So amazing

Today was the big day for Emily's ear tubes to be put in. What an easy thing. We had to have her there by six, we went in for pre-op at 6:30, and then her surgery was at 7ish. The doctor was out within ten minutes of her being put under (she didn't even have to have an IV) and by the time that I went back to recovery to see her, she was already awake and drinking water.

After five minutes in recovery, she was moved back to the original pre-op room. There was a toy room that we didn't even get a chance to visit, but we did get to push her around in one of those big plastic cars. We pushed her up and down the hallway and she waved to nurses. You would never know that she had been under just moments before. Simply amazing!

The even more amazing thing is that the doctor was able to go in and get all of the infected fluid out of her little ears. So she is virtually ear infection free immediately. Wow. Six rounds of antibiotics, and this was what it took. Finally. I can't tell you how thrilled we are that this is done. We haven't had to give her any motrin, or ear numbing drops all day. Wooooo weeeee!

Oh and by the way, this was her last night helping with the dishes. It was just too cute. My little girl is already learning how to tidy up a kitchen!

Waffle House

Scott took Emily in to see the specialist today about her never-ending ear infection. We take her in tomorrow morning at 6 am to get tubes. She has be put under, but it is only a ten minute surgery, and after about three hours start to finish we are able to go leave. I can't wait until a night can pass without Scott or I seeing 3 am. Poor Emily needs some relief obviously too! THe poor girl is a trooper!

Which is what brings me to the Waffle House. I don't know what it is about this little family tradition that we seem to have started, but whenever there is a hospital trip involved, we seem to make a breakfast trip out of it before coming home. Something about the emergency, or outpatient care seems to leave us starving, and so it has come to pass that any time a member of the Johnson family must go to the hospital, a bit fatty breakfast must follow.

I guess this started when Scott had his kidney stone attack a couple years back. Scared the CRAP outta me. But at least after four hours in the emergency room we were both rewarded with a greasy omelet and some hash browns. Then came the pregnancy. Eight emergency room trips for Terbutaline shots to stop labor meant eight trips to BJ's for breakfast. And then of course when Emily was just two weeks old, Scott had knee surgery. BJ's again.

The restaurant of choice in the past has always been BJ's. Now that we are in the south, we think that tomorrow will finally be the day to try out the Waffle House. We have driven past so many times and said, "look how crowded. They have them at every restaurant, and they are always packed!" We have heard stories about the "loaded hash browns."

Hopefully after a long morning, The Waffle House will not let us down. I hope that by the time I post tomorrow that I will have gained a pound or two. All this up all night junk, and I deserve it! :)

Presentation

After a couple days to calm down over Saturday evenings "bash the working mom" fest and your votes of confidence, I am pretty much over it. I went to work today somewhat nervous about a presentation that I was giving in front of about forty teachers in the district about independent reading and conferencing in the Reader's Workshop. I was also not to thrilled about leaving Emily.

However, once I got going into the presentation, I realized that maybe I was really good at my job. Could God possible have planned for me to be a working mom because He has full faith that I can be a great mom, and still do a great job in the classroom? I think so. I love my job, and to be honest, even though I would LOVE to stay at home and be the "perfect" mom with Emily all day... I really think that if and when I get that opportunity in the future that I will REALLY miss my professional life. I think that it took the stupid comments of a bunch of insecure catty women for me to realize that it was okay to be a working mom, and it is also okay for me to say that I love my job without feeling any guilt about my abilities to simultaneously be a great mom.

Anyhow, that is my epiphany for today. Thanks for your comments. I was really pissed and hurt the other day. I think if I ever see some of those women again I am going to take Tom's advice and tell them about my second job as a stripper. :)

Why are moms so catty?

I have run into so many moms who are totally not honest. It brings me back to the Mennonite church that I grew up in where to admit one had a problem was horrible, and so people walked around with fake smiles on thinking that they were the only person in the world who was dealing with something, wether it be serious or not. New moms of little ones are especially bad. I don't know if this comes from worry that somebody else might think they are a bad mom, or what. But so many moms I know would NEVER admit that they have any doubts about motherhood in any regard. These women magically know how to do everything with their child. They know the best ways to discipline, they know how to have the perfect bed time routine, and they never get frustrated with anything dealing with their children.

Well, in my opinion that is a crock. Any mom gets frustrated when her child refuses to go down for a nap, or won't eat anything related to a vegetable. Moms question their decisions about things from when to start solid foods, to how long to let a baby cry it out. To think that so many women go around wanting others to believe that they are perfect drives me nuts.

Here is my question to moms like this: Why all the efforts to make me think that you are a perfect mom? Is it to make me question my ability as a mom, and then in return make you feel better about yourself? It is like the fourth grader in my class who makes fun of her neighbor's hair in an effort to draw the attention away from her own messy hairstyle.

The biggest area that these types of moms are drawn to is me being a working mom. I am so sick of moms finding out that I am a working mom, and then their first comments are, "Oh you are a working mom? When Steven and I got pregnant, we immediately made a commitment for me to stay home so that somebody else wouldn't be raising our baby." Well that is great for you and Steven. But it didn't work out that way for us, and I think God wants me right were I am. And I know that my happy Emily is find in with our set-up.

Then why do I question it and get upset when these crazies say things like this to me?

What it means to be "White"

In my critical perspectives course, one of the texts were reading deals with multicultural education. In the book, the author talks about that though the dominate culture in America is white, “White” people don’t have a sense of culture or identify. In other words, if you asked me what I identified with, I might say “American” but I couldn’t tell you what the definition of being “American” means. And if there was an “American” culture, what are some of those characteristics?

Why The Hell Would Anyone . . .

Why the hell would anyone want to invest their lives in statistics! I know statistics is plays an important part in quantifying everthing from sneezed per minute to farts in a life time. Those are important things to know. But deat God, I HATE statistics. I’ve been trying to be positive about the course. Even bought “Statistics for Dummies” which does a better job of explaining statistics.

My teacher Dr. Hyunh Hyunh (pronounced Win Win) is extremely intelligent but doesn’t teach us. He gets in front of the class and goes through the text. I feel like it’s a self-taught course.

I’ve been doing fine with my homework but I swear this week’s homework had very little to do with last week’s class. It’s not computing the problems that makes me ill - it’s a the other things he wants on the homework. Make sure you circle your answers, attach SPSS sheets with appropriate circles, name on each page, answers only on the answer sheet which as to be your first page, etc. Mess up on one of those things and you get points taken off though you might have a right answer. I spent at least an hour just making sure I had all the proper makings. It’s this kind of teaching which I’m totally against. I want someone to teach me statistics, NOT make me memorize computations.

All of a sudden he wanted residuals, squared correlations, and y-hats. Where did this come from? I think I figured it all out but it has made me tired. Must sleep to replenish brain cells . . .

Helping daddy

I thought that this was cute. Emily decided that she needed to help her daddy by pulling apart every pile of schoolwork that he had so diligently organized not long before. :)

The ear infection

After almost a full month of dealing with this ear infection, this is Emily. What a sweet wonderful, cheerful baby girl. If only you were at OUR HOUSE at 2 am!
1. Emily has been through so much for this stinking ear infection. She has gone through two different oral antibiotics, each lasting ten days, and then when both failed to knock out the infection, she went through a 3-day series of Reciflin (sp?) shots. That didn't work either. SO now here we are after four rounds of antibiotics and the poor girl still isn't sleeping well at night. In the course of the last month we have had so many sleepless nights it is unbelievable. We have made 1 am car rides, pharmacy trips, 2 am parties in the living room on the couches. Enough is Enough. I am SOOOO ready for tubes. Tubes can't be as harmful as jacking her little body up with antibiotics, don't you agree, or am I wrong?

2. Whenever I am awakened at two in the morning my first though is "Holy crap... not again, please Lord, anything but this! I just want to get some sleep!" And then my second though immediately following is, "Holy crap... I am such a selfish bad mommy for thinking of my own lack of sleep and not the pain that Emily must be in to wake up in the middle of the night." Her being sick constantly makes me question my abilities as a mom. "Should I let her cry it out, or is she in pain, do I cuddle and rock her to sleep, even though we have gone through the Ferber method to much success, and I surely don't want to undo that!" It is amazing how much I question myself.

3. Finally, the third thought on this ear infection is how in the heck to single parents do it? I don't know what i would do if I were in this by myself. Thank goodness for Scott. He got up with her last night, and eventually I got to go back to bed. He set up what he likes to call "the fort" in living room (he pushed the love seat and sofa together.) And he patiently loved on Emily and snuggled her until she fell asleep. I can't imagine what it would be like to go through the many sleepless nights without a spouse to help. I have a whole new respect for single parents, that's for sure.

The Doctor

So I hate to go to the doctor. I hate waiting in the waiting room, only to wait once they lead you back to the other room. I hate that I never feel like I get to ask the questions that I have, and I hate it when I have to take medication. Scott and I are so different in this manner. Probably because I have never been prescribed medication that is vital to my life that I take like he has. But either way... I hate taking meds. I don't take them on time, and I rarely remember to take antibiotics long enough to finish the "10-day" or "14-day" cycle. I have probably screwed with my immune system so much.

Well, here's the deal. About three weeks ago i came home on Friday after a mediocre conference. I had a raging headache, probably because of the sinus preassure I was feeling. Great. A sinus infection. I went to bed early, toughed it out, and within in a couple of days, I was okay except for an awful sore throat. Here it is three weeks later, and my throat is still so sore that it really hurts to swallow. I hate complaining about "hurts" or "aches" but this is really a nuisance. All the while, the past three weeks I have been asking myself back and forth, "When DO I suck it up and go to the doctor?" Does one ever really know? So I finally made an appt. for this Monday at 3:30 pm. I am already dreading it because I will have to race over from work, and go through all of the steps I already complained about before. But then what? What do I tell her? "uh... I have a really bad sore throat." How lame is that? Do you ever go to the doctor for a sore throat? But does one ever last this bad for three weeks? Yeah, I hate the entire deal with medical care, doctors, sickness. And in light of Emily's constant ear infections, and the threat of possible ear tubes, I constantly wonder what in the heck did they do a hundred years ago when people got sick? Did a "really bad sore throat" ever lead to anything that killed somebody? And if it didn't, then should I REALLY be going to the doctor, or would it just be another wasted trip that an over-precautious American took advantage of only to add to the problems with health care? But that's a whole other issue.

Interesting

Thought this was cool. Stole it from Kelly's blog :)
-Malisa

54 years 1 month younger than Andy Griffith, age 79
50 years 7 months younger than Dick Clark, age 76
49 years 3 months younger than Leonard Nimoy, age 74
47 years 2 months younger than Carol Burnett, age 72
44 years 5 months younger than Alan Alda, age 70
42 years 11 months younger than Bill Cosby, age 68
37 years 7 months younger than Linda Evans, age 63
35 years 5 months younger than Tom Selleck, age 61
32 years 6 months younger than Ted Danson, age 58
30 years 2 months younger than Jay Leno, age 55
26 years 5 months younger than Oprah Winfrey, age 52
25 years 4 months younger than Kelsey Grammer, age 50
22 years 1 month younger than Drew Carey, age 47
19 years 0 months younger than Michael J. Fox, age 44
15 years 7 months younger than Calista Flockhart, age 41
11 years 4 months younger than Jennifer Aniston, age 36
7 years 6 months younger than Alyssa Milano, age 33
2 years 7 months younger than Colin Hanks, age 28
3 years 2 months older than Mila Kunis, age 22
11 years 0 months older than Madylin Sweeten, age 14

and that you were:

2 years old at the time the first Cheers episode was televised
6 years old when L.A. Law was first aired on TV
6 years old at the time the series Married with Children began
9 years old when Seinfeld was first televised
11 years old in the month Home Improvement began
14 years old at the time the TV series Friends began
16 years old when Everybody Loves Raymond first aired
19 years old when Who Wants To Be A Millionaire began in the US

The River Walk

The pictures below are from our trip to the River Walk. It is basically a bike path that runs between two rivers (Broad River, and the Congaree) before they eventually come together. It is pretty cool to be walking with the banks of two rivers twenty feet to either side.

Emily had a great time. Scott had class, so I thought that it would be nice to get out of the house for awhile. I took Emily and Dakota by myself ( i was feeling brave) and all went well. We took snacks, and all together ended up walking about five miles. We saw geese (and heard them too) and turtles sunning themselves on the rocks within the rivers. Emily had fun waving to those who passed by. It was cute.

Broad River on the left side

Broad River on the left side
Originally uploaded by puzzleco.

Emily eating gold fish

Emily eating gold fish
Originally uploaded by puzzleco.

Emily taking a break

Emily taking a break
Originally uploaded by puzzleco.

Congaree on the right side

Congaree on the right side
Originally uploaded by puzzleco.

A Great Thing About Teaching at the University Level

I was just cleaning out my back when I pulled out two professional book catalogs. Before when I had received such catalogs I would throw them away or recycle them depending on what recepticle was closer or if my laziness was kicking in. When I grabbed the catalogs, I didn’t throw them away - I used my highlighter. Why? Because I can order any book I want . . . for FREE! If I want to view a book I can go to the a publishers website, choose the book, and order it as long as I use my work address.

(I do use the system honestly!!!)

Really

Another Post

When I checked my blog I hadn’t realized it had been so long since I posted. Time goes by quick without reflecting on past events. It’s 1:30 am on Saturday and I’m finishing class work. I think I’m going to enjoy teaching this methods class. There is a lot of work that needs to be put into the class but I think I have taken care of logistics. From this point it’s a matter of planning for each week. What’s nice is I basically know what I’ll be covering each week. Since you are all interested I’ll be covering Cambourne’s Conditions for Learning, creating a literate environment, and Smith’s “Joining the Literacy Club.” If you need to low down on what I’m teaching I can send you my syllabus ; )

I met with the professor who gave me an incomplete. She went over my paper. For writing my first doctoral research paper, I consider what she said to be “nice.” There were several compliments and several “do this next time.” What I really appreciated was the time she spent with me. Though she’s on sabbatical, we met at Banes and Noble. She proceeded to give me a pep-talk reminding me that I needed to ask more questions in class. She said never leave class not fully understanding. I agree this is one of my faults because I have to put up a facade as if I comprehend everything. Then I leave stressing about the class!

Anyway she was extremely proud that I took a chance researching language. Language can be difficult to observe since it’s not tangible like looking at reading, writing, or spelling. Language involves lots of listening and hoping you don’t miss something. I think I’m going to continue researching language or follow in the footsteps of Ralph Peterson and research the importance of community.

To make a long story short she gave me an “A” which means I received straight “A’s” my first semester of school. I didn’t think it was possible but I guess I can give myself a little pat on the back. I guess it’s time to get to bed since I have class tomorrow from 9 - 4 pm. Goodnight!

Obviously We're Not in CA anymore

Now that Malisa and I are back in the crazy town of Irmo, we had to face reality. Malisa is back and work and I have spent a few days sleeping. It’s hard planning for class, getting correct dates for papers due, establishing relationships with the school I’m working at, buying textbooks through Amazon, stressing about statistics and do I have the right calculator, and reading.

I begin a new semester on Tuesday. I’m teaching a reading methods class at Lake Murray Elementary School 5 hours each Tuesday. Students are in the class observing and working with students and I’m responsible for the other 4 hours. I thought it would be difficult planning that many hours but I’m already pressed for time on the first day of class. On Wednesday I take my second of two Advanced Language Acquisitions courses and Thursday is the dreaded Educational Statistics. On Saturday I take my second of four Language & Lit courses. I’m looking forward to this class because I’m reading all books by authors I know nothing about. I know my thinking will be pushed dramatically.

So once again it’s another jam-packed semester in which I’ll constantly be on the go driving all over Columbia getting from one place to the next. Thankfully the coursework will not be as difficult as it was last semester. And no more food court research!

We're in California

It's been a little hard to post since Emily, Malisa, and I are in CA but in case you weren't sure we are here. We're staying most of the time in Bakersfield but we will be in Fresno Wednesday, Dec. 28. I know we would like to get together with as many people for dinner before heading out to Well-Wednesday. Make sure you email us if you're interested: puzzleco@bellsouth.net. Hopefully we will see you all soon.

Almost to the end

My last class finished last night but luckily all I had to do was watch other group’s presentations. Last Thursday I presented my findings from my food court research. I also received a paper that I wrote the previous week. It was a good night. I received perfect scores on both the presentation and paper! Write now it looks like at least two “A’s.”

BUT I’m also finishing up a paper which was due on Monday. I’m having a hard time with it. I did some research in Malisa’s classroom on how a teacher’s language use can promote a learning community. I have my data but writing the paper is difficult. The concept of language and community is bigger than I thought so it’s taking longer than I though. Hopefully I can get it done tomorrow so I can do lots of editing. Part of the grade is sending it off to have published. While I’m most concerned about a good grade, having it published would be great.

One of the interesting things about taking doctoral classes is each class always has you do self-assessments of your grades. The one class in which the paper is due, I had to type out about 20 pages explaining why I deserved the grade I did. I put down an “A” but based on this reason: did I do my best throughout the class with what I understood at that time. The beginning of class was rough. A new state, new university, and the doctoral culture. I had a hard time getting going in my classes and my work AT THAT TIME would probably not be considered “A” work. But I worked hard, studied a lot, grew in my understanding and articulation, and supported others along the way. By the time class finished I was doing “A” work. So how do you take that kind of growth and not justify and “A?”