I've Changed My Last.FM

Let's just say I did not like having Michael Bolton and Kelly Clarkson showing up on my list. When Mindy was here she downloaded a bunch of music which included those two fine musicians. Since I'm not a fan, I changed it. Plus it will update more often so when I'm listening to Neil Diamond or Tom Jones, you all won't know.

The Zoo

Today has been the best day. We decided last night to put our family zoo pass to use and go today. After breakfast we went, and had such a great time.

This is Scott and Emily in the Lorakeet exhibit. For a buck you get a nectar cup, and the Lorakeets come and eat it from you. (I have another with two Lorakeets on Scott's head, but his eyes were closed in that picture.) Emily thought this was terrific.

Here we both are in front of the Sia Ming exhibit. I wish that we could have audio that could accommodate this shot. It was so loud. Why aren't they called "howler monkeys?" I think for a moment Emily got a little scared.

We also went off to the giraffes, gorillas, elephants, tigers, lions.... a lot. I am so pleased to have a beautiful zoo near by.
Oh! And also on the other side of the river from the zoo is a 15 acre botanical garden that is attached with zoo admission so the entire zoo is full of amazing plants and flowers. Right now everything is in bloom!

The best part of the day is we were done by lunch, were able to eat lunch, and get home before Emily's one o-clock nap. We all took a nap. It was great!

The black eye

I had my first church women's softball game of the season this evening. So, one would naturally predict with a title of "the black eye" that it came from either a softball, bat, or some other game paraphernalia. But sadly... no. I left my digital camera in my classroom, or I would totally be taking a picture to attach with this post. Maybe tomorrow.

Let's just say that I have a cut under my right eye, and a cut across the bridge of my eye. Sexy, I know.

How did you get it you ask? Well, you see... there are these gates that go into the dugouts. This particular gate had a very solid metal handle, and I guess I was so excited to go up to the batter's box, that I didn't see the big metal handle on the gate. It caught me right in the face... thus, the black eye, and cut up nose.

To make matter worse, or funnier, depending on how you look at it, I didn't even know that I was hurt. I think I said, "ow" and then walked up to bat. It wasn't until after the first ball went by that I put my hand up to my nose because it tickled, and it was then that I realized I was bleeding all over. Too funny. SO... I actually got a base hit, and after running through first base, I turned to our coach at first and said, "UH.... Jimmy? I think I did something." He looked at me like "how in the world????"

Yeah, only me. I am the only one that can get hurt at a softball game by a gate handle. This should be an interesting season!

The first birthday party!

So this is a little late on the posting, but that's okay. Emily's first birthday party was last Saturday. We had my mom, sis, grandparents, cousin, and some friends over. The weather was in the low 80's so we BBQd outside. The entire day was nice, minus Emily getting sick toward the latter part of the evening (and yes... it was ANOTHER double ear infection, even after the tubes, but that's another story).

Anyhow, everything went really well. Emily got a new trike with a handle that goes up to my waist so that I can push her. She also got a new wagon to tote all of our things to the pool this summer in. Really, she could care about any of that. She really just liked the cake. Oh, and hot dogs. We gave her a hot dog for the first time, and she liked that a lot. Oh, and cheetos. She thought Cheetos were awesome. Okay Geez. So we fed our child junk all day.

I still look at her and wonder where the first year has gone. And then my next thought is, "man I want another." Hopefully Scott will finish school soon. Kids are great!

Reading Mid-Terms

I have discovered if you ever want to make a teacher's life hell - write well over the maximum amount of pages given.  Students had to turn in a 3-5 page midterm reflecting back on the class.  Well I've had one 17 page paper, a 16 pager, several 10-12 pages, and several more 7 -10 pagers.  Since I have no ownership of the assignments, I wasn't the one who came up with the page limitation.  I have taken off points becuase of the great lengths of some of the papers but this is taking me forever to finish.

One year ago tomorrow...

Emily was born! I can't believe it! I thought about setting the alarm to 3:32 am (the exact time my water broke) and waking Scott up to tell him "it was time" just to see what he would do in his sleepy stupor. But I have decided against that. That first week of being new parents was so challenging with all that Emily went through. It is unbelievable how all of that plays no part in how she is today.

To look at how different our life is now than it was a year ago is crazy! And in so many ways in addition to becoming parents. Emily has totally changed the way that I see all children. I watch her as she constantly learns new things, and it never ceases to amaze me at how fast she catches on. I love to watch her explore and observe everything around her. What a little learner she has already become!

The other night when I was reading her a bedtime story, she reached down for the bottom right corner to grab the page. She couldn't quite separate one page from another, but when I separated them for her, she knew to grab the page and turn it. And once the page was turned, her attention went back to the new page. Little things like that are so simple at first, but it just amazes me. It also makes me realize that even at her young age, she is constantly watching our every move.

She is truly a gift from God.

This weekend

Let me start out by saying that I feel a little better about the cafeteria lady. I am still going to have a little chat with her Monday morning about how stupid she was to have said what she did, but I am proud of myself for not getting angry with her Friday.

Well, our weekend started out pretty well. Scott takes a class that meets most Saturdays, so after we all ate some breakfast together, he was off until his class at four. Emily and I played, and after lunch we got in the car to run some errands. We had a birthday party to go to in the evening, so we ran over to Target to get a gift. About half way there I start to feel a little yucky.

Now... I have to go back and explain what has been going on in my school district. There is this AWFUL virus that has been going around. It really hasn't hit too bad at the school that I am at, but Friday another school not far away from us actually sent all the kids home early at 11 am because they had 300 reported absences due to the virus, and by 10 that same morning, another 100 kids were sent home. The entire population of the elementary school is between 700-800. That is a lot of sick kids! Other schools have seen dramatic amounts of sick kids due to the virus too.

So back to me driving to Target. I don't want to go home because I had already got both Emily and I into the car which any mom knows is a task in itself. So in we go. I'm almost finished shopping, and I start to feel totally ill. What can I do? I push the cart with Emily over to the restrooms, and the cart doesn't fit. I leave Emily outside the bathroom while I run in and totally lose my lunch. Nice. Luckily after that I feel some relief and can check out.

By the time Scott got home, I was feeling a little better, but I still ended up in bed from about 4:30 yesterday evening until I woke up this morning. What a horrible thing! Luckily, Scott and Emily haven't gotten it so far. I just pray they don't!

Needless to say, we missed the birthday party. I still had a mild fever this morning even though I felt just fine when I woke up. Scott took Emily to church and I stayed home, not wanting to spread any germs. I got two hours of house cleaning. Wow. I couldn't believe how excited i was just to have a couple hours of uninterrupted house cleaning time.

Later this afternoon we all went outside so Scott and I could do some yard work. And now that I have brought Emily inside, I type this scared because Scott's yard work has turned into him burning the dead "stuff" that he has raked up in the yard. I am totally fine with small little fires to burn tumble weeds and such like my dad did when I was little, but when I saw Scott bring the gasoline can out of the garage, I got a little nervous. If nobody hears from us in days, it is because Scott caught the house on fire!

The cafeteria Lady from down under (no, I don't mean Australian!)

Today I had the best day in my classroom. It is days like today that really remind me what it is about teaching that I am in love with. We had some awesome conversation about poetry, I graded a math assessment where everybody scored either an a or b, and I just feel like the kids in my class really enjoy each other and enjoy learning. That makes me enjoy teaching.

Then we went to lunch.

Now I know that kids in the cafeteria can be loud. But eating is social. My idea for the cafeteria ladies is: DEAL WITH IT! If there are kids being overly boystrous, then fine. Have them sit by themselves. But my entire class was made to eat a "silent lunch" for three days in a row because I was told "my entire class." was overly loud. Yeah right. By the way, this was the case for the entire fourth grade. Yeah right.

Then to make things even worse, if we don't get the kids there the very minute that we are supposed to, the cafeteria ladies get all angry. They don't say anything to us teachers, but they treat our kids like crap and say things like, "can your teacher be on time for anything" or "do they teach you how to read a clock in fourth grade?"

Today was overly annoying and down right angering. I picked up my kids just to hear them all tell me that one of the lunch ladies actually told me kids that their teacher was "hard headed."

Huh? What does that have to do with being on time to lunch? And to make it worse, three of my kids told her that she needed to watch what she says, and never to say that again. The three got into trouble and had to eat an isolated lunch. Another one of my students got in trouble because she was talking during this silent lunch. Well yeah, she was. She accidently spilled her entire chocolate milk on her jeans, and was asking another student to help her.

Ughhh. So that is the situation. I feel like I am SO being tested because the "hard-headed" part of me wants to march in their and tell those ladies they can stick their own foot up their butt. But I know that I shouldn't and this entire week I have been working on controlling my tongue and that entire verse about "what ever is lovely..." Yes, so telling them where they could stick their foot is not exactly lovely, I realize.

I guess I just feel stuck with an administration who doesn't have the time to deal with the cafeteria issues, and parents who are furious that their kid missed recess again. The sad thing is, I don't blame them for being mad. Scott suggested that I just have the kids get their food and then eat in the room. I thought this was a great plan at first, but then I could see the problem with the logistics of it all.

Oh well. What to do. I keep telling myself that giving them a piece of my mind won't help.... I need to just calm down and very politely talk to them... again. Oh well. Thank goodness tomorrow is Saturday!

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.