Just call me Mommy!
I'm currently halfway through a week long stay in Connecticut to take care of my sister's kids. My BiL is in the Coast Guard and gets reassigned this spring. This week is spring break and my parents and I flew out here to either visit with everyone or baby-sit the kids while my sister and her hubbie go to check out their new city. Last Friday they finally got his new assignment. He is being transferred to Morgan City, Louisiana. It was #9 on his Top Ten list. They are not happy to have to go to LA; they'd been really thinking he'd get his #1 or #2 choice in Honolulu, Hawaii, or #3 in Louisville, Kentucky. So my sister and brother-in-law are in LA and my parents and I are here in CT with the three kids.
Since I'm subbing now and not working full time in the classroom, I can pick up and leave whenever I want. My primary school district only has 2 1/2 days of school this week due to conferences so I felt like it was a good time for me to leave. Luckily for everyone (my parents, my sister and brother-in-law, and the kids) I could come because I don't know if my parents would really have been able to take care of these three young kids on their own. J. is 4 1/2 years old, I. is 3, and C. is 1 1/2. It's not that I don't think my parents can handle the kids, it's just that the three of them have so much energy and my mom is always SO tense around them that they can't keep up/take it for too long. :-) We were at the mall yesterday and my mom was getting so mad at C. for not eating her food, as if the 1 1/2 y.o. was doing it just to upset my mom. By the end of the meal, my mom was ready for a hard drink. I, on the other hand, was just fine. Even when my mom is trying to be calm with them, she really cannot completely relax around the kids so she's still tense and short on patience. After spending a week or two with my sister's kids, I usually decide that I'm not ready to have kids and be so tied down. But after Christmas and even now, I still feel like I am ready for it. Not to have three, but I'm ready for one. Hopefully they come one at a time! :-)
Jeff and I are still doing well, enjoying being married. Before Christmas, Jeff was traveling almost every week to Boston for work. By Thanksgiving, we'd spent more of our marriage apart than together. Since Christmas, though, he's been firmer with his company as well as the one in Boston that he needs to spend more time at home. So now he usually only has to go out for one week out of the month. Well, I guess he only had to do one week in January. He did two in February and he's currently doing two now in March, but this second week is because I'm gone, too, so he might as well take the extra week in Boston. Hopefully after this trip, he will be home for at least a month.
Jeff and I are also currently figuring out what our next step in life is going to be. We are both ready to start our family. Our only limitation is that I don't want to get pregnant too early because I don't want to be obviously pregnant at job interviews in July and August. So our plan is to wait until about May or June because then if I get pregnant right away, I won't be showing even by August (at least it won't be obvious to strangers that I'm pregnant and not just chunky!) so it won't hinder my chances of getting a new job. But we're also thinking about trying to sell our condo and get a bigger one. The plus side to moving now would be that we don't have to move while I'm pregnant or after we have a small child. We also won't have to clear out our office and turn it into a nursery because we'd move somewhere with 3 bedrooms. If we can move VERY quickly and sign papers by April 30th, we would also get a tax credit next year. On the negative side, I just moved and I hate moving. We are currently a single-income family and don't want to put ourselves in debt, especially so early in our marriage. If we move now, we would not be able to start a family now because we can't afford a new house and a new baby at the same time. So we're at the point where one of the two will probably get put into motion sometime within the next six months. We're going to try to list our condo and see if we even get any interest in it because we're not moving if we can't sell it and we're not confident that it will sell. (We have a nice condo, but it's an apartment that was sold off as condos instead so it looks and feels like a two bedroom apartment. Less than half of the units in our building have sold and the ones that remain are selling for much less than Jeff paid for it, barely more than what we owe on the mortgage. So we'll see. It's all very up in the air right now.
Subbing continues to go well. Work has finally started to pick up for me. Hopefully working about 4 days a week will continue for the rest of the year. I'm finding out that maybe I'm not a good kindergarten teacher after all. Not that I don't enjoy it and teach the curriculum well, but maybe you really do need to have the bubbly personality to really do a good job at it and I just don't have that. I'm finding out that maybe I would like to teach 5th grade after all. No "act" required in 5th grade -- but I'd really have to brush up on all my skills and knowledge! I am totally lost during science lessons in particular after spending the last four years in K-2.
I am currently taking 2 Master's classes this semester. I'm so glad I never tried to do 2 classes while also working full time. It never would have worked. As it is, I'm constantly behind and always have 100 pages (sometimes per class) to read every week. On the plus side, the semester is already half over so I've nearly made it. And on the really bright side, I only have one more class until my capstone project. If I get a job in the fall, I will finish in December 2010. Otherwise, graduation will wait until a new job since it's not going to be easy to find a new teaching job and certainly not if I have a Master's and will cost more to hire, especially when compared to someone fresh out of college. I do wonder, though, what excuses will come my way this year for why I wasn't chosen for the job -- I usually get "we went with someone with more experience", but I should have sufficient experience now. Of course, if I go for an upper-el job, I don't have any experience at that level apart from subbing. I also get "we went with someone with their Master's". So we'll see.
I think that covers everything that's going on around here. Oh yes, I'm also LOVING the spring weather while also waiting for the cruel joke to end and the cold to return in full force. Maybe Mother Nature is being genuinely kind after all...
Since I'm subbing now and not working full time in the classroom, I can pick up and leave whenever I want. My primary school district only has 2 1/2 days of school this week due to conferences so I felt like it was a good time for me to leave. Luckily for everyone (my parents, my sister and brother-in-law, and the kids) I could come because I don't know if my parents would really have been able to take care of these three young kids on their own. J. is 4 1/2 years old, I. is 3, and C. is 1 1/2. It's not that I don't think my parents can handle the kids, it's just that the three of them have so much energy and my mom is always SO tense around them that they can't keep up/take it for too long. :-) We were at the mall yesterday and my mom was getting so mad at C. for not eating her food, as if the 1 1/2 y.o. was doing it just to upset my mom. By the end of the meal, my mom was ready for a hard drink. I, on the other hand, was just fine. Even when my mom is trying to be calm with them, she really cannot completely relax around the kids so she's still tense and short on patience. After spending a week or two with my sister's kids, I usually decide that I'm not ready to have kids and be so tied down. But after Christmas and even now, I still feel like I am ready for it. Not to have three, but I'm ready for one. Hopefully they come one at a time! :-)
Jeff and I are still doing well, enjoying being married. Before Christmas, Jeff was traveling almost every week to Boston for work. By Thanksgiving, we'd spent more of our marriage apart than together. Since Christmas, though, he's been firmer with his company as well as the one in Boston that he needs to spend more time at home. So now he usually only has to go out for one week out of the month. Well, I guess he only had to do one week in January. He did two in February and he's currently doing two now in March, but this second week is because I'm gone, too, so he might as well take the extra week in Boston. Hopefully after this trip, he will be home for at least a month.
Jeff and I are also currently figuring out what our next step in life is going to be. We are both ready to start our family. Our only limitation is that I don't want to get pregnant too early because I don't want to be obviously pregnant at job interviews in July and August. So our plan is to wait until about May or June because then if I get pregnant right away, I won't be showing even by August (at least it won't be obvious to strangers that I'm pregnant and not just chunky!) so it won't hinder my chances of getting a new job. But we're also thinking about trying to sell our condo and get a bigger one. The plus side to moving now would be that we don't have to move while I'm pregnant or after we have a small child. We also won't have to clear out our office and turn it into a nursery because we'd move somewhere with 3 bedrooms. If we can move VERY quickly and sign papers by April 30th, we would also get a tax credit next year. On the negative side, I just moved and I hate moving. We are currently a single-income family and don't want to put ourselves in debt, especially so early in our marriage. If we move now, we would not be able to start a family now because we can't afford a new house and a new baby at the same time. So we're at the point where one of the two will probably get put into motion sometime within the next six months. We're going to try to list our condo and see if we even get any interest in it because we're not moving if we can't sell it and we're not confident that it will sell. (We have a nice condo, but it's an apartment that was sold off as condos instead so it looks and feels like a two bedroom apartment. Less than half of the units in our building have sold and the ones that remain are selling for much less than Jeff paid for it, barely more than what we owe on the mortgage. So we'll see. It's all very up in the air right now.
Subbing continues to go well. Work has finally started to pick up for me. Hopefully working about 4 days a week will continue for the rest of the year. I'm finding out that maybe I'm not a good kindergarten teacher after all. Not that I don't enjoy it and teach the curriculum well, but maybe you really do need to have the bubbly personality to really do a good job at it and I just don't have that. I'm finding out that maybe I would like to teach 5th grade after all. No "act" required in 5th grade -- but I'd really have to brush up on all my skills and knowledge! I am totally lost during science lessons in particular after spending the last four years in K-2.
I am currently taking 2 Master's classes this semester. I'm so glad I never tried to do 2 classes while also working full time. It never would have worked. As it is, I'm constantly behind and always have 100 pages (sometimes per class) to read every week. On the plus side, the semester is already half over so I've nearly made it. And on the really bright side, I only have one more class until my capstone project. If I get a job in the fall, I will finish in December 2010. Otherwise, graduation will wait until a new job since it's not going to be easy to find a new teaching job and certainly not if I have a Master's and will cost more to hire, especially when compared to someone fresh out of college. I do wonder, though, what excuses will come my way this year for why I wasn't chosen for the job -- I usually get "we went with someone with more experience", but I should have sufficient experience now. Of course, if I go for an upper-el job, I don't have any experience at that level apart from subbing. I also get "we went with someone with their Master's". So we'll see.
I think that covers everything that's going on around here. Oh yes, I'm also LOVING the spring weather while also waiting for the cruel joke to end and the cold to return in full force. Maybe Mother Nature is being genuinely kind after all...