Holy Cow there are 9!

(Picture borrowed from Annie)

Petersen Family Bi-monthly Birthday Party tonight at Aunt Karen's house.

9 whoppin' great grand kids.

Elliott is the oldest at 5, then Hyrum, Wyatt, Molly, Kate, and Braidyn.  The babies are Jack, then 1 month old Quinn and 1 week old Milo.

There are only 11 grandkids in this family, so to have 9 great grandkids already is crazy!  My grandma was so excited when Elliott came along, but he's the only one she ever met in this life.  I'm sure she would be so overjoyed and proud of all of these little squirts.

Oh, and one more thing.  Girls?!? . . . totally outnumbered.  Molly and Kate can definitely hold their own in this group, though.

(picture borrowed from Melanie)

I Must Be Incompetent

Today was one of those pressure-cooker-totally-stressful-I-suck-at-life kind of days.  I try really hard.  I try to be a good mom.  I try to be a good teacher.  I try to be a good person.  Even when I think I'm doing ok, though, I sometimes have days like today when I feel like no one else thinks I do anything right and everyone think I am just incompetent.

Do people I work with read my blog?  Probably.  It's linked from my school website and I'm sure I have some student or colleague blog stalkers.  Should I be careful what I write?  Probably.  Do I need a moment to vent, though?  Yes.

Some people are highly critical.
Some people in education do not know how to present to a group of others.
Sometimes leaders don't understand what is going on under their stewardship.
Though the term "professional" may be defined in small groups as part of a meeting, sometimes people continue to be very inappropriate in the same meeting - derogatory comments, cell phones ringing, people leaving before the meeting is over, etc.
Some people are never satisfied with any quality of work you try to contribute to a group.
Some people seem to have lost focus of what it means to improve student understanding and student learning.
Some people have the ability to leave you feeling absolutely incompetent after every interaction you ever have with them.
Some people don't know how to prepare copies that include the text they are going to read from.
Some people treat everyone like they are better than them.
Some people don't feel like they need to be accountable or follow any set of established professional standards.
Some people do not understand how to do math and when trying to teach students how to do it, just make it worse.



Some small children melt down in cars on the way home from school, then melt down at dinner for no apparent reason, but then end the day dancing away, completely uninhibited in the middle of a bunch of crazy high school kids.

Some small children are nearly always happy to see the mom even after the mom has a day like today.  They still smile and giggle and love you . . .  and then puke on you . . . but it's ok.

Some people write general statements on blogs to represent interactions with a variety of other people on a bad day in hopes that it will make them feel better and that tomorrow will improve.

Football meets the Gospel

It's football season.  This is a good video.  I like Elder Uchtdorf.

Sock of Shame

Hello world, Jack here!  I'm hungry.  In fact, I'm always hungry!  I eat all day, but I'm still so hungry.  I sleep really good for my mom and dad at night, but all sleeping does is make me . . . hungry.  Lately I've been trying to eat my hands all the time, but my mama finally made me stop doing that.  My hands were pink and raw and sore.  She put yucky vaseline on the sore spots and then made me wear these socks.  Now I may be little, but I know socks are for feet.  I even hear my sister get told all the time, "Molly, take your socks off your hands."  Last week she even took her sock off and filled it with cookie crumbs while my mama was putting the groceries away.  I wouldn't have done that, but I still have to wear these socks on my hands.  Mom, why?  Just let me eat my hands.  They taste so good.  Sigh.

School Days

It is 11:35 p.m.  I have tons of school work today and sleep to catch up on, but instead I am blogging.  It's a good stress reliever, I guess.

We've been in school for almost 3 weeks now.  Molly goes to school with me.  Jack hangs out with my cousin Maddie and her cute little boy Cole.  I go to crazy land and try to teach.

My ESL U.S. History class is fun this year!  It is a huge relief to the challenge of my majority Ukrainian students last year.  The countries represented in the class include: Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Mexico, Belgium, Czech Republic, Sudan, Ethiopia, Iran, Nepal, Thailand . . . I think that's it.  Their residency in the U.S. ranges from a few weeks to several years and their language skills have just about as broad a range.

Utah adopted new math curriculum and began implementing it last year.  We have started teaching it at our school this year - Secondary Math II.  The curriculum itself is kind of fun and I am buying into it, but it is a challenge to have students of all ability levels in one class.  It is a wide gap and we are all grappling with how to not "water down" the curriculum for the top end students while not leaving the lower end students in the dust.  It's tough.

Molly has been pretty good at school.  She really likes it and has only fussed a couple of days that I've dropped her off.  She thinks Miss Autumn and Miss Sarah live there because instead of calling it school, she says she wants to go to "Miss Autumn's and Miss Sarah's house."  Though our toilet training has been pretty successful, she wouldn't go to the bathroom at school for a week and a half.  She held it all day and had no accidents, but was having stage fright or can't-go-with-new-adults-helping-me issues.  She's finally warmed up a little bit and today successfully even told her teachers that she needed to go, rather than waiting for them to make her go.

(I stole this picture from my sister.  It was a Sunday afternoon photo session and for reasons you can probably guess, Molly's nickname during this short period of time was "Static Underpants."  Willie, Annie, and I also thought that could be a clever band name.)

The bad news is that Sunday she got in trouble in nursery for hitting kids and then Monday and today she also got in trouble for doing that at school.  On Monday it was little kids.  Today is was big kids.  I guess at least she doesn't discriminate against age.  Other than an occasional run-in between her and Wyatt, she's never really been a hitter.  I don't know what has brought this on.  Miss Sarah says it's just a phase and they are working through it.  We are, of course, talking about not hitting at home, but she hasn't done it at home.  I don't know what's going on, but she seems super stressed and has had a many a screaming fit in the last few days, too.  I don't know what to do.  She seems to feel ok.  She could probably sleep better, but isn't doing terribly.  I just don't know.  I drugged her tonight to see if that would help.

Jack is just dandy.  He cries when he's hungry.  He cries when he's cold while getting dressed after his bath.  He cries when he feels neglected because his sister is requiring too much attention.  Otherwise, he smiles and giggles all the time.  He is such a happy boy!  He likes to be tickled under his chin and on his thighs.  He still spits up a lot, but it doesn't seem to phase him.

He's excited to start playing with his new cousin Quinn (though they look nothing alike)!

I've totally stolen all of these pictures from my sister.

My mom's Starting 5!  Notice Elliott and Wyatt were going for "Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil."  I think Jack was trying to do "See no Evil," but his arms just couldn't reach quite high enough.  Who knows what Static Underpants was trying to do.  She's coo-coo!

Handsome boy in blue!