Welcome New Baby!!!

After much anticipation and waiting...our new baby is finally here! Christian was born last week after being 5 days past his due date. It was exciting to finally see his face and hear his wonderful little cry!

We waited and waited, and still no baby. I finally went in for my post due date visit where they did a stress test and an ultrasound. Everything went well, except for a couple of decelerations in the baby's heart rate. That is what ultimately sent me directly to the hospital for an induction. I was scared to death of being put on pitocin, since I've heard that contractions are stronger and more painful than with natural labor. Towards the end, I experienced the increase in pain and it turned out that the baby was facing up, contributing to my extreme back pain. But in the end, everything turned out well and I was able to survive without any medication. Labor lasted only about 4 hours.

Christian was born healthy and my mother was able to participate in the delivery. It was exciting to see her expressions as the baby was being born. She had never had that experience before and she was great in helping DH rub my back and get me comfortable during the most painful part of labor. In the end, she cut the umbilical cord and DH and I were happy that we were able to share the moment with family.

Now that we are home, it's nice to get back into the swing of things. The kids are loving the new baby and I'm blessed that none of them have ever been jealous of a sibling. Marco and Isabella are truly enjoying the big sibling roles they have. Anthony is still a little clueless, but is constantly kissing the baby and saying things like, "Aww...baby cute. Kiss baby." In all, we are truly one, big, happy family!

Accountability.

Well, today I finally had the opportunity to keep a promise made to my daughter a long time ago. For the past year, we have been attending classes at the YMCA. On our drive to the Y, we always pass by the Academy of Dance. For a year now, she has been asking to take dance classes and I have told her that she had to wait until she was 3 years old.

Now the time has come where she is old enough to take the classes and I am dreading it! Classes start on the 20th of this month! That means that I will be taking along a newborn to her first class. Luckily, I'll have family in town and I'll be sending them off to take her for her first class. The baby will be at most a week old. I don't think I can handle that right now. I'll be exhausted!

Anyways, I figured this was a good lesson to us that we need to stay accountable to our kids and keep our promises. I know that sometimes life might get in the way, but when your kids see you do everything you can to follow through, I believe they really learn something from it. I also feel like we owe it to her, since this summer was mostly dedicated to Marco's activities. Now it's her turn. We'll see how it goes!

Finished with MFW Creation.

We have just finished with our introduction to MFW. We did Creation and used Catholic Heritage Curricula's "God's Love Story" to supplement in our reading. The kids LOVED it! It was great fun for them due to all the cutting and pasting that they got to do. In the end, we created a nice little book describing all the wonderful things that God created.

This means that beginning on Monday, we will be starting with Lesson 1 of MFW. I'm looking forward to it and I'm sure that the kids will love it just as much as they did the Creation unit. We are still doing Saxon math along with all our other curriculum choices for phonics, handwriting, and enrichment.

Isabella began Saxon K and she is moving through it at a faster pace than I expected. I do anticipate her slowing down once we get into more difficult material, however. She also began Phonics Pathways and has surprised me with how well she is blending her sounds. She has been able to read some 3 letter words now without my assistance, so I thought it was a good time to start her on the program. Overall, she is really enjoying finally being able to do "school" with big brother!

Marco is also happy to have a new partner during his school hours. We have set up a file folder system where he picks something while I do one-on-one with Isabella. This past week he worked on his doubles and plus one facts. He is finally slowing down during his math, but I also anticipated that happening. As for everything else, he seems to be enjoying our time working together as a family and has even volunteered to help Isabella learn to read. It's really cute to see them together and reviewing all the sounds and blends!

I suppose having siblings be so close is a great advantage to homeschooling and I'm loving it!