Molly Can Hold Still

Molly rarely holds still, not even in her sleep. She is constantly moving. Here is an example of how she spends most of her day. She is constantly picking things up and dropping them in new locations, adding to (and creating much of) the messiness of our house. Her little legs must be tired at the end of the day with all the walking around she does.

I not only apologize for the lack of tidiness in my house, but also for the terrible choice of music. Molly is capable of taking the alarm clock off the nightstand, turning it on and off, and moving the dial. She picked Cozy 106.5 the other day.



She does sit momentarily in this next video.



This summer, however, we have discovered a few favorite Sesame Street videos on youtube that have stopped Molly in her tracks. We watch them over and over again. I was able to catch her on video a few times while watching some of her favorites. Here is an example.



But, alas, nothing lasts forever . . . not even holding still during your favorite videos.

I can be crafty

I am not a very crafty person, but on occasion, I can be. Remember when I posted those nerdy math signs a few posts back? Well, I decided they would be a nice addition to my classroom at school. I tried to just steal them and copy the images, but they were too small to make bigger, so I recreated them, with some minor adjustment. I bought sturdier-than-dollar-store frames at the D.I., I spray painted them, and ordered prints of the signs. The whole project came in at under $10 and I am very proud of myself. (The "octopi" sign was the hardest and it took some sweet skills using Paint and Microsoft Publisher to make that one.)

House Update - Framing

Our house is coming along nicely and is beginning to look a bit like a house.

We don't have much of a backyard,

but we have big side yards.

The back wall to the 3rd car garage was finally re-poured and backfilled, so that garage floor could finally be poured.

Overwhelmed

When I was a little kid I had extreme anxiety about going to school. It wasn't pretty. When I say, "little kid," I mean from 1st grade up through about high school and beyond. So what did I do to relieve this extreme school anxiety that I had (besides perhaps some medication)? I became a school teacher. What was I thinking??????

This year (this week, in particular) the anxiety is beginning to maximize. I don't really know why, but I start having a million thoughts a minute about things I need to do for school, things I should have been doing at home all summer, but still haven't, things that will be new this school year. It is scary. To ease my thoughts a bit, it is sometimes healthy to write them down in a journal (or on the internet for the whole world to read).

Positive things to look forward to:

• Teaching Concurrent Enrollment Math
• Teaching U.S. History again
• Double blocking our lower level kids again and working with Mr. Berg
• Having Molly as my carpool buddy on the way to school and taking her to a place where people love her, take good care of her, give her structure, socialization, and cool art projects
• No more Master's Degree Classes (still waiting for my final grade and then degree to post, though)
• I finally painted most of my outside fence that has been gross all summer. I just need to do the very bottom that gets chewed up by the weed eater.
• A new house coming soon

Anxiety Ridden Things that make me Nervous:

• Dropping Molly off at a place that is not with me at home
• I need to do some touch-up painting in my house and I haven't done it yet.
• Renting my house still scares me
• Building a new house still scares me
• I have to give a presentation next week in front of my faculty, I don't know how all this concurrent enrollment class stuff works, I didn't keep good records of how I taught U.S. History last year and I'm afraid I'll have to reinvent the wheel.
• There always seems like so much more than is humanly possible to do in a few days to get my classroom, curriculum, etc. ready for a new year and I have zero desire to work on it at home. Oh well. Somehow or another it always comes together.