Break's Over

We're back in school tomorrow after two weeks of winter break. We had a great time off: took Molly to The Princess and the Frog (her first "theater" movie), cleaned the pantry (thanks, Matt), and went to Chicago--shopping, museums, good food. Sam and Em went to the Art Institute to see Van Gogh and Monet, while Molly and I went to the Disney Store--a cultural experience all unto itself. We saw The Addams Family Musical, which was fun, and a little strange, too, but that was part of the fun. We went to the Museum of Science and Industry, where Molly could have played for hours and hours in the room with the balls and the pneumatic tubes. As seen here:

Molly tugs on the pulley...

really really hard...

and a little gun thing shoots water all over the place.

The girls on the hotel pull-out couch our final night in Chicago. The most exciting thing about our 2-room "junior suite" was the presence of 2 (count 'em) flat screens, although as Emma pointed out, they were often both turned to the same channel.

And now, it's 3:37 on Sunday afternoon and I am in this weird denial about going back to school tomorrow. I'm not sure if it's because I'm woefully unprepared, my own fault because I have taken the whole "break" thing pretty seriously, thank you very much, or if I am just not constitutionally and emotionally suited to work, anywhere. Although, if I could find gainful employment watching ridiculous amounts of cable television and writing about it snarkily, I would be a happy happy girl.

Last night, Sammy had a meltdown at the thought that he has to go back to school tomorrow. I get it; I really do. He has all this anxiety that's not tied to reality--worries that he won't do well (he's making high honors now) or that he will be yelled at by us, or his teachers. Freakouts because he can't find his lunch box. Feelings that he "just doesn't like that place." I guess if home wasn't so fabulously fun and exciting, or if we were meaner to him, he'd be looking forward to going back to school. But it is more fun to sit around at home. I told him that if I homeschooled him, his curriculum would probably consist of watching Lifetime movies based on true-crime novels (Language Arts), The Price Is Right (math), Degrassi (health), and Hoarders (social anthropology). And he agrees that this isn't adequate. Still, at this point, the only one who is looking forward to going back to school is Molly. That's probably not good.

Ok. I'm not sure why I started down this road. But now I've got to go and figure out what the hell I'm doing with my students tomorrow. Still in some kind of denial that I actually have to plan an outfit and wake up at 6 a.m., but what'cha gonna do?

Suuummmmeeerrr

Summer is really a glorious time. Although 4 + weeks in, I'm still getting used to not getting up to go to work in the morning. Actually, that's not really it. After the first three days or so, my brain had totally adjusted to not getting up and going in to work in the morning. I went in the Tuesday after school let out to clean out my room, and that was that. I'm pretty sure that I left something big and important under a table, but can't think what it might be, so whatevs. Next year, I'm moving to a new school, a new grade, a new part-time schedule. It's all really good: the I'll be at my "home" school so I'll be close to home, and I'm hoping that there will continue to be a spot for me there so that I'll still be there in three years when Molly starts school. But even though it's exciting, it's also really weird. Especially the not-teaching-kindergarten part. I think I'm in denial right now. After I left, I think my brain shut off, because it's been very hard to remember that I ever WAS a teacher, much less what I might've actually taught anyone.

Weird, how quickly we readjust. Four weeks really isn't that long, yet it seems like forever since school ended. And at the same time, summer feels like it's flying. It's mid-July. So I keep reminding myself, "it's only July..." The upside of having a state government that's controlled by the bozos in the Wisconsin Dells, and who set the start of the school year for Sept. 1, meaning that the school year seems to last FOREVER (and those last few weeks really did seem to go on and on and on) is that we have ALL of August off, which is a psychological bonus right about now.

But the summer was accounted for before it started, and I have tons to do: About a million cleaning projects around the house, more every day as our cats have decided that every place EXCEPT the litter box is an appropriate place to pee. Work for KU. And now that all three kids are home all day, we have to organize excursions or we get a repeat of today: by noon, we were all home, done with errands and Sam's morning enrichment class, watching Demi Lovato on "Sonny with a Chance." I think my brain turned to pudding.

Oh, and I think I'm launching a new website for highschoolers. I'll keep you posted.

So in the meantime, we marked the second anniversary of bringing Molly home, which really deserves its own post, so I won't belabor it here. Emma's already been to DC with her eighth grade class. Sam's already finished his little league season. And Sammy and Em have already rehearsed and performed in their summer drama school production of "Annie!" which was honest-to-god-absolutely-phenomenal-and-I'm-not-just-saying-that-because-I'm-their-mother. I'm thrilled that the kids take after me with their affinity for drama and total lack of interest in team sports.

But that deserves its own post, too. So more later.

Molly and I have been hanging for the last month or so, and that's been really cool. She's exhausting, my little girl, but so smart and sweet, and especially when her brother and sister weren't around and she had me to herself, very fun and very dear. Molly has had no trouble adjusting to summer. Here's Molly, getting ready to head out to drop off Sam and Em and head to Whole Foods on a hazy, humid summer day in Madison:

Like Navin Johnson in The Jerk: "All I need is this lamp, and my thermos, and this pumpkin, and my dog..."

Ready for a summer outing in Wisconsin.

Molly loves the splash park and she rides her trike like Danica Patrick. We've also been watching "Cinderella" on an endless loop, along with many many episodes of "The Muppet Show" on DVD. And I say it again: the 70s were a very strange time.

Catching Up... Maybe Not

Oh, my poor blog. I have neglected you so. Not for any good reason. Honest. I don't have any good excuses. Just crazy busy, crazy tired. Teaching, and toddlers, and sinus infections. But nothing too exciting or meaningful. I've missed my little blog and the catharsis it brings. Facebook status updates are a quick fix, but they're just not the same.

I feel like there's so much to say that to try to cover it all would just be stupid, so I'm not going to try. No recaps here. Can't post any pictures, because my computer is dead. Good news: I get a new computer. Bad new: my dead computer is sitting at our lovely IT friend's house until I figure out whether it is worth putting on life support for Sam and Emma. How much life is left in my 5 year old machine? It's been rebuilt so many times (new hard drive, new motherboard, new keyboard, new battery, new superdrive...) but now it needs a new display. Worth another 120 bucks to pass on to Sam and Em? They're chomping at the bit to get their hands on a laptop, so maybe. Me, I'm psyched because my new MacBook will come with a new iPod touch, giving me the capability to Facebook and blog on the go. So I'll never be off-line. :-0

Meanwhile, Molly is setting some kind of record for 2-year-old time outs. At preschool, she's fond of saying "I love poopies!" So they put her in time-out in the bathroom. It's not working. She comes home and says "I say 'I love poopies' at school!" And when we ask, "are you going to say it again?" she says, "yeahhhhh...."

Went to a retirement party last night for my principal and another teacher in my school. It was lovely, a nice tribute, both are very deserving. But as I'm leaving, my principal says to me, "You're going to be a marvelous teacher. But you need to put in more time. At least five years." Hm. Quite a ringing endorsement, wouldn't you say? I'll tell you: It made me feel super-good about my career choices and the work I've done. So thanks for that.

So whatever. Nine more days of school. And then I can spend the summer pondering all the ways in which I'm not "marvelous" and trying to figure out how to fix them so I can be marvelous by next year.

Sometimes It's Enough to Make You Wonder About Yourself

As a kindergarten teacher, I spend way too much of my day trying to get young folks to sit still and pay attention. Often, this is a losing battle. Today, one of my students had spent much of the morning avoiding following directions, so he was missing part of his free choice time as a consequence. I'm very mean. So I go to sit down and talk to him about the situation. We talk about the need to listen and follow directions, and mostly this means I say things like "did you make a good choice" and he says "no," and I say "will you make a better choice tomorrow?" and he says "yes." So a lot of "yes" and "no" on my student's part. And this is what transpires:

Me: Do you think that you would get more points from your friends for doing the right thing and listening and following directions?

Student (chastened): No.

Me: No?

Student (looking at me, seriously): I don't understand what you are saying.

At this point, I burst out laughing, lecture over. I didn't really understand what I was saying, either.

It's Winter. In Wisconsin.

So I've been really really bad about posting lately; I apologize for that. It seems like anytime I have access to a computer, I also have a little person sitting on me, making typing hard. In fact, she's sitting on me now, but she's engrossed watching Tilly and the Wall sing the ABCs on Sesame Street. You have no idea how conflicted I am about this.

So what's been up? It's been really really flippin' cold. So cold that I'm questioning why the hell we live in a place that's so cold. So cold that I'm re-considering moving someplace like North Carolina, which we considered years ago, before I started Ed. school. So cold that I bring this idea up about every 5 minutes and Emma's gets really really mad at me. But to be fair, Emma's 13. She's always in the process of getting really really mad at me.

It's always cold. It feels like it will never be warm again. But this past week it got extra super cold. And that was actually kind of a good thing. There are many times when it's not especially helpful or convenient to be a teacher. Getting sick is not really a good option when you're a teacher. Because when you're a normal person and you get sick, or your kid gets sick, you can call in and expect that your work will just be waiting for you when you get well. But you can't work from home when you're a sick teacher. And even if you're sick, those students in your class, they just show up anyway. Who knew? So you have to spend a ton of time and energy organizing and Xeroxing and planning for your sub, just so you can be sick. Not convenient.

But there are other times when it's super-convenient to be a teacher. Like this week, when the windchill was 40 below. For two straight days. That's the kind of cold, the weather folks like to tell us, where exposed skin freezes in under 10 minutes. And so, as a matter of policy, when it gets that cold, they close school. And the nice thing is, if Sam and Em are off school, and Molly's daycare is closed for weather, I'm off, too. So childcare isn't an issue and we can all hunker down together.

Of course, even with this benchmark, the school district never announces ahead of time that they will close school. And we have such crappy weather here that school closings are never a given. We still had to get up at 5:00 on Thursday and Friday to confirm that it was still JUST THAT COLD and that there would be no school. But sure enough, our 3-day MLK Day weekend magically turned into a 5-day Cold-plus-MLK Day weekend. And I can't say that I'm complaining. It was actually kind of lovely. We didn't go anywhere. We cleaned up. And watched TV and drank hot chocolate.

I can't remember anytime since the ice storm when I was in 4th grade that school has been closed for 2 days in a row because of weather. It was wild. And what's even weirder, we'd already had 2 snow days, which means that as of today--mid-January, with at least a month and a half of solid winter left--we've already had 4 snow days. It's unreal. Good thing that "climate change" thing they keep talking about is just a liberal myth, huh? Uh, ok.

Of course, they'll have to figure out a way for us to make up all this lost time. There's already speculation about where they'll add days. Last year, we only had 2 snow days and they had to add 7 minutes to each of our school days for the rest of the year, because, for some unknown reason, they apparently only build ONE snow day into our school year. In Wisconsin. So it's an open question how they'll make up 3 extra days (at least...). But honestly, and I know I'm in the minority here, I'd rather make up the days in the spring or even pre-summer, when it's muggy and hot but it doesn't physically hurt to get out of bed because it's SO COLD. So I'm fine with it.

Today, we had the birthday party we were supposed to have for Molly a month ago. Of course, Molly's really birthday was at the beginning of December, but we had to cancel her party last-minute when Em got sick. So today was birthday party make-up day. And we had a great time. I think Molly truly couldn't picture the idea of her friends being here, with her, in her house!! Super fun!! She just kept running around, bringing out her toys and showing them to her friends. I had a little craft project planned, but we never really got to it because the kids were happier just running around and climbing on Sam's slide/loft bed. You gotta love toddlers. I do. Molly was in fine form, playing and dancing and jumping around. She ate all the frosting from her piece of cake and mine too. And then as soon as everyone left, she got really cranky and crashed. A successful party, for sure.

Another reason that I haven't posted is that my camera has been broken since Halloween. Very sad. So I have a picture backlog. My mom took some pics of Molly's big day today, which I will post very soon, along with pics from Em's Bat Mitzvah, and Sam's star turn as "Spirit Child" in "A Christmas Carol" last month. I promise.