4 Months Old

Miss Zuri turned 4 months old today. She is one cute little thing that gives us lots of big smiles and cooing. She thoroughly enjoys the attention she gathers everywhere we go when she flashes her smiles around. We also get a lot of comments on her long wisps of hair. We are in full swing of that awkward baby hair stage- short on top, long at the crown, little bit of mullet in the back. :) I need to do some trimming, but we waited so long for Rori to get any hair that it is hard to take away any of Zuri's. The long hair is dark, but the new stuff coming in looks like it might be light.

She still likes to be held and have Mommy or Daddy in site a little more than we would prefer, but we are getting a bit more breaks from the play mat, swing, and bouncy seat. She has spent quite a lot of time being shuffled around in the car seat over the last few weeks as we've been figuring out the school routine with Kai and Rori. I'm hoping this will help her learn to like the car seat a little better. Her hands are in her mouth quite a lot these days. This plus an occasional first drippy nose and lots of drooling make us wonder if the teething process is beginning.

Our great sleeper has decided to mess with Mom and Dad some over the last few weeks. We've been trying to determine if this is due to the possible beginning of teething, or due to us having to alter her nap schedule due to the other kids school, or due to the fact that she's sleeping with a binky, or due to the fact that she might be thinking about starting to try some food other than milk, or due to the fact that she seems to like to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, or due to the fact that we are still swaddling her, etc.

Fortunately the immediate solutions of popping back in the binky or a quick diaper change in the dark is all it has required. Not a huge deal unless she decides to do this several times in one night which she has done a few times. I know we have been extremely blessed by her sleeping so well up until this point, but it has been a little extra frustrating because she did do it so well for so long. Next we will try taking out her 10:30pm feed and not popping the binky back in. Then we can deal with not being swaddled, her rolling over and waking herself up, and all the other things that can mess up sleep as they come. This is one of the tricky things about the newborn stage for me. Things can so quickly go awry and figuring out why isn't always easy. Lance and I have both commented that it is hard to be frustrated with her for too long because she's really good at flashing you a huge grin- even in the middle of the night.

After one particularly long night last week I heard this song for the first time on the radio on the way to school.



It won't be like this for long applies to lots of different aspects of life. Sometimes you want to speed through parts and other times you just want to soak in the moment. Who knew Hootie sings country now? Well probably lots of people other than me. :)

We love this little one and are excited to be watching her develop more and more in to her own little personality.

Here are Zuri's 4 month stats:

Height: 26 inches; 97%

Weight: 14.3lbs; 55%
(she's dropped % quite a bit in weight to be right on target with the %'s of her siblings at a similar age.)

What Do You Think?

People keep saying how much Zuri looks like Kai or Rori when they were her age? Here is a picture of each at around 3 months old.

Kai:


Rori:


Zuri:

1st Day of Preschool 2011

Rori had her first day of preschool today. She has been so excited to go to school just like Kai. I wondered if her excitement would fade when it was time for me to leave, but she did great and wasn't phased at all. When I said goodbye to her she said "Bye Mom" and went skipping off hand in hand with a new friend from her class that she had just made.

This is the next big step of the Rori Story we've been on this year. When Rori turned 3 a few weeks ago she graduated out of the Early Intervention program and in to the school districts jurisdiction. In anticipation of this Rori was evaluated by several people from the district over the summer- speech therapist, nurse, school psychologist, hard of hearing coordinator, etc. Then this Tuesday we met with all of them to do her official IEP where they would tell us what services the school district would be willing to provide her based on her hearing.

We feel good about the outcome of the IEP as they accepted her in to the program that we had been hoping for. It is a language intensive preschool for kids who wear hearing aids. There are currently 7 kids in the class counting Rori (they can have up to 9) with one teacher and 1 full time aid. They also currently have 1 little girl in the class that is a "typical hearing" student who is there to be a good speech example. She is the one Rori went skipping off with. We met with the teacher yesterday and I thought she seemed great. She was enthusiastic and appeared to be very organized which speaks to me.

The good news bad news is that she will go to school M-F from 9:10 - 1:10pm. I know it is going to be so good for her, but I'm selfishly going to miss my time with her. I'm sure I'll be posting more about all the cool things she will do in this class in upcoming posts, but so far everything we've seen looks awesome. They will be academically prepping the kids just like any other preschool, but in addition the teachers are trained to specifically work with kids with hearing issues (who aren't deaf) to help expose them to as much language as possible in these early years. In addition there will also be a speech teacher that will visit the classroom a few times a week to work with the kids. We're really excited about it and hope that this will be a great thing for Rori for this first year of preschool. Assuming we follow the same August birthday wait to be an older pattern that we have done with Kai this could be the 1st of 3 years of preschool for Rori.

Thankfully the school offering this cool program is just about 10 to 15 minutes away from our house which is pretty amazing. But, it is going to be interesting figuring it all out with Kai's different school hours in the mix. Lets just say our mornings are going to be a little nuts. I am really looking forward to getting settled in to a routine though.

Hopefully Rori will continue to be excited about going. When I picked her up today she told me how much fun it was and she had done "great". Now she has a long weekend to rest up before a shorter week next week due to the holiday. Hopefully that will help ease her in. We were a little concerned about such a long day for her, but we'll see how it goes. She was super excited to get to take her own lunchbox today too like Kai.

So now I'm down to just one kid for a good portion of the day. It will be a little like going back to the Kai baby days. It will be nice to have that extra 1 on 1 time with Zuri. Maybe I'll even be able to get to some of those projects that I can never seem to find the time for. We'll see if Zuri agrees to that though since when she is awake she is probably the most demanding of the 3 at this time.