Babysoroos

These photos were taken just before Christmas.

Ben is reading. We started with the SRA/Distar reading course of Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and about 100 days later, he’s done. It worked well, far beyond my expectation of what was possible.

So, today we took Ben to the library and got him a library card. He chose a book, sat down and read it to us. Then another. He checked those out, and a couple more to read at home.

He’s pretty much 100% on the Level 1 books, and I think that he’ll make a good dent in the level 2 books that we grabbed. His spoken vocabulary is huge, so it’s mainly a matter of decoding the written words — there’s not a lot in these books that he hasn’t heard before. I’m really curious to see where we actually are at the end of the lessons, and how long it’s going to be before he’s reading essentially at the level that we read to him.

Nathaniel is 3 months old today. So in the family tradition, we dressed him up and took pictures. Looks just a little bit like his brothers, don’t you think? 😉

Nathaniel, 3 months

Timothy, 3 months

Benjamin, 3 months

We’re all doing well, just busy with visitors and Ben starting Kindergarten, and getting used to being a family of five. It’s been a crazy few months of adjustments but we’re finally settling into a routine. Sort of.

Nathaniel had his 2 month appointment today, and weighs 13lbs 10oz. That’s up almost two pounds since he was last weighed, two weeks ago, at the midwife’s office. So while he’s smaller than both his brothers at this age, he’s gaining weight at about the same rate now. And otherwise he’s healthy.

Here are a few recent photos of him:

Both big brothers love to hold him and make frequent requests (demands?) to do so:

And here are all of them, The Whidbey Soroos Boys, together:

Two and a half weeks: a few more pictures and a name.

Nathaniel had a rough second week of life, when we discovered he had a fever at 8 days old during a routine midwife appointment. We were sent to the ER, and discovered both his breathing and heartrate were too fast. Blood tests, urine sample, a chest x-ray, and he was admitted. He was given IV antibiotics, and over the course of the next 4 days had many more blood draws, two more chest x-rays, a spinal tap, an antiviral added to the IV, an ambulance transfer to Children’s Hospital in Seattle, and ultimately he recovered and we have no diagnosis. Some unidentified virus. It was traumatic for everyone (the first nights I’ve ever spent away from either of the older boys), but we’re home, he’s well, and we will all recover. And we are grateful for the amazing support and help we received from our community of friends.

Somehow I think I have managed to get through an entire pregnancy without mentioning it here at all. I’ve been blogging so little since last winter. I’ll try to go back and add some of the maternity photos at some point.

Baby boy #3 arrived this morning, August 16, at 4:42am, in the pool in our living room. It was a wonderful birth. He weighed 8lbs 9oz, and measured 20″ long. We haven’t named him yet.

More details later, about the pregnancy and birth and all of it, but in the meantime, here are a few photos from today.

Timothy has recently been taking over Ben’s little bike, and Ben had clearly outgrown it. So we got a bigger one for Ben, and now they officially have one each. When the new bike arrived, we just didn’t put the training wheels on it. Eric spent a good few hours on Sunday chasing Ben up and down the driveway, but it only took a short time before it was more moral support than anything else.

He still needs some help starting, and hasn’t quite figured out how to turn at the end of the drive or how to stop effectively, but he’s been having a great time! And Timothy is loving having his own bike too — no more taking turns!

Just to prove that I can take a straight portrait of Tim…

He was pretty excited about opening some presents from family on his birthday morning.

And eventually he was willing to sit for the “official” birthday photo with crown.

Then we had a party the next day.

Complete with cake:

The party guests started to sing Happy Birthday to him:

Which for some reason, caused this:

But he came around and blew out the candles when it was time:

All in all, he had a good couple of days, I think.