Our first college talk

Yes, you read the title right. I have had my first conversation about college with my 3.5 year old daughter. The conversation went something like this (note, Katie is reading letters all over the place which is AWESOME! and led to our college conversation):

Katie (reading the magnet on the car in front of us at a stoplight): U-N-C. UNC! That's a UNC car Mommy!

Mommy: That's right! Good job Katie. UNC is a school, a university. I went to college at UNC.

Katie: I want to go to college, too!

Mommy (chuckling): You will honey, you will. Many years from now.

Katie: I can teach your students!

Mommy (glad that she is driving so as to hide her wide smile): Yes Katie. After you go to college, you can teach my students.

Katie (cute drawn out): Oh-kay.

So, a future college-going teacher in our family?

Good eater

Mommy, you may have a piece of candy from my Halloween bucket. What kind of candy would you like? Do you like a lollipop? [Holding up a yellow lollipop]

No, I don't really like lollipops.

How about this? [holding up a Butterfinger]

Oh, yes. I like those.

You may have one piece of candy after you're finished with your supper.

Thank you, Katie. That's very kind of you.

Daddy, you already have your dessert [a cup of ice cream, half eaten]. Oh! That's the sound of my pee pee! [runs off to the toilet]

[a moment later, from the bathroom] Mommy, when you are finished with your supper, you may eat that piece of candy.

I already ate it.

Good job, Mommy! You're a good eater! [then follows the process of finishing with the potty and hand-washing]

[Back at the table] You're a good eater, Mom! Gimme a high five!

Learning Every Day

There are some lessons in life that you learn, forget, learn again, forget again, and relearn until you don't need to know them anymore. One of those lessons for me is remembering to pick my battles and not always take everything quite so seriously.

I relearned that today with one of my students. He is a great kid who is learning a lot, but in the meantime, he is driving me buggers. There are a lot of reasons he acts as he does, not the least of which is that he is a middle schooler (ie t-e-e-n-a-g-e-r). He does things like ask me for candy, repeatedly, whine when I ask him to write notes, refuse to come to the board (with an attitude) to answer a question, complain when I don't call on him more than all the other kids, and go into my closet to rifle through the candy while I'm watching when I don't give him some. Many days I get so frustrated with him and I end my day full of frustration. Today, I didn't. I watched him get in my candy, I quietly waited without reacting when he whined and refused and, to my surprise, without my cajoling or freaking out, he was fine. He didn't take my candy, he still wanted to come to the board and so he did, and he got his work done. I didn't give him anything to react to. For me, I trusted that he is a good kid who needs some guidance right now, not a teacher who freaks out every time he jokes around with the rules. Were his actions inappropriate? Sure. But as he learns to trust me (and as he learns that I don't make a big deal out of it), he will act out less because he won't get the attention he craves from that. Even better, I ended the day without wanting to pull my hair out.

I experienced something similar with Katie tonight. She has been a nightmare to put to bed lately with lots of screaming and crying to do anything. She is a queen staller and when you try to move her along she ignores you and fights like a banshee (and sounds like one too...). If you get tired of waiting for her to do something and do it for her, watch out Mount Vesuvius, Mount Katie is ready to blow! Somehow, tonight I didn't get all worked up about anything from the pickup all the way through the kiss good night. When she wanted to sleep on the floor (not a good choice as she never actually sleeps when she tries to sleep on the floor) I managed to laugh it off and convince her to get back on the bed. In the past I have either let her try to sleep on the floor (I want her to have choices, after all) and then stressed out because I had to go upstairs to intervene several times before fighting to get her in to the bed so she would actually sleep, OR I would just fight her to get her into bed by telling her "no". Not only was I able to brush it off and not get worked up about it, I even made a conscious decision to let her try to sleep on the floor tomorrow if she wants to. It's a weekend night with nothing specific happening Saturday morning so, if she doesn't sleep right away, it's not going to ruin the workday the next day.

Although my student (and his parents) probably wouldn't appreciate my comparing him to my 3.5 year old child, they both test me on a minute by minute basis. With both of them I have two choices, get worked up and stressed out over every infraction, no matter how minor because "The rules are important!" Alternately, if I choose my battles, especially if I choose the right rules, I won't lose my authority, I won't be so stressed out and I'll even have a lot more fun, teaching and parenting.

Now, if I could just remember that tomorrow...

Halloween Spooktacular

After a full week of being sick with H1N1 (both Katie and I), we managed to get better in time to enjoy a little Halloween. We were sad to miss the neighborhood activities last week, though. Next year.

When I asked Katie what she wanted to be for Halloween she immediately said "a tiger!" Amazingly, she was very consistent in her desire for the tiger. Even after we got a princess costume when I wasn't sure that I could find a tiger costume in her size, she still wanted to be a tiger. So, I managed to find one. It truly demonstrates how difficult it is to buy clothing for young children without having the child try it on first. After trying on 4-6 and 6-8 size costumes for my 3 YEAR OLD that were too small, I ordered the 6-8 size tiger costume for her. When it arrived, this is what we found:

Fortunately, 4 safety pins and one hair rubberband later, we managed to find a workable tiger in there.

Mommy even got into the fun with her own costume.

The downside of these wonderful costumes this year is definitely the weather. It was 80 degrees and humid today so the headpiece only lasted for half the walk up the street.


I'm afraid we had to forgo our standard picture of weighing the candy bucket and the child stuffing her face with candy this year. After moving, we haven't found the scale yet and, a reflection of how sick Katie has been, after eating one lollipop, she said she wanted to go to bed.

The great part about Halloween this year? Being in our super family friendly neighborhood. There were kids everywhere and tons of places to trick-or-treat. Like last year, we bypassed the scary houses. Unlike last year, there still plenty of houses to go to, just on our street. The kids and parents we met walking around were all really nice and I can't wait to get to know more of them better in the future. All in all, we had a great Halloween in our new neighborhood.

Rawr!

Phone Photo Sunday

I keep meaning to do this on Friday but here they are!

When I returned from NCCAT last week, I was greeted with a great big hug from my daughter. One of the things that I love (and sometimes hate) about Katie is her uninhibited exhibition of emotions. She does everything big. When I came home from NCCAT, she screamed "Mommy!" and ran down the hallway at daycare to fly into my arms. When we got home, she wanted to cook so we ended up having our first impromptu Mommy/daughter cooking session. Our first dish? Mac and Cheese. This is the result:

The work.


The "Mommy, I'm done taking pictures" picture.

And, the perfect pose to please Mommy.

I see cookie baking and lots of kitchen fun in our future.

The bell's ringin' Bossie, it's our turn at the trough

Well, this post was supposed to post last week but I miust have done something funny because it didn't get posted. Just pretend that you are seeing this last week while I was away at NCCAT.

One of the best things about NCCAT is definitely the food. The learning is nice, the meeting with colleagues is great but seriously, being fed 5 times a day and waited on while sitting at a table with white tablecloths, no screaming wiggly child who is flicking milk everywhere with her straw, and, of course, no clean up, just makes my whole week worth the extra time spent on sub plans.

The downside of all this wonderful food is...I have not had a hunger pang in 2 days. Seriously. Not that being full is a bad thing but the next meal is starting before I've had a chance to get hungry again! I haven't even taken advantage of the snacks available around the clock in the residence because, really, I'm NOT hungry. Not even the slightest hint of the munchies. When Heather, my friend and fellow teacher started pushing me to come here, she often talked about the food. Her words, and I quote, as I was leaving last Saturday were, "Just assume you will gain ten pounds and take stretchy pants."

Fortunately, I decided going in I wasn't going to worry about just how much I was eating and I am just enjoying being pampered and waited on. Heaven knows that won't happen again any time soon! So, in the meantime, I'll enjoy a short respite from hunger pangs, knowing that next week I'll be back to starvation by 10am.

Just roll me home.

Fairest of the Fair (Part 1)

Thursday night we went to the NC State Fair and had a fantastic time.

Since eating is a very important part of what we do at the fair, we started by eating. First, Katie ate half of a corn dog over a period of an hour. She was too excited about riding the carousel to eat it before riding anything.

Then she started our rides with the carousel.

Then there was her first pony ride. (Hopefully the first of many!)

After which she just HAD to ride on the airplanes. We kept trying to get her to push the button and take the airplane up but we never quite got the message across. She had a great time, obviously.

We also rode Mommy's favorite ride, the swings!

Vroom vroom!

To be continued...