One Year Ago Today...

One year ago today, I got to take Princess home from the hospital. She had been in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for 77 days.

Birth weight: 2lbs 6oz
Birth length: 14.4in

Going Home weight: 6lbs 4oz
Going Home length: 17.7in

It was the day before he due date. We were literally told about her going home 18 hours before. The afternoon before she went home, I received a call from the nurse asking if we were coming in that night. (They knew we usually came on Wednesday nights.) And when I said yes, she told me to bring the car seat, because Princess would be doing her car seat test that night. If she passed, she could go home the next day. I was overjoyed! But a little freaked out too! Thankfully the nursery was mostly put together. The bassinet was moved into my room. I waited anxiously to find out if she was going to pass her car seat test. I was so freaked out, I called the hospital at 1:30 in the morning to find out what was going on! I was told she was chilling in her car seat. At almost 6 in the morning, I was called by the nurse and she said that Princess had passed and we could go home! BEST 6am wake up call EVER! And WAY better than the one I had received just 3 days earlier. (On Monday of that week, the nurse had called and told me that they had stopped all of Princess's feeds, started an IV and were waiting to see what the doctor would do because she had been fussy and threw up her 3a bottle. Turned out it was a milk protein allergy. She was put on formula and 2 days later we were testing to go home!)

So that day, I live tweeted Princess's homecoming, complete with a hashtag! (#homecoming) I posted mainly from Twitter via my cellphone. I also posted songs that played from AIR1 and KLOVE. Songs that played on the way to the hospital were:

• "Your Love Never Fails" by the Newsboys
• "We Won't be Shaken" by Building 429
• "Every Good Thing" by The Afters

When we got to the hospital and I got inside, I took a picture and posted the sideways tag on the board that told you were each baby was. Sideways meant the baby was being discharged! I was so overjoyed to see her name sideways! So I did all the outgoing talking stuff. Got three cans of formula for her. Found out the formula had expired at the beginning of the month! (Glad I checked.) And got three more cans of formula! We got our final Beads of Courage update and they even gave us her "happy birthday" bead (for being there at her due date), even though she was going home a day early! I got her in her car seat and of course snapped the obligatory car seat photo:

We then got led outside. We took photos and got the car and got the kids in the car and headed home! What a great feeling to finally be leaving the hospital for what we thought would be last time. Little did we know that we would be back the following week and the week after that. But after 11 weeks of being in the hospital Princess was finally going home!

Summer Learning

Okay, I know most homeschoolers are off for the summer, but we're not. Why? Well, I'm lazy and haven't want to homeschool for periods of time. But that's okay, we're making up for it now! So here's what we've been up to.

We're still working on our handwriting, like the last update post here. I've also been pulling stuff from 3 Dinosaurs and Royal Baloo. Mainly their "Jump In" and "Build Up" summer units. The "Jump In" series is last year and the "Build Up" is this year. It's still in the process of being released. I wish I would have looked into these beforehand! They are GREAT! Here's what's in them:

There's a word family page. Sometime we do a page if I'm teaching a word family. We will also use the Read 'n' Stick mats from The Measured Mom.

We also put them on a page in our Word Family Dictionary from This Reading Mama.

Then there is some type of math/language arts page. We've done this one on the penny. I know Little Man KNOWS his change, but it seems to come and go sometimes.

We've also done a page on the parallelogram. Little Man wanted to color ALL the shapes at the bottom so we had decided he would color the parallelograms blue and the other shapes a different color. We've also done a page on rhyming words and we're going to do one on syllables.

The third page is a sight word page. Little Man has mastered (I think) all the Dolch pre-primer and primer (kindergarten) words. So we are now starting on the first grade words. I have him read them and then introduce the ones he doesn't know. He continues to surprise me every day!

The fourth page is a math page. We've done adding and subtracting. There's other things I'm going to introduce and teach like time and fact families over the next few months.

I've also purchased one of those Summer Bridge workbooks. This one is for K to 1st. I'm pulling pages in order and letting him use our page protector to do them. This way, if we have to do them again later, we can! I'm also kind of using this to see what I still need to touch on because the book is supposedly correlated to the new Common Core State Standards.

I also signed him up for our library's summer reading program! So far, he and I have read 25 books together. There are a few of them he has read by himself which is still WAY impressive! We only signed up a week ago too! I'm not sure how long the program runs, but I'm sure we'll have a LOT of books read by the end!

The other thing we have for him is a simple word search book. He still needs help, but he does pretty well with it. I know the picture is blurry, but he is trying to do it himself! We got it at the dollar store and all the words are either across or down. There's no diagonal or backwards words, so it's a perfect first step for him!

So I'm debating on enrolling him in transitional kindergarten this year. For one, I don't know if they'll have a spot for him. Secondly, I'd really like him in a charter school, but I don't know our chances of getting in. Thirdly, I'm debating just enrolling him in kindergarten the year he should start and then letting THEM see that he's too advanced for K. I mean, really, the only things he has to work on his handwriting, which we are doing. And according to their benchmarks, by the end of the year, he needs to be able to write a  sentence narrative. (HUH? When did K become 1st grade?) Well, we can hit both of those through his journal. In fact, he does well creating sentences on his little computer! Now I've just got to get him to hand write them!

So I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this kid. He's just too dang smart but needs the socialization. Anyway, here are the links to the worksheets we're using

Links We've Used:

Build Up to Summer Learning (3 Dinosaurs and Royal Baloo -- the link is to 3 Dinosaurs, but some links will take you to Royal Ball. They partnered on this!)
Jump In to Summer Learning (3 Dinosaurs and Royal Baloo -- the link is to 3 Dinosaurs, but some links will take you to Royal Baloo. They partnered on this!)
Read 'n' Stick Mats (The Measured Mom -- These are under word families. I'm not sure how up-to-date her list is, but I think she said her site is going to be redesigned soon.)
Word Family Dictionary (The Measured Mom but written by This Reading Mama)