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!