inspiration.

Just made this on Picnik from a photo found on tumblr and a

quote found on Pinterest...yay for for social networking, no? ;)

Glowbug Cloth Diaper Giveaway :)

Just a quick post to mention another cloth diaper giveaway at ELF: A Family Blog.

Click here to go to the giveaway post or on the button below:

Good luck! Keeping my fingers crossed that I get to try out a Glowbug cloth diaper for free since I'm trying to get back into cloth diapering again.

clarity.

Lately, it's been hard to keep myself positive, to stay focused on what goes well...because there's been a lot of negative. I'll be the first to admit that a lot of it comes straight from me. I'm the first to have a pity party for myself...oh, poor me...I don't sleep enough because my baby wakes up a lot at night...I'm "suffering" through a job that I never applied to have, don't feel fluent enough to have, and that I have to create all the materials for because I was left with nothing much that's usable...I don't have enough time in my day to take care of the bazillion things that need done around the house and my husband never seems to notice half of those things that should be done...on and on I could rant, but what good would it do?

I'm all about honesty, but lately I've been keeping on the silent side because I don't want to just complain and spout negativity on here.

Instead, I'm trying to focus on how richly I've been blessed.

It ain't easy.

(Allow me to complain just a bit, and then I'll end it on a positive note, I promise.)

Like I said, it's a job I never applied for...I still yearn to be back in second grade, where I felt needed and and significant because I truly felt like I influenced and shaped my young students. The high school is a place where students care more about peers liking them than about teachers liking them, where some students like to push the limits just because that's somehow part of their adolescent make-up. It's a place where I blend in because of my height, general frame, and lack of "looking my age," which is moving closer and closer to 29. I think because of this some students see me as more of an equal, and they challenge me daily because it's hard to respect a teacher who you view as so very close to a high school student. About once a week I have horrible days at work and I literally just want to cry because some kids just really need to learn some kindness and respect for the adults who devote so much time to trying to help them learn. Some kids just want to play hackey sack or study for their next class and don't seem to view my class as something they should put much effort into. I get so frustrated and disappointed because some of the students just don't care about learning Spanish; to me, it's so discouraging because I LOVE Spanish and it hurts me that they think it's stupid or boring or uninteresting in every way. I try so hard to present things in interesting ways and to make assignments that will appeal to everyone...but of course, I can't make everyone happy. On days like that, it's hard to keep my focus...but somehow I get through every day and walk down to the office, where a smiling Adelle is waiting to greet me with, "Mommy!" and to chatter about her day in first grade while she holds my hand and we walk through the hall like fish going against the current, dodging high school students trying to escape the school building. In those moments, no matter how bad of a mood I'm in, she reminds me of why I'm at work and why I've got to keep going. I want her (and Jackson...and all of my students) to have good teachers all throughout her school career, not just at the beginning. If I give up or decide to not try as hard as I do to make a difference, where does that leave my daughter and son in their high school years?

P.S. I truly love and enjoy many of my students. Some of them go out of their way to show me that they appreciate me and that they enjoy learning Spanish. And I laugh every day at some of them because they're truly hilarious people!

read this.

This article is haunting me. Reminded me to let all I do be done in love.

yeppers.

Source: pearls-curlsandasoutherngirl.tumblr.com via Ashley on Pinterest

shyeah.

So lately...the major emotion of late has been overwhelmed. Warning: many, many sentence fragments and ellipses ahead....

Overwhelmed by the amount of planning and energy it takes to teach high school Spanish. I'm not gonna lie, not loving it right now. I keep telling myself that next year will be easier (because it will be), but it's challenging for a bunch of reasons....figuring out how procedures for everything at the high school (how do I pick up my copywork or check out a t.v. cart or perform my mandatory student parking lot duty?), trying to keep up with grading and updating the online gradebook regularly, attitude-y students, teenage boys in general, realizing how little my students know in comparison to what I hoped they would know, and dealing with the legacy of taking over for a teacher who was more about fun than about learning. *sigh* (For the record, I'm all about learning in a fun way....)

Overwhelmed by how much I just want to spend time with my little family but feeling pulled in so many different directions at once...keeping my house at least to some semblance of "clean" (though it's terribly lacking at the moment and not up to my standards at all)...laundry...packing lunches and diapers bags and school bags every night...grocery shopping...bathtime...bedtime...etc. Still feeling jealous of my summer self right now and wishing I could go back to "just" being a mom and not a working mom. I wish I could just sit on the couch with my husband most evenings instead of working on school stuff or preparing our things for the next day. But that's not reality.

Overwhelmed by sleep deprivation...six weeks of not sleeping more than three or four hours a night is taking its toll on everything in my life. Not to sound completely negative, but I honestly don't know how I keep on going at this point except that I have no other alternative. And I don't think that most people really understand what we're going through with him waking so often. I know almost all babies wake round the clock in the beginning, and we got through that first couple of months successfully. Jackson is waking up more than he did as a newborn, and we've tried everything that we can think of...at this point I feel like it's just something we have to wait out or maybe he's got some sort of sleep disorder. He was sleeping nearly all night around three months, and then about a week before school started he began the rut we're in now. Basically I get him to sleep, and he's up again within forty-five minutes to an hour later. Then maybe he'll sleep an hour, or maybe he'll wake up again in twenty minutes. But when he "wakes" up, he's usually not really awake...just needs help getting back to a deeper stage of sleep...*repeat every night at least four or five times* :( I've stopped nursing him back to sleep, stopped trying to walk him around to put him to sleep, tried giving him cereal to keep him full longer, tried giving him formula with added rice starch to keep him full longer, read The Baby Whisperer, finally found a pacifier that he likes (the Soothie, and this was just a few days ago), which has helped him fall asleep on his own sometimes, and exhausted all other ideas that I've been given. Except cry it out...I refuse to let me baby cry himself to sleep when he's crying for someone to come help him. I'll let him fuss for a bit, sure, but once he begins really getting upset, I go to him. Every night I hope that he'll sleep better, but so far it hasn't happened except about a week ago he slept for an astounding six hours straight. Unfortunately, not a new trend. And as I type this, he's now up for the second time already after going to bed around 7:45...gotta go.

P.S. I know it'll get better, but sooner rather than later would be amazing.

remember.

Ten years ago, on September 11th, 2001, I was a freshman at Mount Holyoke College. I had just gotten out of my biology lecture and climbed the four flights of stairs to my dorm room in Brigham Hall, preparing to relax a little before bio lab that afternoon. I switched on my nineteen inch t.v. to watch something I'd taped the day before (yes, this was waaaay before DVR and back in the days of the VCR, baby...lol) and turned on my laptop to check my email. When my internet browser came up, I was confronted by images of terrorists attacking the World Trade Center. Planes crashing into tall buildings? Is this a joke? I thought to myself. I stopped the VHS tape I had just started in my VCR and switched on the news. Of course, it didn't matter what station I put the t.v. on...every channel was either broadcasting a live feed of the smoking buildings and the aftermath or replays of what had happened less than an hour earlier.

I sat there, horrified, my eyes riveted to the television screen. It was unbelievable in the worst way imaginable. It seemed so senseless and so unfair. Travelers on the planes died just through chance died for choosing that flight on that particular day. People had jumped out of buildings, frantic to escape the fate terrorists had decided for them. Rescuers had died trying to save those who were trapped in the buildings. I remember thinking that the people who were in the Twin Towers that day were just going through their normal, everyday routine; they headed to work and were just getting started with their day when this unimaginable horror happened. I kept thinking that they never expected to die when they went to work that day, just the same way that I would never expect to die going to my job in my dorm's dining hall. These were people who had mothers, fathers, brothers, friends...just like me.

One of the new college friends I had made about two weeks prior to September 11th was a native New Yorker who used to walk past the towers every day on her way to Stuyvesant High School. She was, in every sense of the word, traumatized by this event even more personally than I could ever be. Terrorists had attacked my homeland, but they had attacked her home. Seeing the 9/11 attack through her eyes and helping her cope with the emotional aftermath made me realize just how horrific it was, especially to New Yorkers. Seeing how the attacks affected Mariel made it personal to me in a way that I can't really explain. When we got back from a short break a couple of weeks later, I remember telling Mariel that when I went home, my father had cut down a huuuuuge pine tree that had always been in our backyard growing up...that it looked incredibly strange to me because it seemed like our yard was somehow empty even though that was the only thing that was missing. She told me that that was exactly what it felt like to go home to NYC and not see the Towers, and that she felt like I at least partially understood what she was feeling.

Ten years later, I still remember these details. We were all worried that another attack was imminent, that it would happen again without warning, just like the first time. Instinctively, I just wanted to go home and be with my family, but that was about nine hours away and I had no transportation. I was incredibly saddened and frightened that the attack had happened, and I had the overwhelming feeling that life in our country would never be the same because it now seemed possible that something like that could happen again. I remember how uncertain life had suddenly become...it felt like anything could happen at any moment, especially in the days right after the attack.After I became a second grade teacher a few years ago and realized that my little seven- and eight-year-olds had no clue what September 11th was, I made it a personal mission to educate them on this event in an age-appropriate way. Of course they couldn't personally remember something that happened when they were infants (or later on, I taught students who hadn't even been born yet...made me feel old lol). And of course I didn't want to scare the bejezus out of them but I felt so strongly that it was something that must be remembered. So, we started out discussing what they knew, which was horrifyingly little...I remember thinking that it was a shame that most of them had never heard about it (even just a mention that it was an attack on our country...not expecting a huge amount of knowledge or thinking it was necessary to know details at such a young age). When I found The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, I knew that this would be a great way to introduce 9/11 to them. For four years, I read the book to them and watched this video of him walking between the towers...and we talked about how horrible it would be for someone to attack our country and kill innocent people in doing so. As I read the story of Philippe Petit, a bit of an attention freak and free-thinker who decided to (illegally) walk a tightrope strung between the Twin Towers, the kids were drawn in and making predictions about whether he'd make it. The last page mentions that the towers are no longer there...and the kids naturally ask, "Why?!?" That would lead into an age-appropriate discussion of the attacks in which I told them the basic facts of what had happened that day and showed them photos of some of the destruction. Of course, they naturally asked why anyone would do something like that, and showed at least a shadow of the emotions that we were all feeling that day...disbelief, horror, shock, and sadness. Though I would never want to scare my students, I always felt (rather sadly) that I had accomplished my personal mission to have this day remembered by the younger generation. Now that I teach high school Spanish, I hope that there's another teacher in the elementary school who is exposing the little ones to the memory of that day.Yesterday, I was at a National Guard family picnic with my husband and kids...and I became instantly angry to see that one of my husband's fellow Guardsmen was wearing a shirt saying, "Everything I need to know about Islam, I learned on 9/11/2001." I understand that men who serve our country are patriots, and that's a good thing. But being a patriot does not mean being a bigot. People like that are the reason relations between countries and religions are so tense. I would compare this level of ignorance and intolerance to someone being killed by a drunk driver that happens to be a blonde and then proclaiming that all blondes are drunks and killers. Ugh. Obviously, from my post above you know that I would never support this attack or the reasons that the terrorists had for attacking our country, but I feel strongly that you cannot label an entire group of people based on what a very small percentage of those people did, no matter how horrific. The truth is that people perpetrated this, not their religion or their god. Stop the hate, but remember.