Happy Halloween

Have a "wonder"ful Halloween everyone!

Big H, age 4, 2006




















And me, age 5, 1977

Inspiration

A great article from the Washington Post Magazine that could help inspire and motivate high school students.

1001 Books You Must Read

Some English teacher I'm supposed to be. I've only read 31 of the books (or 3%) on this list from the book "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die: A Comprehensive Reference Source, Chronicling the History of the Novel." And I haven't read any of the books from the 2000s. I'm not sure what that says about me.

Smooth Ride

Here's a shot of Big H riding her bike on our glorious new blacktopped road!

Dentist

Big H made her first trip to the dentist yesterday. I originally tried to schedule her to go with me the last few times I've gone down to Aunt J's office, but it never worked out and we needed to go, so I found a local dentist instead. Big H did an amazing job for her first trip there. She wasn't scared and cooperated with the hygentist through the entire cleaning and fluoride treatment. The hygientist was great, too. She explained everything she was doing and really took her time with Big H. The only bad part of the trip is that the damage to her weird front tooth is a cavity. The dentist thinks it will probably fall out sometime in the next year, especially if she bites into something hard like an apple, because it is very weak, but he recommended filling it anyway to make it stronger. The silver lining is that I think she finally understands she can't drink chocolate milk in the middle of the night any more. We had broken her of this habit and then M. was weak and started giving it to her again. Last night, I didn't hear a peep out of her. He also is going to recommend an oral surgeon to have the piece of skin that connects the lip to the gum cut (Hayley's comes all the way down in between her front teeth, which I think contributed to the cavity and her "perceived" speech problem), which I'll probably wait and do sometime while I'm on maternity leave.

M. had an appointment at the same time as Big H. He hadn't been to the dentist in a very long time (as someone who goes religiously every six months, I'm too embarrassed to say how long) and it showed in his appointment results. Needless to say, M. will be making a few more trips to the dentist between now and the end of the year.

Book Choice

I finished Cold Sassy Tree a few days ago (I think it took me three weeks to read, very unusual for me, but I'm hardly doing any reading at night because I'm too tired) and I'm glad this is the book I chose for class. In class on Saturday, we had to go around the room and say which book we chose. Three people picked The Giver and two chose To Kill a Mockingbird. No one else selected Cold Sassy Tree and everyone else chose a different book, so we should have lots of different lesson plans at the end. We were given some time in class to start on a couple of the elements of the final lesson plan project. The class continues to go well - everything is new to me, so I'm learning something new every week. And we continue to get out between 10:30 and 10:45, which is great.

Sleep

After only four hours of sleep Monday night, this was me trying to take a nap Tuesday after work from 5:30-6:15:

• After riding her bike for about 5 minutes, Big H comes into the room and wakes me up. Great babysitting, Dad.
• Our next door neighbors are mowing their lawn and they are completely inept about it. It is like this every time they mow. For some reason, they turn the mower on and off about every 10 minutes. And of course, our bedroom wall is the wall that faces their yard.
• The phone rings and the machine picks it up.
• Big H comes in and wakes me up again.
• M. decides to start the race car. And then he asks me why I'm up and cooking dinner when he comes in the house a few minutes later.

So at 9pm, after we put Big H to bed, I'm ready to collapse. But this is the moment the farmer who owns the field behind us decides to cut down the soybean crop. Who starts culling a field at 9 o'clock at night when it's pitch dark out? So I turn on the air conditioner to drown out any other background noise and finally fell asleep at 9:30.

Absence

Okay, so August and September were a wash. No excuses, really. This pregnancy has knocked me out in a way I wasn't expecting. I am supremely tired all the time. I've become an expert at finding a place to nap in the afternoons at work. Otherwise, the pregancy is going very smoothly. I'm currently in my third trimester and almost 28 weeks. Now that October is here, it hit me that this baby will be arriving before we know it. With the expectations of upcoming holidays and finishing my Saturday class, the time is flying. I can barely even read anymore, which upsets me to no end. I hardly make it through one or two chapters and my eyes droop and I'm out like a light. And keep in mind I do a lot of my reading while eating lunch at my desk at work!

I hope to go back and post-date some entries - our big family vacation in August, my ultrasound photos (it's a girl, by the way), etc., and if I do, I'll enter a new post with a link. Plus, there's always plenty going on - Big H started ballet and tap a few weeks ago, all of the fun fall craft shows are coming up and more. So, I'm sorry for the absence and I'll try to do better. Pinky swear.

You Know You Live in a Small Town...

...when you get way too excited about the fact that the township is paving your street.

Don't get me wrong, our street is paved, but in typical Pennsylvania fashion- some strange mix of rocks and concrete that is one step above a gravel road. Today it is being paved with real live blacktop! The reason I'm so excited is that we live on a cul-de-sac with only one other house, so there is no traffic. But the court area is usually so full of rocks, stones and debris, that it's hard for Big H to ride her scooter or her bike out there. So now it should be the perfect place to learn how to ride a bike and play basketball. It makes our location ten times better than it already was.