Mom’s Stuff:
Well, it has been a solid two months since I last posted. Please accept my sincerest apologies for my blogging lapse – life has been quite busy! Below is a post I drafted but didn’t publish on January 3rd, just before I went back to work after the holiday break. Enjoy, and more will follow . . . promise!
Well, the holiday season has come to an end and it is back to work tomorrow. I know I have been way behind on blogging here, but it is for a good reason – I actually been spending time with my family! In the past month I have been really inspired by one of my friends who teaches and is also a mom of young children. She is technically part-time, but she teaches the same class-load as I do, and she manages to not bring work home with her. Seriously, she doesn’t bring work home. I know she had told me this earlier, but I thought she meant “I barely bring work home” or “I only bring grading home.” Nope. She doesn’t bring work home. And she is a truly amazing teacher. Seriously, she is really great, and her kids learn so much from her.
For various reasons I will continue to bring work home (or at least work outside of school) for the foreseeable future. Some of this is because of the additional responsibilities I have besides teaching: PD planning, National Board work, working with a student teacher, etc. Also, I don’t really have a quiet workspace at work, what with shared classrooms and all. While I LOVE the open-ness of our school and the fact that it supports lots of informal and productive conversations between teachers, it does make it hard to just sit and grade papers without getting in a conversation with someone.
So, I will never get everything done at school, but I’m try to re-capture the way I used to split up work and home before my little guy was born. Back then I didn’t bring work “home” – but I rarely made it home before 6 pm, and I routinely spent several hours at coffee shops on weekends. Now I want to make sure I’m home by 5:00 as much as possible (with an occasional 5:30 arrival depending on a bus schedule).
Quick note: I did pretty good with this until the last week of the term – but this week I was back on track!
LP’s Stuff:
Since my last post eons ago, LP has been doing quite a bit of talking, moving, dancing and singing! He has a number of words now, including:
“waffle”
“kitty”
“banana”
“apple”
“cracker”
“butter”
“spoon”
“knife”
“mine”
“no”
“bath”
He is also getting much more helpful around the house! LP will help us unload the dishwasher and clear dishes from the table. He also loves to vacuum and will eagerly clear his new playroom in preparation for the excitement of the vacuum! We certainly have a neat little kid – it must be his dad’s influence 🙂
Food:
Tonight we had one of LP’s favorite dinners: polenta! The G-man makes it ahead of time and then he crisps it up in a cast iron skillet with some olive oil. Topped with homemade marinara (I make huge batches we freeze) and leftover homemade vegan Italian sausage, it is quite a hit!
Video:
