Appreciate me! Please?

Me, to Jacob: You know, it's Teacher Appreciation Week this week and it's Mother's Day on Sunday, so I expect to feel appreciated all week.

Jacob, stilted: I appreciate you. There.

I guess I'll take what I can get.

Since it IS Teacher Appreciation Week, all the teacher bloggers in all the land are hosting giveaways for products and gift cards to teacherspayteachers.com. I may or may not have entered over 20 contests today in hopes of winning one. Not that I care that much about the cutesy markers and decorations, but the gift cards, man, the gift cards!

I then spent about 2 hours adding products to my wish list. I want to buy all the things! The task cards! The Greek mythology units! The interactive notebook activities! Even if I do win $25 (and with the accompanying 28% off sale), I'd only be able to get a fraction of the things I'd like. Oh, why does everything cost so many dollars?

Speaking of, I went to town this year purchasing products from a particular seller on this website. (We have a certain amount of money we can spend each year and then get reimbursed from the school.) I received a notification a couple weeks ago that she recently became a millionaire through selling her products. When I told Jacob this, he immediately asked if I could do the same thing. Maybe if I ever have time to create products, I'll venture into this as a side business . . .

Side note: When I told Jacob I wanted to buy more things, he asked, "Are you going to make that teacher even more than a millionaire?" Ha.

Mostly, for Teacher Appreciation Week I hope to still have a job next year. My students took their Language Arts and Science end-of-year tests last week and they did . . . much worse than I anticipated. Fingers crossed they redeem themselves in the math test this week or I may just be looking for a new line of employment. Like selling things on Teachers Pay Teachers, perhaps?

Blue and gold

Marie's birthday is in 8 days. Who gave permission for my baby to grow up? Not me. 

The children love the books!

She's getting quite adept at standing and has taken a step or two on a couple occasions. Also, she's basically the happiest baby that has ever lived.

But, as darling as my daughter is, this post is not about her. 

No, this post is about my recent foray into the world of Cub Scouts -- a world with which, with the exception of Pinewood Derbies, I am completely unfamiliar. 

I was called to be a Cub Scout leader a couple weeks ago. When I was extended the calling, I was under the impression that I would be able to choose the day of the week that worked best for me to hold den meetings. Later, I found out that meetings are held Wednesdays at 6:00. 

Joke was on them! The first Wednesday after I received the calling, I had Parent-Teacher Conferences until 7:30. Starting this Wednesday and for the next six weeks, I'm taking a class that goes from 4:30 until 6:50. So I'm being a super active participant these first two months.

But I'm not one to shirk my responsibilities so easily! The Sunday I was set apart, I attended a meeting with all of the Cub Scout leaders to plan the Blue and Gold Banquet, which took place last Wednesday, and which I was actually able to attend. The other three women took charge of the meals, decorations, and the activities. I was given two jobs: 1) Acquire enough lengths of rope for a knot tying activity, and 2) Buy three bags of ice. 

(Allow me to interrupt myself and say that I would have helped with the meals and decorations had I not been working when they wanted to get those things put together. Lest you think that I'm just super lazy or something.)

Well, I asked one woman in the ward where to get rope, since she mentioned a place where you can buy it for a good price, and she volunteered to just get it for me. So that left me with the very important job of bringing ice.

I didn't want to screw this up. If we had warm beverages, it would be all my fault! So just before the banquet on Wednesday, I headed to the store and made a beeline for the freezer section. While there, I realized that I never asked what size bags of ice I should procure. I was able to eliminate the 10 pound blocks of ice right off the bat, but the store sold both 7- and 20-pound bags of ice. Which one, which one? 

I hemmed. I hawed. I called Jacob to ask his advice (but it went to voicemail). I finally decided that 60 pounds of ice would be an absurd amount and settled on the 7 pound bags. (Also, I wasn't sure how I would physically carry 60 pounds of ice into the building, because heavens knows I didn't want to take more than one trip to and from the car. That was a primary factor in the decision-making process.) 

As it turned out, even with a mere 21 pounds of ice, we had more than enough as it was. 

You may all marvel at my contribution to the banquet now. 

Just smile and nod

I have had almost the exact same conversation with an acquaintance at work at least three times in the last month or two. It goes something like this:

Acquaintance: How's that baby of yours? Walking yet?

Me: No, but she rolls all over the place!

Acquaintance: My oldest son was a little Tootsie Roll. I think he's an alien. I swear I was impregnated by an alien.

Me: [awkwardly laughs] Oh, really?

Acquaintance: [launches into story about how her son used to crawl backwards and then one day stood up and walked down the stairs and now he can understand any game after reading the instruction booklet for one minute]

Acquaintance: And now he's in the Navy!

Me: That's great! Well, bye! [gets the heck out of there while simultaneously wondering if this lady actually thinks she was impregnated by an alien]

We don't got no food

The last two days, I've made the majority of my class stay in during recess to finish missing assignments. Once a student turned in all of the work, he or she was able to go to recess.

Me, after a student handed in his last assignment: "Okay, [Student], you can go to recess now."

Student, flailing his arms over his head and running out the door: "I'm free of my burdens!"

Bahaha.

The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice

A texting conversation:

Me: Also, I introduced Marie to the Hairspray soundtrack today. She loved it! Muahahaha!
Jacob: She will be scarred for life and I can never forgive you for this :(

Somebody doesn't like music that brings joy and laughter and sunshine to the world.

I'll huff, I'll puff, I'll blow you away

I took a logic class in college. It's been some time, but let me try my hand at a scenario:

If Marie wears white pajamas, she'll have a blowout at night.
If we have just done laundry, she'll either soak through her diaper or have a blowout.
Yesterday we did laundry and Marie wore white pajamas.
Therefore . . .

(I'll let you draw the conclusion.)

* * * 

I made a pie chart to represent the contents of our bathroom trash can, but I couldn't figure out how to put it in this blog post. I'll give you the raw figures, though:

Hair: 80%
Toilet paper tubes: 5%
Dental floss: 3%
Used tissues: 4%
Miscellaneous trash: 11%

This postpartum shed thing is no joke. On a weekly basis (at least!) Jacob makes a comment that he can't believe I'm not bald yet. It's pretty foul.

* * * 

School has been in session for three weeks, and for the most part I'm enjoying being back in the classroom. I did a couple team building activities with my class at the start of the year that I'd like to share, because, well, I can.

The first activity was called "Saving Fred." I told the class a story of how Fred the worm was always very safety-conscious and took his life preserver with him when he went out boating, as he doesn't know how to swim. Unfortunately, today his boat capsized before he was able to put his life jacket on. He managed to cling to the underside of the boat, but it was up to my students to retrieve the life jacket from under the boat, put it on Fred, upright the boat, and place Fred in the boat without letting him drown.

(At this point, I demonstrated the initial setup: a peachy-O ring was placed underneath a plastic cup, and a gummy worm was placed on top.)

Of course, the students weren't allowed to use hands -- they could only use paper clips to complete their quest. And before too long I had to tell the students they weren't allowed to stab Fred either, as the point was to keep him alive and unmaimed.

The second activity that they had a lot of fun with was called Constitution Island. It was supposed to be a long drawn out lesson about the importance of rules and such, but I ran out of time, so it boiled down to this:

I told the class we were on a cruise ship sailing to the Bahamas, and I was the captain of the ship. We were looking forward to snorkeling, playing on the beach, and drinking smoothies. Unfortunately, we were caught in a terrible storm, and the passengers were all blown to five separate islands. Of course, the captain always goes down with his (her) ship, so I died. (At this point, the students asked if they could hold a funeral for me and if I was a ghost.)

I then gave instructions that the students had to design their own island and decide upon seven rules to help govern their island. Everything had to be agreed upon by majority rule vote, and they weren't allowed to leave their islands because they would drown since they didn't have boats. And if they got into a disagreement with their fellow island-dwellers, I couldn't resolve it for them, since I was dead.

The kids had a blast with it, and it was especially interesting to see some of their island designs. One group built a Costco on their island "because it has everything there," while another group created a gravesite AND a log cabin for me. It was touching. Sniff, sniff. Yet another group used those scented markers and my room has just finally stopped reeking a week later.

* * *

I hate it when I read a book that rivets me and then I find out the next book in the series doesn't come out until next year. This has been happening surprisingly frequently as of late.

I'm a mean old witch with my hat

I know Halloween is more than two months away, but I'm already brainstorming costume ideas for our little family of three. (Yes, I'm making the assumption that both Marie and Jacob will cooperate and wear costumes with me.) The ideas thus far:

1) Jacob and Jennifer: pirates
Marie: parrot

2) Marie: Albert Einstein (may as well put that hair to good use!)
Jacob and Jennifer: theory of relativity

3) Jacob and Jennifer: bank robbers
Marie: bag of money

4) Marie: scuba diver
Jacob: shark
Jennifer: surfer

5) Jacob and Jennifer: popcorn venders
Marie: bag of popcorn

But if we're being realistic, I have almost zero sewing ability and just as little desire to fork over too many dollars for store bought costumes, so we'll probably end up as a trio of ghosts or something.