First Day of Kindergarten!

Zachary officially began his schooling career this week at Champion Preparatory Academy.  It is a "homeschool" school - so he'll be attending school there for Tuesday - Thursday, and then doing home curriculum here on Mondays and Fridays.  There are 9 kids total in his kindergarten class, so it should be one in which he receives a lot of individual attention.  The teacher is very animated and he informs me that he really likes her!  This year at least should be very easy for him, as he knows how to read and do math pretty well already, which we're thankful for as we're also dealing with a newborn obviously!

Speaking of our precious newborn - we discovered early this week that Addison was not gaining weight, and in fact had not yet regained her birth weight back.  We were pretty horrified (especially Amy!) to discover this, so Amy has rented the hospital scale (just like we did for Kaleb - oh what a familiar journey we're on!) and a hospital pump to try and boost her milk supply.  Amy took Addison to the nursing specialist on Wednesday and confirmed what was already suspected - she is a very weak nurser, and has similar muscle issues as the boys did.  We're doing the exercises with her, and hoping that she gets stronger quickly.  She basically was only drinking about 1-1.5 ozs per feeding, rather than the 2-3 ozs that she should be.  Amy is now pumping and feeding a bottle in order to ensure that we're getting enough milk into her each day, so she's now gained about 5 ozs in 4 days, so is catching up just slightly thankfully.  She is a pretty good sleeper still, and seems to have a natural 3.5-4 hour cycle in which she'll wake up and eat.  As we're trying to get her to gain weight though, we're waking her up about 3 hours to be sure that she eats.  Her belly button cord fell off this week (yeah!)

Zachary is our man of routine, and he has entered into a terrible sleeping routine for the last few weeks - anything that throws off his normal habits then becomes his new habits - unfortunately. He also has not mastered the skill of going back to sleep, so he's been waking up anywhere from 4:30 - 5:30 over the past few weeks, and not going to sleep that quickly at night. This of course results in a very overtired child - which isn't good as he isn't able to then nap during school days (yes, he does still nap, which is probably extremely unusual for a six year old, but he needs those naps, and the Z parents need it to keep our sanity from an otherwise very emotional child). We're hoping that we can get this under control and create a more sane habit quickly.

The boys went to Blake and Evan's birthday party last Sunday.  It was a carnival theme, complete with fun games etc and a face painter.  The boys were a lion and a tiger - two of their most favorite animals!

We got our new rocker for the baby's room this week, which has some nice features of being taller in the back (wonderful for resting your head) and being able to recline.  It is not as deep or as a wide as our old chair, which is a bit disappointing but something that we'll have to get over as it was a custom order!

Tropical storm Isaac is barreling its way towards Florida, so we're praying that we do not actually get hit.  Unimaginable to have no power when you have a newborn!

Phrase of the week:  This is something that Kaleb said a while ago, and we just haven't had a chance to put it on here - he was eating breakfast with Amy one day and looked at her and said "Mommy, where are your nose hairs?"  Amy answered "I don't have nose hairs (at least not long dark ones!)" and Kaleb replied "You don't have any??  Oh!  Daddy has lots!"  Ha ha!

Life with a Newborn

Life with a newborn - we've officially dived back into the world of diapers, around the clock feedings, and trying to get little miss Addison to sleep and WAKE up! :)  She continues to be fairly sleepy, so is difficult to get to wake up and nurse.  We'll see how this ends up impacting the overall milk supply - as Karis said it earlier this week "We're back on the milk production roller coaster."  Amy took her to the lacation center earlier this week to weigh, and she had not gained as much weight as she should have so Amy has been trying to feed her more frequently - but she still does not seem to be a very strong nurser.  So reminiscent of Kaleb!  On other topics, she is a pretty contented baby so far, although she is starting to wake up more in the evenings - last night Karis had the "on call" duty and was up with her until almost midnight before she finally fell asleep.

Zachary had his school orientation this week - he was quite excited.  His kindergarten teacher is Mrs. Sitigata and she seems to be full of energy.  He'll be going Tuesday - Thursday and then doing homeschool topics here at home on Monday and Fridays.   Next Tuesday is the official start of school.

The school had "olympic" games to help get kids having fun and comfortable - here is a sack race!

Other than that, we've just been hanging out at home trying to survive.  Amy is feeling much better after the delivery and actually could fit into her fat jeans this weekend! :)  Glory be!  Glad for that, because next Sunday we have her newborn pictures and we always wear jeans with white tops, so Amy was hoping not to have to buy new jeans as well!  So, we've gone from last weekend looking like she was still 6 months pregnant to now looking like she just add a few too many chocolates! :)

Phrase of the week:  Kaleb's fervent wish "I wish that I could be a mommy - so that I could feed a baby and pump"  Even when Amy explains that it is probably more fun to be the dad, because you can have all the fun without quite as much of the feeding work, he does not agree!  His other phrase this week is "Look at the little fella!"  No matter how many times we explain to him that fellas are boys, and not girls, he insists that she is a fella!

PS. The following picture is our tradition of doing a clay footprint of our kids.  The last time with Kaleb, Karis took the picture and you couldn't see any of Kaleb except for his foot, as he was hidden behind Amy's shoulder - so we learned our lesson this time! :)  On another note - see the nasty bruise on Amy's right forearm?  That beauty was thanks to a nurse at the hospital drawing blood who did not really know what she was doing too well - OUCH!


The Waiting Is Over - The Baby Has Arrived!

Addison Grace Zbaraschuk made her debut on Tuesday, August 7, 2012 at 9:09A.    She was 7 lbs 12 ozs, and 20.5 inches long.  She has dark brown hair (darker than Zachary's at this point), brown eyes, seemingly darker skin, and the two cutest dimples we've ever seen!  We aren't sure who she looks like yet - other than herself! :) With these stats, she is the biggest Z-baby! 

Amy was having pretty strong contractions on Sunday and Monday in the mornings, but of course as the day would progress (even with copious amounts of walking etc to keep them going), the contractions would subside.  Amy had basically decided that on Tuesday at her doctor's appointment that she would inquire about a scheduled induction on Friday, August 10th (8/10/12 seemed like an auspicious birth day!).  However, Monday night she woke up with the urge to cough (she had a bit of a cough from Kaleb) so went out into the living room couch to avoid waking up Karis.  About an hour later, she was dozing off and on, and at that particular moment was awake - she adjusted slightly how she was laying on the couch when she heard a very LOUD POP!  At the moment where she wondered, "What was that" it was immediately obvious as her water began to gush out.  With the boys, her water broke but it was more of a steady trickle vs a gush so this was a bit of a 'new' experience.

Realizing what was happening, she threw herself off of the couch (must save the couch!) and ran into her bathroom yelling for Karis to wake up.  Karis was so dead to the world that it took her three times to rouse him.  Thankfully we were basically ready to go, so we called in Lisa to come sleep over with the boys (so thankful for great friends who don't mind being totally inconvenienced in the middle of the night!) and we were off.  Once her water broke, her contractions started immediately - pretty strong and about 5 minutes or less apart - but bearable.   As we hurried out to the van, Karis announced that the van would not start - key wouldn't turn.  After multiple attempts, he ran inside to see if he could find the solution on the internet, while Lisa went inside to get her keys to move her van (identical to our van) to no avail.  Long story short, Karis had grabbed Lisa's keys when he ran out the door, so no wonder the van wouldn't start!  We were thankful to have at least figured it out so quickly!

We were admitted to the hospital at 3:00A, and the contractions continued to strengthen and upon discovering that she was already at 6 cm dilated, she asked for the epidural.  What blessed relief!  Until that point, Amy had been telling herself to "just focus" through the contractions by thinking of some great vacation - Belize was the one that came to mind but after two super strong contractions, her thought was "Belize is just not cutting it, I'm dying here!"  Within about an hour of  being at the hospital, she was at 8 cm dilated - so it was progressing very quickly with no pitocin etc.     By 6:45A, she was fully dilated and effaced, but the wait was just for the baby to come down a little further in the birth canal. 

The doctor came in about 8:30A, and after two rounds of pushing, actually told Amy to wait so that her body could stretch a bit to adjust for the baby.  After a few skipped contractions and one more round of pushing, Addison made her way into the world!  It was surprisingly emotional, Amy could have started to cry as soon as she began to push, but employed the "do math in your head" to keep it together so that she could actually push! :) 

We were transferred to recovery, where we discovered that another set of friends, Daniel and Jamie Cochran, had delivered their baby girl via planned c-section at 8:08A (Audrey Elizabeth) - so it was pretty neat that the girls were born at 8:08 and 9:09 and both had A names!

We stayed in the hospital for 2 days, during which of course there is no rest for the weary between nurses, lab techs, delivery personnel, nutritional trays etc.  The best part of the interruptions was all of our friends and family coming to visit us!  We had quite a list of folks that came to visit:  Amy's Mom and the boys (4 times - can we say over the moon with excitement!?), various branches of the Cochran families, Deiningers, Johnsons, Jennifer B, Niesha, Abel, and Doug. 

We went home on Thursday morning and have been adjusting to the new 'normal' ever since.  She has been pretty good baby so far, sleeping well etc.  She is so sleepy that nursing has been challenging to get her to wake up, but this soon will pass.  She doesn't cry a whole lot yet except when her diaper is being changed, and an initial cry upon waking up.  We've been doing the mouth exercises that we did with the other boys to help with the nursing issues (it must just run in our family) and it seems to be helping, even though she hates it!

The boys have been staying over at Grandma's house at night, which is kind of nice as Amy has been sleeping in Kaleb's room with Addison in a bassinet to let Karis have as much sleep as possible.  It is obvious that Addison is the third child, because we're all kinds of relaxed with her - pulling her into bed with Amy when she doesn't go back to sleep right away etc.  Lots of holding and snuggling of course!  We've introduced her to the crib, which seems to be going well thankfully.

Phrase of the week:   After watching Amy feed the baby, Zachary asked "Do all private parts have holes in them?"  Ha ha - yeah, apparently so!  Kaleb's phrase was "Can I hold her - for a very long time?"  Both boys want to be with her all of the time, although Zachary is still enamored with the Olympics so he gets distracted pretty easily and onto other things.

The Crying Game

Yep, it's true.  We're still pregnant - or correction, AMY is still pregnant.  Longest pregnancy now to date by far.  Contractions continue to no avail.  Prayers are being lifted, although in a bit of a schizo manner because earlier this week, it was "Please Lord, let the baby come now" and then on Thursday when Zachary finally managed to give Amy the full fledged stomach bug complete with diarrhea and stomach cramps, it was "Please Lord, don't let the baby come today!" and now we're back to "Please Lord, let the baby come now!"  The male Z family members actually had special prayer today for the baby to come - fingers crossed!  Amy is beginning to think that perhaps she'll never go into labor - maybe her body doesn't know how to get to the next stage of labor - it is just stuck in the perpetual on and off contractions!  On the internet (and EVERYTHING on the internet is true, don't you know!?) it says that 4-14% of women never go into labor.  It stands to reason perhaps - with the first two her water broke without any contractions starting, so she had to be induced.  This time, contractions all the time, but nothing else......patience, patience!

Amy went to the doctor on Thursday (with the help of some Immodium) and was "thrilled" (aka horrified) when the doctor said two things.  "You can be pregnant all the way to 42 weeks" (HEAVEN HELP ME!) and "Oh, the baby has a big head" (JUST GREAT, THANKS FOR THE ENCOURAGING NEWS, KEEP THAT TO YOURSELF NEXT TIME!) :)

On a brighter side, we are thrilled with the summer Olympics.  We are fanatics, we love to watch them!  Each with a different sport of course.  Zachary loves soccer, water polo and field hockey.  Kaleb loves gymnastics.  Amy loves gymnastics, swimming, diving, skeet shooting, archery (okay, perhaps a little of everything EXCEPT for the things that Zachary loves!).  Karis too will watch just about any sport.  It has turned our front foyer into a soccer field - as Zachary and Kaleb play soccer and see who can get the most scores.  Of course the "goal posts" are the baby's room door frame, so once the baby arrives we'll have to figure out something else! :)

Zachary is the goalie making a "save"

We also had the pleasure last week of celebrating with our friend Abel for his 40th birthday.  His wife threw a very classy "black and white" party for him, and it was great fun to visit with friends and see the video montage of Abel's life.


Part of the group sitting around visiting

Phrase of the week:  As Zachary and Kaleb play soccer, Zachary yells "Out of balance!" - um, Zach, that is supposed to be "Out of BOUNDS!" :)  Kaleb's phrase is more of a recent "attitude" in which if he doesn't get his way, then he insists "well, then I'm not going to eat, or I'm not going to play" - we're doing our best to nip this in the bud, but we'll see how long it takes! :)

Kaleb and Daddy playing "Hullabaloo" which Kaleb is now obsessed with!