up one of her premie sized onesies that she only fit in for a couple of weeks. :)

I found a blessing!

I haven't been blogging much lately. There's a reason for that. (Well, I mean besides being too busy.) I haven't felt like I have anything constructive to post. And by that I mean that life has looked pretty bleak from where I sit these days, which is in the rocking chair, on the couch, at the kitchen table holding and rocking and patting and shushing my precious but very fussy baby girl.

I'm not gonna lie to you, these past 6 weeks have mostly been incredibly difficult. Most of that period Channah has cried 50-75% of her awake time and often part of her should-be naptimes as well. (We had a brief interlude somewhere in the middle where she was much less fussy, but the past 2 weeks have been worse again.) We think her crying is mostly due to tummy discomfort--gas pain and acid reflux--and have been treating her with medication, which has helped some, but has not revolutionized our life like we hoped it would. So, unfortunately this has not been the blissful newborn experience we were all hoping for.

But(!) today I had a thought! It was the glimmer of sunshine I prayed for this morning when I prayed for the strength to be a good mommy today, even though I was dog tired and even more discouraged. All this time I'm spending rocking and soothing my fussy girl allows me to slow down and not miss the little things. I know, for example, that today she tried to blow a raspberry. As her little tongue was stuck out she gave a faint blow and then immediately broke into the most adorable smile. She knew that she was onto something! What a sweet little moment. Just the memory brings little tears to the corners of my eyes. And I already know her little personality so intimately. I spend a couple of hours, at least, every day locked in eye contact with her, exchanging smiles and coos or soothing her with soft words and safe arms. I know the different pitches and meanings of her cries (sometimes). I know what makes her smile. As a mama of four these are the little things I could easily miss.

What amazes me is that this matches right up with my theme for this year: "The Little Things: Treasuring God's Blessings." I chose this theme in January (even though this is the first I've blogged about it). It seemed appropriate for a year in which I would have the sweetness of a newborn baby to treasure up in my heart. I must admit I pictured blessings of a more...um...happy nature.

But God knows. He knows that I tend to fill my time up with projects and activity, always tweeking and fixing, and letting the little things go by unnoticed. He knows that I want to do less and be more but I don't naturally know how to fulfill that desire. He knows that on my own I would get to the end of the year and sadly look back, realizing that moment by moment, day by day I forgot to notice The Little Things. So He gave me a fussy baby who forces me to lay aside my daily agenda, pause (sometimes for days at a time), and take the time to enter into moments in the life of my children. I still have a long way to go in learning to truly treasure the blessings of my new daily routine, but by God's grace I am daily intimately acquaintanted with The Little Things.

Smiling Girl, 8 weeks old

Lemonade & Sunshine

Leila's 3rd birthday got a little lost in the shuffle this year due to the birth of her baby sister just four days before the big day. Poor girl doesn't have a good track record. On her first birthday Seth and I were out of the country celebrating his graduation and our 10th anniversary. We celebrated that birthday the day between graduation and our departure for our cruise.

We celebrated much the same way this year (minus graduation and a cruise) by inviting several of her friends over for a Lemonade and Sunshine party a week before her official birthday.

We kept things pretty simple this year. The main feature, of course, was lemonade. But thanks to Pinterest I had this fun idea of having a drink station with all kinds of mix-ins for the lemonade. Here was the result:

We had ingredients for Strawberry Vanilla, Strawberry Basil, Grapefruit, Blackberry, and Cucumber Mint varieties. Some were more popular than others. :)

I made Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes based on this gorgeous cake. (The cake and frosting were delicious! I'm definitely going to have to try the full recipe someday.) I had also planned to make lemon curd tea sandwiches and lemon bars but alas my creative energy failed me.

I think the birthday girl was pretty happy with just a cupcake.

After our treats we played a couple of lemony games. First up: Lemon Derby. The goal was to push your lemon across the finish line using a wooden spoon. The kids (well, truth be told, the dads) had a blast.

 

Next we played a rousing game of Lemon Tag, which was pretty much just regular tag except using a lemon as the instument of tagging.



The rest of the party was just playing outside, enjoying the backyard and the nice, cool spring weather.

A week later we celebrated Leila's actual birthday the day we came home from the hospital. We had hummus for lunch by Leila's request and our weekly pizza/movie night at dinnertime with cupcakes for dessert.

Milestone Moment: Benj's Tooth!

A few weeks ago Benjamin lost his first tooth!

He came into our room one morning about 2 weeks after Channah was born and woke me up. "Mommy! I have some exciting news!"

Groggy Mommy opened one eye and managed "What's that, buddy?"

"I have a loose tooth!"

I woke up with a little more enthusiasm and watched while he proudly wiggled a very loose tooth.

About a week later we were at church for a choir rehersal on a Sunday night. When we picked the kids up from childcare Benjamin proudly showed us his tooth all wrapped up in a napkin. It had come out while he was eating his sandwich for dinner.

When we got home that night I got out my brother's old tooth pillow that my mom had passed on to me the last time we were in California. (Seth was genuinely impressed that we had a tooth pillow ready & waiting for this moment. :) ) Benj proudly stored his tooth in the pocket and stowed it under his pillow. He was thrilled in the morning to find a dollar! (Our comment to attempt to avoid setting any kind of precident: "man, that tooth fairy sure is generous when it's the first tooth!")

Interestingly enough Benj seems to geninely believe in the tooth fairy. This is my son who regularly rehearses the fiction/non-fiction status of various stories of his acquaintance. If you ask him if Tinkerbell is real he says, "No! Of course not." If you ask him how he knows he'll tell you (laughing), "because fairies aren't real!" But the tooth fairy appears to be of a different breed, for some reason. I'm not sure how that works out in his fascinating little brain.

Anyway, here's our little man with his new (super cute, if I may say so) gappy smile.

Photo Update

As my poor mother, 2000 miles away, has reminded me, I haven't posted any pictures Miss Channah since her birth. She is now 8 weeks old!

Here are a few pictures from the last few weeks:

3 weeks old

4 weeks old

4 weeks old - Mama cam :)

5 weeks old - starting to smile more!

6 weeks old - this shot captures the happy side of her little personality perfectly :)

That's the most recent picture I have.... Looks like it's time to take some new pictures!