Things to remember

"Please bless that I won't have many difficult things in my life" Saku's prayer before dinner.

"No one is cuter than me" Eerika, yesterday as I told her that she is the cutest thing on the block. The positive thing is that she lets me do her hair so she will look cute and she is adamant about painting nails, but of course, I don't want her to think that she is better than others. How to teach self confidence and humility at the same time?? And to a three year old.

I asked Eerika "can I keep you forever?" as we snuggled yesterday.

She laughed and said "I am your daughter" as if it was given that she was mine forever. 

Saku requests a sacrament meeting song each night as a lullaby because he wants to "be like Heavenly Father".

Saku's best buddy Zane calls him Sock sometimes. I asked him if he liked it or not, and he said "he is my best buddy so I don't mind it".

It feels so good to be taken care of!

Today Corrye offered to watch Eerika after her play group while I went to the doctor. This meant that I dropped her off at their house at 8:30 for the play group. It lasted until 10:30 when other kids got picked up and then Eerika got to play with Amber until 3 when I got home from the doctor and picking up Saku. That is a long day to watch someone's kid. Eerika is easy going and she loves being with Amber so it is fairly "easy", but really taking care of your kid or anyone else's kid is never really easy. Yet Corrye genuinely did not think twice about it. And she is the one who offered to have Eerika stay at their house all morning/afternoon. What a great example of service and genuine friendship.

So Troy and I enjoyed a lunch date after the doctor's appointment.  It was so nice to just chat in the middle of the day while eating delicious sandwiches at Beyond Bread.

Even after my kid free morning/afternoon, this morning's crazy cleaning and last night's bad sleep (Saku woke up at 4:30sh with a bloody nose) plus Eerika's tiredness due to a missed nap left me with no energy by the time Troy got home at 6. Maybe the fact that I hadn't gained weight in the past two weeks, I felt psychologically such a craving for chocolate so Troy just took the kids to Roadrunner for a chocolate run. That man knows how to deliver when it really counts. 

The Business of Growing a Baby

I had forgotten how exhausting growing a baby can be. I am up about three times a night to pee, so my sleep gets interrupted. When I do my daily walk in the evening before going to bed, even if it is just a mile, the next morning I feel like I ran a marathon the day before. That is a bit dramatic, but my body is truly is tired the next morning.

However, everything is going perfectly right now. As much as we can tell without seeing Little Ninja. I am measuring right and his heart beat is strong. 

I have felt quite stressed out about gaining weight since July. I gained seven pounds over four weeks, which I had done with the other two pregnancies as well, but this time Dr. Farias mentioned it. I think she just wanted to make sure that she was aware of anything that I might have noticed, swelling etc. However, it made me feel very self conscious and I have made a huge attempt to walk every day. I would say that I have been overly concerned (or even overly scared) about it and there are nights when I am tired but I think  "I will just walk for 15 minutes". 

So there was a sense of satisfaction when the scale today showed that my weight gain is very good right now.  It is vain. But it is the honest truth. Just because you know you are supposed to gain all this weight, doesn't make it easier. 

When people around you tell you "you are all belly" and "you look good", it does make a difference, because I had forgotten how long pregnancy is and it is hard to give up your body for all those months.  Of course, it is never all belly and other areas expand as well because walking will only keep you so in shape. The changes are worth it and I am grateful to feel this little boy moving around. And when I sit on the floor and try to play legos and I just cant get comfortable, I feel so blessed to have that tightness in my belly and the wiggling all the time. 

But really who likes to be weighted every two weeks? 

Saku and the rest of the Family's World With Kindergarten

It almost seems silly to say how much our life has changed since Saku started school. 

Troy used to go to work early on many mornings, as in he would be at work by 6 am. Now he is Saku's morning ride and doesn't get to work until closer to 8:30 am. 

Eerika is obviously by herself at home with me. I think she finds this just fine and enjoys the time together with me. She doesn't get full on naps on most days, but she is okay with it. She obviously spends more time in the car as we drove 20 minutes to the school and then back. Again, she is flexible so this hasn't been an issue.

Instead of using my kids as an alarm clock, now I have a legitimate alarm clock that goes off at 5:55 am each morning. I get up and make breakfast for the boys while they get ready for school. I have also had the luxury of taking DAILY naps with Eerika. And then I get to be the enforcer of homework, which most days is not a bad role.

Of course, the most dramatic change has been for Saku. He gets up by 6:15 each morning, which is a huge change from the sleeping in rhythm that he had prior to school. He would easily sleep until 8:30 am. 

His circle of friends has changed a bit since he spends most of his day at school and we don't necessarily have time for play dates in the afternoon. He is friendly at school and is liked by his class mates. When he went back to school yesterday after a sick day, he received hugs and happy greetings from his class mates. 

His play time is shorter, but I think he is getting used to it and okay with it. He needs to read 15 minutes each day, which isn't any different from our regular days as we read plenty each day. He is also getting faster doing his homework and I can get him to do two or three pages earlier in the week so he doesn't have to do work later in the week as much. 

Bedtime is about 8 pm. I wonder if it should be even earlier, but I want to make sure that he gets enough to time to play and spend with Troy as well. He falls asleep very quickly.  I dont know if I have recorded this, but Saku is great about going to sleep. He never gets out of bed.

Saku is starting to use more Chinese words at home. He will ask us questions such as  "are you [insert a chinese word] or "can you [insert a chinese word]? 

Saku and Troy at Zane's Scooby Doo Mystery Birthday party

Saku had a blast at Bryant's birthday party. He is such a fish that two hours of swimming with cool toys and new friends was awesome.

Saku loves to play games. It is a big boy activity that he gets to do with Troy and I. He is getting better about losing and Troy and I are making sure that he loses enough to realize that it is part of life.

Last week we were blessed with a cooler afternoon, so we made a pit stop at the skate park by the school. Even if the cooler weather, we had bright red cheeks within half an hour so we headed home to enjoy air conditioning.

I think I am starting to adjust to school. Kindergarten is no joke:)

What you learn about your child when they go to school

Saku is the one going to school, but Troy and I are learning some things as well. Yesterday we received the first progress report. I will admit that I think that Saku is very bright boy and I would expect him to excel in school. And it doesn't help that many other adults comment on how smart he is as well. I also admit that I was a competitive student from early on, as in elementary school my teacher told me that "school wasn't a competition" as I would do extra homework...

So on his first progress report, Saku got "2" (approaches) on "knows all his alphabets" and I thought that this was off as he knows his alphabet. BUT I did not want to be the parent who freaks out about one little thing. Yet I felt a bit of concern whether the teacher was aware of Saku's abilities and I wanted to have an understanding of how he is tested. 

As Troy dropped Saku off this morning, he talked with Mrs. Bohnsack and she explained how Saku had mistaken lower case "b" to lower case "d" and called "p" a "q". And if the student misses one, then they are graded as a "2". Also she showed Troy how he had missed many of the sight words as he was tested with, such as "can, a, and," which really should be easy for him.  It is nice to have an understanding how things work, and it is also good to have an awareness that Saku gets intimated when he is put on the spot and needs to answer questions.  And we know that the teacher is aware of Saku and his abilities and she had also been surprised by the lack of reading of the sight words.

Selfishly, and also unselfishly for Saku's sake, I want others to see his abilities and I want him to succeed. And I am aware that one progress report in KINDERGARTEN does not define anything, but it was a good starting point to make sure that we help Saku figure out a way to show what he knows. 

The other things that we are learning about him at school is that he gets frequent nose bleeds and he falls over a lot. His teacher asked me he trips at home a lot. And the answer is that he doesn't. This is our child who learned to walk at 9 months and is very coordinated and nimble. We will try wearing his tennis shoes more to see if it is his sandals that bug him. He has also been to the nurse several times for random things. Some days it takes him few minutes to come out of the class room as he is giving his friends hugs as a good bye. 

It is a weird transition when you suddenly don't know what is going on with your kid all the time and need to explain random things or asks questions about other things. 

I am very happy with Saku's teachers and he likes them a lot so I feel good about his situation at school, but I sure would like to be a fly on the wall to know more about everything. Because a 5 year old can only tell you so much what is going on in the class room. 

He has made good friends at school and school is overall a positive experience him. Zane is his buddy and they seem to stick together during lunch and recess. He tends to not finish all his work in class and has had to stay inside for recess for few times. He is very meticulous about his work, as stated by his teacher, so he takes a long time to get things done. 

This week has been less emotional for him. I am very grateful for that. He does state "But I was gone all day" if Eerika seems to have get a preferential treatment with playing such as 10 minutes of playing time with me while Saku wants to play with me as well. 

He seems like to like the Chinese aspect. On Monday he was in the bathroom and asked me "are you [insert an incomprehensible word]? So I said  "what?" and this happened three times until I just asked him to come to the kitchen because I could not understand him. It turned out that he was asking me if I was a frog, by using the Chinese word for frog. So I literally could not understand him. He also suggested a Chinese name for Little Ninja and said that he could teach Little Ninja Chinese. 

I still wrestle with the question whether this Chinese and all day Kindergarten is the best thing, yet it does feel right so I just need to express my doubts and fears to Troy and enjoy this year as we are committed to it. 

Eerika's First Day of School

 We had plans to do joy school with Eerika this year. She has been participating in Saku's joy school for the past two years whenever I was the teacher, so she was ready for her own joy school. We started with possibly 12 students, which would have resulted in two groups. However, in the beginning of July we were down to two kids: Eerika and Brad.  So obviously joy school did not happen. Instead, we planned once a week "organized play group" where the mom in charge could do whatever she wanted with the kids.

Eerika's first day was at Brad's house. They are best of friends. Eerika plans on marrying him, so it was a very easy drop off for her. I had a doctor's appointment that day so she got to stay for an extra hour and took her lunch box with her, which made the whole day even more exciting.

When I taught few weeks later, our two hours consisted of reading two books, glueing circles to make them look like balloons and talking about how B is for balloon. We also had a snack, did the bean bag song and played puzzles. There was also plenty of free time play, which was quite loud with four three year-old boys and Eerika. 

The group is Eerika, Mitt, Carter, Zyon, Brad and Amber. But Amber was out of town that my week of "teaching". It was definitely more laid back than teaching joy school. And Eerika can totally point out a B and tell us what words start with a B so she, at least, learned something:)

Opposition in All Things

If yesterday hadn't been such a rough day emotionally, I probably would not have appreciated and marveled at how fabulous today was. 

Eerika got to feed the giraffes and enjoy a close encounter with an elephant. We treated my low iron levels with a delicious burger from Monkey Burger for lunch. It was so good and big that I couldn't eat dinner tonight. 

The kids played happily together from the moment that we got home. Saku had minimal amount of tiredness induced whining. Homework got done quickly. We read books like we used to when we had all the time in the world. The kids played in the rain. They sang together. They pretended together. We had a low key meal because Troy wasn't home and it was nice to not spend the time cooking or cleaning after dinner. We had time to build with legos. The kids brushed their teeth after I only asked once. Saku read part of our bed time story from Magic Tree House book.

As I sang to the kids, Eerika fell asleep first! And as I whispered a thank you in Saku's ear for the fabulous day. He said "thanks for being so kind today". The love in that room was so overwhelming. I am thankful for that. 

"Peace on Earth" is playing in their room as Saku wanted to listen to a song about Jesus as he fell asleep. And tonight there is peace in this house and gratitude.