Tuesday, February 24, 2009

School Once Again

School has restarted here in Connecticut after a nice week long break. By Sunday the kids were ready to go back and on Monday morning were excited once we got in the car to go. I think they enjoyed the break, but it was time to return and play with friends. This week also was a good reminder of all the reasons I decided to go back to work and not be a stay at home mom.

Sunday we watched the Oscars but found them boring. I am anxious to see a lot of the movies, nominated, though. Hopefully soon. Mat and I are movie lovers. I used to love going to the movies regularly before we had kids and now we rent like crazy. It has always been our thing. Our first date was a movie (Silence of the Lambs. I know, I know!!!). And every weekend after that for about a year, that is what we did - movie and dinner after.

Monday was our first day back. I still have 15 kids at my school that are on vacation! Must be nice. Most of them are in far away places, too, like Florida, Hawaii, Italy. The one girl that is in Hawaii has been there going on 3 weeks. 2 weeks of missed school - that seems like a lot. I can't imagine being comfortable keeping my kid out of school for more than 1 week, and even that would be pushing it. The kids were a little rowdy on Monday, but nothing terrible. Mostly they were happy to be back, too, so they stayed in class. We did have a quick 10 minute staff meeting on Monday because while we were away on break on of our second grade teachers decided to retire unexpectedly. She was pretty unhappy and kept saying she should have retired last year. Her class is really rough and kind of on the large size this year, so she left!!! The hard part was, it was on break, so our principal had to come in and send a letter out to all the parents to let them know that there would be a change of teacher come Monday. We have a sub this week in her room and then one of our existing math support teachers will be taking the position. I am secretly happy because this teacher really was kind of hard to get along with and it was time for her to go. But I do wish her well in her retirement.

Today was much busier at work. The kids are in routine now and didn't feel like being in school today. There was a mystery stomach ache that 4 girls in one class caught all at once today. Hmmmmmm.... They crack me up. They act so surprised when I don't believe them and send them back to class. But I had a busy day. NOTHING like I used to - maybe about 35 kids?? I was still able to do plenty of other things I needed to do, so I call the day a success. I did have one kid get pretty injured in gym class today - got hit in the face with a rubber hockey stick. The gym teacher was pretty upset. The kid was fine, but he is going to have a black and blue eye and a swollen cheek for quite awhile. And my day ended happily when one of my "success stories" of school phobia baked cupcakes in front of her WHOLE CLASS without a panic attack and then......brought me one to eat. Yum.

Tonight was Daisy Scouts and a PTO meeting. These Tuesdays with both are infrequent, but a little tough around out house. By the time I pick the kids up from school, get them home and fed, and help Mat get them all bathed BEFORE Arlington goes to Daisy's it is tight. Then I am home about 45 minutes and I go back to the PTO meeting and Mat picks up the kids. I do enjoy going to the PTO meetings, though. They can be a lot of fun and I love hearing about everything that is going on in the school. And I did learn tonight that our little 3000 person town has a Memorial Day parade. THAT should be highly entertaining. I guess the parade march is about 100 yards. This town is flippin' awesome.

The kids are all doing great. Finley has been in underwear at school for the last two days and hasn't had an accident. So that is going well, but I am still bracing myself for a set back. Cainan, well, he is a potty training mystery. He does okay one day and terrible the next. But we don't stress it. Daycare, unfortunately, doesn't have a potty training policy, so they aren't putting him on the potty as much as I think he needs to go to be successful. But, I think I will just go with it for awhile and really work hard on it while we are home and then maybe in April, when we have another break, work with him again. I want to thank AnyMommy for all of her potty training advice! She too has "forced twins" that potty trained, so she has been very encouraging!!

Arlington did one funny thing while we were at church this week. During the part of the service before Children's church begins, she sits with us and works on an activity book the church provides. This week, one of the pages was "what do you find in a garden?" They had pictures of all kinds of things that were appropriate and not, and you were supposed to color the appropriate ones. Arlington was going along great, and then she colored in the ice cream. I said, "ice cream is not found in a garden". She said, "well, if I drop the ice cream off the cone then yes it is". What a weirdo.

So, our life is back to normal and boring. Here are a few pictures. Some are from Arlington's birthday party a week or so ago - I got a few more from a mommy friend. And some are from the terrible disposable camera we had that day!! There is also a picture of how I found Finley when I went in to check on her after she fell asleep the other night. That girl has always been a restless sleeper. And another picture is of Mat and Arlington doing a simple science experiment from a kit that Aunt Betty bought her for her birthday. Enjoy the pictures and I will see you Saturday!

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