tonyandkirsten.org

Erik is really psyched to be a “big boy” doing preschool.  I’ve heard him repeating often that he isn’t going to do “tot school” any more.  Since he is so eager to learn and “do school” like Madeline, I thought it would be helpful to use a curriculum with him this year.

I bought “Little Hands to Heaven” when Madeline was 4.  At the time I thought it was too young for her — she already knew her letters, colors, shapes and numbers to 10.  The Bible stories in the curriculum looked fun, but she needed something beyond what was provided for the other subjects.  I liked it enough though that I kept it.

Erik is at the perfect age for this curriculum.  While he is pretty good with colors, shapes, and numbers (up to about 7 or 8), he hasn’t learned his letters much at all.  I think it will be a challenge to keep up with a separate curriculum for Erik, but it will be fun and Madeline is excited to help Erik learn and do some of the activities with him.  Hopefully it works out that way in practice!

I think I’ll also be purchasing the “Letter of the Week” printables from Erika at “Confessions of a Homeschooler“.  Most of the printables are available free on her blog individually, but I like the idea of having them all in one place! I intend to use these materials to keep Erik busy when Madeline is doing school and Erik wants to “do school” along side her.  We purchased a color laser printer this past spring, so it won’t be a huge expense to print out the colorful activities.

Of course, I’m sure we’ll throw in there some Tot Printables from 1+1+1=1.com and miscellaneous activities and studies on topics of interest to Erik.

That just leaves Kai…I’m not sure if I am going to do any Tot School (aka fun purposeful playing) with him this next year…or come up with some toy rotation or just hope for the best! I have noticed he is interested in scribbling and just likes being at the table with his siblings.  I may try and regularly put him in a booster seat at the table and let him scribble along with them for a few minutes.  We did this one day recently when the bigger kids were both doing projects on table, and even after Kai was done with his table activities, he seemed more inclined to leave them alone!!!

~Erik is 34 Months Old~

We’ve had some fun Tot School times the past couple of weeks! I think we’re finding a balance that works for us of Erik sometimes joining in to the best of his ability with what Madeline is doing, sometimes doing his own “tot school work” alongside Madeline and other times just playing and doing his own thing during our school time.  And every now and then while Madeline is taking a break or doing work independently, I can work one-on-one with Erik.  While I would love to do more of this, it just doesn’t seem like it’s in the cards right now.

Math is still Erik’s favorite subject to “join in” with.  And why not? Math manipulatives are so much fun, and he loves exploring numbers and counting:

Art is another favorite activity we have not done as much of lately, and Erik requested coloring (and then cutting) and painting this past week:

Erik and I did get a chance for just the two of us to play Cariboo this week:

We had our “Game Day” on Friday, and Erik participated whole-heartedly…even in games he didn’t fully know how to play, like sight word bingo.

It’s hard to believe, but it won’t be long before I am thinking up “tot school” activities for Kai.  Even now, I am realizing that the reason he has been whining more frequently during school time is that he gets bored! I am working on setting aside a few toys that I will only get out for him during school time.  He really likes manipulating the pieces of these jumbo-sized puzzles:

To see what other families are doing for Tot School, visit the weekly tot school link-up at 1+1+1=1!

We now have two cloth diaper wearers in our family:

After using disposables for the first week or so with Kai while we were waiting for the remnant of his umbilical cord to fall off, I was super excited to start using cloth diapers on him about two weeks ago.

While we use mostly prefolds and covers with Erik (with a couple of pocket diapers we use at night), we have a greater variety of diapers for Kai.  The bulk of our newborn/ small diaper collection is still prefolds and covers, but we also have several pocket diapers, some fitted diapers and a couple of all-in-one style diapers as well.

So far having two in cloth isn’t much more difficult than having one in cloth.  I was doing laundry about once every two or two-and-a-half days with just Erik in cloth, with an occasional stretch of three days.  Now that I have a newborn’s diaper laundry added to that, I think the most we’ve gone between loads is a little more than 48 hours.  I think most of the time we’ve been doing diaper laundry every day-and-a-half or so.   But now that I have my laundry routine down, it doesn’t feel like it takes too much time out of my day to get that laundry done.

Interestingly, the determining factor in when to do laundry most days has not been running out of either boy’s diapers…but rather that the diaper hamper was full and smelly (I don’t rinse out the newborn poopy diapers, because they come clean in the wash without rinsing…but that does make the diaper hamper much smellier!).

Before Kai was born I got a real steal on a great diaper bag for having two kids in cloth diapers ($25 shipped, from Ebay!).  It has a lot more interior room than my previous bag — enough for about two diapers per kid, a full change of clothes for Kai, an extra pair of pants for Erik, and all the usual diapering stuff like a changing pad and wipes.  So we’re able to cloth diaper fairly easily, even on the go.

It seems silly, but I really think that cloth diapering makes diapering two kids seem more fun.  Changing diapers is classically considered one of the drudgeries of parenting, but there’s something about using cloth that is making it not seem like much of a drudgery at all, at least so far.  And of course I still like the money savings of not having to buy disposable diapers times two, and the convenience of not having to run to the store due to running out of diapers!

Many people have been noting how similar Kai looks to how Erik looked as a baby, so I thought I would find some pictures where we could make a direct comparison.

Here’s Erik at 4 days old:

And here’s Kai wearing the same shirt, laying on the same couch, at 3 days old:

They definitely look very similar!  Though it is a little bit harder to tell in the pictures, Kai’s skin tone, hair and eye color are all darker than Erik’s are.  Erik’s skin tone is very fair like mine, while Kai (and Madeline) take more after Tony in that category.  Madeline was born with dark brown eyes, Erik’s were light blue from birth (and stayed blue!), and so far Kai has more of a dark gray-blue color to his eyes.  His seem to be more of a “baby” color that will change to something else as he gets older.  Perhaps his eyes will be hazel like mine?

Kai also seems very similar in temperament to what Erik was like as a baby.  Just like Erik, Kai seems very easy going and is a good eater and sleeper.  We haven’t had any problems with nursing, and as soon as my milk came in, he was sleeping about three hours at a time at night and easily going back to sleep between feedings (unlike Madeline, who liked to be awake and screaming between feedings in the middle of the night as a newborn).

Madeline and Erik seem to be adjusting pretty well to having Kai join our family.  We haven’t had any obvious jealousy issues thus far, though I can see that we will probably have some patience issues once Tony is back at work and there is only one grown-up here to help the kids.  I think it might take them some time to get used to the fact that there will be times during the day when it will be 10 or 15 minutes or more before I can get something for them or help them with something because I am feeding the baby.  Madeline obviously went through this once before when Erik was a baby, but since then she has gotten used to mommy almost always being available to her within a minute or two to respond to her requests.

Besides the logistical challenges of learning how to get out of the house and go places with three kids in tow, I think our biggest challenge once it is just the kids and I here will be finding a good schedule that work with a newborn, a toddler and a preschooler.  We had a pretty good schedule going for the first couple months of the fall, but then as I got further along in the pregnancy, the holidays hit, and so on…well, the schedule pretty much went out the window! For the six weeks or so before Kai was born, we were pretty much just trying to get through each day with a minimum of disaster and without me going completely crazy from exhaustion. That meant extra TV and computer time many days, and just more “entertainment” for the kids in general rather than purposeful use of time.

I’m sure we’ll still have some days like that in the weeks ahead, especially on days following nights when Kai does decide he needs to eat all night long (and every baby has those nights, even the “good sleepers”).   But overall I think a bit of structure will make our lives easier and more productive in the long run (though it might hurt a bit getting there!).  Tony is home with us for another week or so, until he starts his new job on Monday the 23rd.  Then the adventure of having three kids at home with me really begins!

Since Kai is currently a relatively unusual name, I thought it would be appropriate to blog about why we gave Kai his name.

The name Kai, as near as I can tell, has two primary origins. One seems to be roughly Indoeuropean, meaning either “Lord”, “Warrior”, “Keeper of Keys” or “Rejoice” as Caius / Gaius in Latin (Cai / Kai in Welsh and German and Kaj in Scandinavian) and Anglicized as Kay. The Arthurian legend depicts Cai (Sir Kay) as Arthur’s foster brother and one the first and most loyal of the Knights of the Round Table (also hot-headed). The other origin is Pacific, meaning “Ocean” in Japanese and Hawaiian.

All that said, we didn’t pick Kai because of any of the mentioned meanings of the name. Kai has an entirely different meaning to me.

Shortly after our first son was born, my dad unexpectedly passed away. Erik was about 3 1/2 months old. I had already been thinking about how my Dad raised me, the ways that we spent time together and what lessons he had taught me (both intentional and not) about what it was to be a man. After Dad passed my Mom, brother, sisters, in-laws, neices, nephews, aunts and friends spent copious time telling stories and remembering Dad. All this really brought his parenting (for which I am very grateful) into sharp focus for me. I decided that there was much of what and how Dad taught me that I wanted to repeat with my son.

I also began to think that if God were to give me another son, I wanted to preserve these thoughts by giving my son my Dad’s name. His name was Kay Russell Hill, a name that even in 1944 had quite a Boy-named-Sue feeling to it. Since Kai is a related name to Kay and only one letter off, I suggested the name to Kirsten after we found out she was having a boy. We tried it out for a while and quickly became settled on calling him Kai.

So while Kai is indeed nice masculine sounding male name, to me it is primarily a reminder of Dad, our relationship and the legacy that he left me to pass to my family.

We welcomed Kai Russell Hill to our family yesterday (February 6th) at 3:49pm.  He weighed 7lbs, 15 oz. at birth and is 20 inches long.

For those who are interested, here are all the details of his birth.    We arrived at the hospital at 8am on Friday, February 6th for a scheduled induction.  I was 41 weeks, 5 days along in the pregnancy — 12 days past my due date.  While anything under 42 weeks is still considered in the range of “normal,” induction is fairly commonly recommended at some point before a woman passes 42 weeks gestation.

The induction began around 8:45am with a pitocin drip.   The whole morning was pretty uneventful, other than a couple times when Kai’s heartbeat dipped down for 30-45 seconds or so before coming back up to normal.  Especially since I was 12 days past my due date, they were watching this very closely because it can be a sign that there is meconium in the amniotic fluid or that the baby isn’t responding well to the stress of labor. (Luckily, neither of which proved to be the case.)

I was having contractions all morning that were growing ever so slightly stronger and closer together, but the contractions were really not very painful.  While this was great in one sense, it also meant that the labor was not progressing very quickly.  Around 2:15 or 2:30, I was having contractions that were maybe 3 minutes apart, but I was also still only 3cm dilated and 80% effaced.

The midwife went ahead and broke my water at this point.  I was very nervous about this, because the act of the doctor breaking my water was very painful in my labor with Madeline.  It was a much better experience this time, and not painful at all.  I think the water breaking was just the cue my body was looking for, since things really started to move quickly at this point.

A little before the midwife checked my progress and broke my water, the nurse had asked me if I wanted to try a birth ball in order to be up and moving around, use different muscles, etc. (It’s basically a huge ball that is inflated enough to support a woman’s weight, but is soft enough to provide comfortable support when sitting on it).  I moved back to the birth ball after my water had been broken, and I was so thankful to have this option.  The contractions were getting more painful and closer together fairly quickly, but I was able to get some great body positions while on the birth ball that made the contractions as bearable as possible.

Some time later (maybe a little before 3:30pm?) the nurse and midwife suggested I move back to the bed, partly because they were having trouble continuing to get a good fix on the baby’s heartbeat, but also because (as Tony told me after it was all over) when they could get his heartbeat it was obviously getting lower.  Also, even though they started diluting the pitocin in order to try and space out the contractions just a little bit, my body kept accelerating the contractions on its own. So, I am sure it was clear to them that I was nearing the pushing phase of labor.

I took a few very strong contractions while moving from the birth ball to the bed.  Then, just about as soon as I was laying down on my left side in the bed (the position my midwife suggested), I started to feel the sensations associated with being ready to push! I was pretty surprised, since I figured I might be in for quite a bit longer time experiencing strong, painful contractions.  After a few small pushes, Kai was really ready to make his entrance, and I gave a few more strong, painful pushes to get him out.  Tony tells me the whole pushing phase lasted about 15 minutes,  and that I was mostly on my side when Kai was born.  I was surprised to have given birth in that position, but it seemed to have worked well and I pushed for (I think) about half the time I did in my labor with Erik.

I was so happy to have made it through the induced labor relatively quickly (at least realatively quickly once things really got started) and without needing any pain relief.  I had the epidural in my labor with Madeline, and it was actually not a bad experience (and made a long labor much more bearable), but having labored naturally with Erik I knew my body was capeable of it and I wanted to be able to do that again.

Kai has been a great baby so far — he is an eager eater and yet was nice enough to only wake up once for a true “middle of the night” feeding last night, thus allowing us to get a fairly good night’s sleep.

We’ll be here at Fairview Riverside hospital until sometime on Sunday, then we’ll be heading home to begin adjusting to life as a family of five!