Happy Birthday Tiana (and an update on my busy week)

     A year ago today, my beautiful daughter came into this world at 7:04pm. It was such a wonderful day. Her birth was so peaceful (no, I am not lying). Her entrance to the world was accompanied by Bob Marley. I recall hearing, "Stir it up, little darling," right as she was placed in my arms. We bonded instantly. She took to nursing like a champ and pretty much never let go for the next 9 months. Haha. We snuggled for hours.  That night was much less peaceful, and as I sleep peacefully tonight with blood pulsing through my veins, I will again thank God for the life I am so very grateful to have.   :-)

     I was looking back on my blog about the experience, and you know, not that much has really changed. She is, of course, a beautiful toddler now, who is walking and talking (okay, sort of) and has quite the personality, but she still loves to cuddle (so much more than Vinny ever did). She is still very tolerant of her affectionate big brother, who is also still utterly in love with her. He still showers her with kisses. Well, except for when she makes a mad dash for his room. He has decided as of late that he does not want her in his room, especially while he listens to music. He plays it so loud, it is probably better if she is not in there, but of course she wants to be in there most when he is listening to music.  

     Ah... my kids. Hard to believe I have been a mother of two for a whole year. While I almost cannot even remember what it was like without her, there are still times I am in disbelief of the fact that I have kidS. Not kid- KIDS. Whoa.

     Funny, in my blog on September 26th last year, I talked about how hard it was to slow down enough to recover from a baby, because I am so used to having "a full stovetop of pots all boiling at the same time and 100 deadlines looming in the distance." Sounds about right. I am certainly back to normal now. Lots of pots boiling, lots of deadlines looming in the distance. I ran into a friend tonight and she mentioned that she hadn't read my blog in a while... and I confirmed that I hadn't posted one. Just too busy. Such a busy week. I felt like I was just "go go go" this week.  


    It was a fun week though. Vinny had his first soccer game. They didn't win, but I think he had fun. He must have, since he has been looking forward to this week's practice and game all week. Perhaps he will start to actually get the hang of the game itself soon. :-) 

I actually stood on the desk to take this picture.
Wasn't even thinking about the article when I did it.

Fun lessons this week too. I read this article last week about "Why Every Teacher Needs to Get on the Desk," and a random idea at the end of it gave me an idea. The idea in the article was for math, but I figured it could be applied to a literature discussion. I wrote discussion questions on balloons and decided to combine this idea with a Kagan structure my students are already used to- stand up hand up pair up. Basically, we played "musical balloons."  When the music was on, they tossed the balloons all over the place. When it stopped, they grabbed a balloon and paired up. They discussed the questions with their partners, using the book we are studying, Persepolis. 




I love teaching. Even if it is the most exhausting career I could ever imagine....

A Nice Weekend

It has been a nice family weekend. Even with the 3 hours I spent at school this morning, it has been a nice weekend. I supervised my sophomores at Saturday school today because it desperately needed to be assigned to students who were way behind on their outside reading. It was okay though. I brought Tiana with me, since I wasn't officially working. They clearly miss me, which feels good and makes me look forward to going back. I had fun with them. I made them read pretty much the whole time, but I gave them two "breaks" to come gather around my desk and listen to me do a dramatic reading of a short story. During the first break, I read Langston Hughes "Thank You, M'am." I thought I would never want to read that story again after an LAUSD prescribed unit I had to teach when I was student teaching that made me way over analyze that story with students who so were not interested. But I guess I got over it, because I enjoyed reading it today. In the second break, I read "The Hand" by Guy de Maupassant. Now THAT is a good story. One that makes you get chills and giggles, all at the same time. Many of the kids made great progress in the books that they were reading, and they can all test on the 2 stories I read them, which at least will be something. I love seeing kids get into reading, especially reluctant readers. I'm still crossing my fingers that I can actually get my super awesome book ownership project funded. Only $1312 left to go! It sounds like a lot, but to many people, it's not, so I'm hoping one of those people comes across it and likes it.

Meanwhile, Vinny and Daddy had a nice father son weekend. They went to Lowe's for Vinny's 3rd build and grow workshop. They made a really cute snowman picture frame. Much props to our good friend Katrina for telling us about these workshops. Vinny LOVES them. He wants to wear his Lowe's builder apron all the time. Which reminds me, I need to sew his patches on it before he loses them.

I met up with the boys and my in-laws for lunch, and then went out with my oldest (meaning longest, not age) friend, Janelle. We've been friends since I was 9. That's a long time. I love her to pieces. Our relationship is different than my relationship with other friends for some reason. Like, both of us do go out at night and stuff, but for some reason, not usually with each other. Lately, we do a lot of lunches and coffee dates. She still has a young fun spontaneous life, and I so rarely get to be spontaneous, so that's okay. She's still one of my best friends, because when we sit down to chat, the hours just fly by.

For dinner, we had a quiet family night at home with take-out and redbox. There is this new Italian place in town called "The Boot." Second time we have tried it and we were not disappointed. It is EXCELLENT. The food is fantastic, high quality, and unique. You can tell the pizzas are homemade because the crusts are not perfectly symmetrical. And the prices are by far the best in town. Everything is under $6! Totally not kidding. If you live here and haven't tried it yet, you really, really, really should, even if you live on the other end of town. It is that worth it.

Tiana is going through a growth spurt. She ate constantly today and for long, long stretches. She was eating for like 15 minutes at a time, but today it has been like 30 minutes at a time, and she just doesn't seem full for very long. I read on the LLL website that this is normal, and as empty as my breasts feel, I just gotta keep letting her go at it so that my body realizes she needs more and makes more at each feeding, so it gets better.

Looking forward to next week, even though I have so much to do. Making cupcakes for Thanksgiving and I found some new recipes I am going to experiment with. Possibly a marshmallow creme frosting like a hostess cupcake.

Every day I hear about someone new who reads my blog that I didn't expect. People I know, but never hear from. Because only a handful of people comment, I sort of forget that so many people read it. Sorry it is so hard to comment right on here. I have it set to accept no anonymous posts to avoid spam. I'd like to make my blog just more viewer friendly in general, utilizing the tags and whatnot, but I'm not very good at that stuff. If any savvy bloggers, want to come over some day and teach me, I'd love to learn.