I'm so blessed with wonderful children. My youngest, MrP, (you may have read about him before) Any I'm pretty sure his favorite thing to say is "Mom, I love you". It makes me smile every time. I hope he never out grows his love for always telling me he loves me.
I ponder sometimes the idea of church and state. I am entrusted this year with 19, nine and ten year old, children. The care that I have to give and provide for them is different then kindergartners but also very much the same. Last night as I was having a hard time sleeping thoughts of them kept me awake...
Am I doing my best for them? What more can I do to help them? How can I use the precious time that I have to teach them wisely? What do they each need? How can I give them what they need? What is most important? The list goes on and on. But the thought kept coming back to me that I need to pray for them, not as a whole but one by one, by name. And so I began to pour out my whole heart to the Lord in regards to the children in my classroom. Eventually I was able to sleep again, and as a result gain enough strength to make it though another day in fourth grade.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could say that all my questions were answered and that I know just what to do with and for each student in my class? But alas No. I can however say that I felt gentle nudges throughout the day to do somethings differently. To spend more time on subjects that I had not before emphasized. I felt strength to be a little more patience as I explained subjects to them a few extra times. I was prompted to say things different. Most of all I felt a greater love for my students.
I am not sure why I felt the need to share this today, but I know that I am not the only teacher who loves her students. That's part of being a teacher, to give our days, nights, and hearts to the children that we are entrusted with each and every year.
At church I have been giving the responsibility to help people find and learn about their ancestors. Some weeks are really great and other weeks I feel like I have nothing to offer the students in my class.
We use a wide range of websites and resources to accomplish this amazing and rewarding work.
www.familysearch.org is the main go to website from which all the others connect or stem.
This week we explored a little on Ancestry.com, kinmapper.com and a fun app called Hope Chest.
7:40 pm mr.p asks if we can just go to bed
It's been too long since I have posted anything here. I am making a new start to keep up with the fun exciting mess that is my life. I am sad to say I have no great stories to share today, but instead am just putting a time stamp here to remind myself of this commitment. I'll be back soon.
MsTay woke up this morning came down stairs gave me a hug and said "Mom we should pick up the big stuff around the house so we can vacuum this morning." And then she helped me pick up the house and vacuum.
Day One
Me-MsTay has a question for you dad.
Not a problem here MsTay will just have a frozen corn dog. I think we need to invest in a lock on the freezer door.
I decided to have a little photo shoot to celebrate mr.p being three months. MsTay was a great helped here are a few pictures that didn't make it to Facebook.
Last night while blogging about potty training, MsTay snuck out of her bed to the bathroom for a little BM, then proceeded to fill the toilet with toilet paper, and why not put half the roll in the shower as well. Then went back upstairs to bed. I being the awesome Gus informed me that MsTay had poo in her bed. GROSS! I know, well despite all the TP she was still was in grave need of a bath.
Mixed feeling here however...
GROSS!
Yeah she used the potty!!
But mostly GROSS!!
Last Sunday night we put the last diaper that we had on MsTay. She told her the diapers were all gone so she was going to have to be a big girl now and use the potty. Oh a little back story two days before I threw a little fit, told my love to buy some more diapers because I didn't have the patience to deal with potty training little miss because she does this not so cute thing of ignoring me. I didn't realized that a two year old could have such great selective hearing. But after two days of changing diapers again I guess I build up my courage to get it done.
So Monday No Diapers! For the most part it was a pretty good day. Tuesday even better. Wednesday Great!! Each of those days we went to lunch in the park and took about an hour drive and had no problems. Thursday and Friday were even better, we'd gotten over the uncertainty of the BM and she was doing super. Saturday was AWESOME! No accidents, 4 hours out of the house, great self control! I really thought we had this thing in the bag.
Sunday I was a little worried, mostly because she was going to be in nursery for two hours with out mom. But she did great, asked to use the potty a couple of times but never actually went. Baby steps right? Yesterday another good day.
TODAY not so much, there was no success today, correction Gus said there was success after she wet her pants and then we put her on the potty. I guess I'm miss pessimistic, wet pants are wet pants! Grrrr! Tomorrow is a new day but I was very very tempted today to break down and re-diaper her.
So how you might ask is Potty Training like Childbirth?
1. You forget between children how hard it really is
2. Every child is different
3. You can read every book, article, blog, etc about it and still feel completely unprepared
4. It is inevitable, you can't just not do it, there is a point of no return
5. Everyone wants to tell you "their" story
6. The process is very messy
7. Men really don't understand ( I love ya love!!)
8. It's quite the emotional roller-coaster
9. There is so much involved in such a "simple" process
10 Finally in the end it's all worth it!!
