My subbing adventures

Today's Wednesday...that means it was a work day for me.  Booooo.  I've been substitute teaching now for about 5 months and I suppose I'll say it's okay.  At least when I sub in the Maize district.  I've come to the conclusion that I don't like Wichita schools.  Maybe it's just where I was raised and I'm too preppy or whatever, but I will say that when I walked down that high school hallway for the first time and I was all dressed in my khakis and sweater and not one boy in that hallway had pants pulled up above his knees, the girls were wearing clothes tight enough to be painted on and combs were sticking out of hair....I felt a little out of place....to say the LEAST!  I stood out like a sore thumb. 

It all came to a head when a couple weeks before Christmas for two Wednesdays in a row I subbed in the middle schools and both weeks there were fights in my room.  The second week it was an all out fist fight of two 7th grade boys, both twice my size mind you, pounding the living daylights out of each other in my first hour classroom.  Um yeah.  Not worth the $50 for my half day.  Take me home to my baby please.  I'd rather sell my plasma.  Anyways, that kinda did me in and I took a 6 week hiatus (an extended Christmas break if you will) from the Wichita schools and I still have yet to go back. Thankfully the Lord has been once again faithful and while I was home they called me to sub in the Maize schools (which are SOOOOOO much easier and better!) and while I couldn't do it that week, I told "Sandy - sub finder" (as known by my iphone) that I'd like to work on Wednesdays if possible.  She told me to call and remind her on Tuesdays and she'd look for jobs for me.  Well that's worked.  And I've gotten jobs the last 3 Wednesdays. Praise the Lord!  Today it was a music/vocal class...perfect!  My specialty!  HA!  Thankfully they just took a test and watched Shirley Temple.  Nothing like watching the first half of a movie three times in a row.  Makes me half tempted to go rent it from the library so I can watch the last half of the movie!

Anyways, Maize is a thousand and one trillion bazillion times better and I'm really glad that I keep getting jobs in that district.  As much as I love breaking up fights and pulling 200 lb 7th grade boys off the floor, I think I'll take the other option thank you very much.  I have much respect for teachers who do this every day.  By the end of the day I am exhausted from standing and being "on" all day.  Maybe it's cause I don't work every day anymore or maybe it's just that being a teacher is hard work (I'm willing to vouch for the second).  Props to you teachers out there.  Thanks for lovin' on those kiddos day in and day out because they wear me out after just one day.  I'll stick to my own babies and hanging out with the students at youth group when they call me Julie....not Mrs. Goodman!

Christmas 2010

This year our Christmas break is an extended visit....1 week at the Goodman's and 1 week at the Spader's.  Christmas started at our house in Wichita which we haven't gotten to experience yet since usually we're home already by then.  My parents got to travel to Israel over Christmas this year though so that's why we did it all after the actual holiday.  Christmas Eve was a good family day.  We were excited to have Keira's first Christmas at our house and watch her "open" (or just chew on the bows and the wrapping paper) her presents.  Pete did AWESOME this year and totally surprised me when he brings 5 wrapped presents home from the office (1 being HUGE mind you!!).  I was so surprised and excited to see what he had gotten me!!  :)  He told me he had been "stealing" money from his painting money all year and had gone on quite the shopping spree for me and Keira.  That meant so much to me that he had been thinking so far in advance about the presents he was going to get me.  It was so thoughtful!!  Anyways, Christmas Eve we opened our presents after Keira's morning nap and then went to our favorite restaurant for lunch.  Here are a couple highlights...

My BIG present...I was SOOOOO curious and it was the greatest present ever!  :)

This is what was inside....

Presents under the tree!  Yeah!

Keira's gift from Mommy.

Let the present opening begin!

Pete got me a Michael Buble CD, a fleece electric blanket (which I LOVVVVEEE!), a Famous Footwear giftcard (because I had been recently commenting on how I was in dire need of new black shoes), a pandora charm for my bracelet (a heart with Keira's birthstone in it) and then the big one....three really big framed pictures of Keira for our house.  He seriously did AWESOME!!!!!!!  It was so fun opening presents together and watching Keira look at her new toys.  :)  Pete was playing in the Christmas Eve service so I went by myself and got Keira all dressed up cute in her Christmas dress that I had been waiting to put her in!  :)  We got some cute family pictures.

Our trek home started after the Christmas Eve service and we drove through the night.  We were stuffed solid into our little CRV!! haha.  Literally there was no more room!!  It worked well to drive through the night so Keira and Wrigley could sleep.  We made it in 10 hours and 25 minutes.  Christmas day we just rested and hung out at the house and the whole family came over the day after Christmas.  It was so great to see everyone...I am so blessed with my in laws and 2nd family!  We had a lot of fun opening presents together and just spending good time together.  Keira enjoyed her new toys and her fisher price stand up toy was the highlight present of the year.  She just LOVES it!!  :)

A great game of spoons!

Cyndi of course made QUITE the spread of food and it was so, so good...however, I caught the flu bug Sunday night and it stuck the whole week which made things not so good.  :(  I couldn't keep anything down and was pretty much miserable.  We all went to Wisconsin Dells Monday-Wednesday and while it was a ton of fun and I loved being there, being sick while I was there was no good.  I did manage to get to the pools a couple times though and get some pictures of Keira swimming for the first time.  She wasn't a big fan...all the pictures I got she has a worried/concerned look on her face.  Here is what the most of the pictures look like...

New Years Eve we drove to my parents house and met up with Jamie & Brandon and Matt & Anne McClane.  We left the sleeping babies with Grandma and Grandpa and went to Houlihans for dinner.  It was great and us three girls talked babies the whole time!  Matt & Anne have a little girl Rilyn who is only 10 days younger than Keira.  It was so fun to see all the girls together!

The rest of the week was filled with more present opening, good family time, lots of good food and much relaxing.  I got to go up to Indiana and meet up with my Bethel girls.  We brought all the babies and it's so fun watching them interact with each other.  They are such great friends!!

On Thursday I met up with Jerusalem and her little sweet boy Eli.  Again, so fun comparing babies and talking baby things.  :)

By the end of the week we were definitely ready to get back to our own house.  It's tough living out of a suitcase for 2 full weeks.  I couldn't wait to get Keira back in her own crib and have everything back in it's place.  It's very stressful for me to be out of a routine so once we got back it has been nice to adjust back to the norm.

Overall, this years Christmas was great.  What a blessing to have 2 families that we just love being around and great friends to see and spend time with.  Here are just a couple more pictures that I enjoyed. :)

Twinzies!!  :)

Crawling

My girl is fully on the move these days!  I love it!!  :)

She is exploring everything and has made her tracks over our entire house already.  Last year at Thanksgiving I felt her move for the first time inside of me and this year at Thanksgiving, I got to see her move on her own for the first time!  My life has definitely changed as now I can't just lay her down on the carpet or sit her with a few toys.  I have to constantly be watching her and making sure she's not into anything. I can only imagine that this gets more difficult as she will get faster and eventually start walking.  I just LOVE being able to stay home with her and help her learn the little things.  :)  I came into her room the other day and this is what I saw...

I'm just waiting for the teeth marks to start showing up on her crib rail.  haha.

We got to spend Thanksgiving this year down in Austin, Texas at Ben & Stacy's house.  It was a ton of fun and I thoroughly enjoy spending time with Pete's family.  I have been so blessed to get wonderful inlaws and I couldn't have asked for a better second family!  They are so great!!  We get our family pictures each year...here's our most recent one -

And that's after many takes trying to get Keira to look at the camera.  This is the best we could do.  :)  Here's one of everyone -

We're heading home for Christmas on Christmas day this year.  It will be weird not going to the Christmas Eve service with my family, but my parents and Christy will be in Israel Dec 23 - 31st so we're spending the week after Christmas with Pete's family and then the first week of January with my family in Batavia.  We'll also be celebrating my dad's 60th birthday that week.  I love this time of year as we just get to spend a lot of good quality family time together.  This being Keira's first Christmas will make it extra special!!  :)  So if I don't post within the next couple weeks....Merry Christmas!!  :)

Reflective moments....

Today my heart is for some reason extra sensitive.  I feel like the littlest thing is making me cry.  Yesterday was a rough day for me.  Woke up at 4 am and couldn't fall back asleep, subbed for a 7th grade language arts class and had to physically break up a fist fight during class, got an email from a lady canceling a party, got another email from a lady expressing frustration with some things (harsh words are VERY hard for me to hear...especially when directed at me, I ponder them for days), hurt by some other things that happened, had a POUNDING headache all day long, then got some terrible news about someone I am very close with.  My heart was heavy last night and I was anxious to just crawl into bed.

This morning I woke up with that same heaviness.  My heart just hurts for the broken and hurting.  I have spent much needed time with the Lord this morning and as always it is refreshing, but it just leaves me feeling more aware of my need for his active presence in my life.  Today my heart is soft and Jesus has been extra close that which I am so thankful for.  I often picture him hanging out with Keira and I during the day.  Just watching her with complete awe as I do.  There are moments when I feel like He's telling me how beautiful she is to him.  That makes me smile and I continue to make that a prayer over her life...that she would be so fully aware of God's deep, unconditional love and pursuit of her.  She has given me joy today.  I love turning around to see her and she just squirms with excitement that I'm paying attention to her.  Her little voice and sighs as she plays absolutely melts my heart.  There is no other place that I'd rather be than here with her today.  We occasionally have these moments where we just stare into each others eyes.  She stops moving, I stop moving and we just look at each other.  It's in those moments that I know our souls are communicating.  She can't talk yet or understand my words, but it's in those moments that we share our love for each other.  It's one of the most satisfying things I've ever known.  She is physically a part of me and when they say a mother's connection with her babies is deep, I now know what they are talking about.

Anyways, I'm obviously in a deep reflective mood today.  Take my thoughts for what they are.  I'm off to put my girl down for a nap.

And we have a tooth folks.

It finally came through!  Keira's been teething for many weeks now and I could tell that just recently it was really hurting her.  All of a sudden she hasn't been taking the bottle anymore and her sudden interest in her paci (not to suck...just to chew on) had definitely picked up.  She's been more fussy than normal and I just had a feeling that it was going to poke it's way through her gums any day now.  I kept feeling around and yesterday morning I felt some bumps of the top of a tooth and today I for sure felt it and could even see the surface of it (when she would let me get a glance in her mouth).  Finally!  Except that's just one of many yet to come!!  :)

I think we've finally made it through the time change.  It didn't take too long and I think she's finally adjusted to the new schedule.  We're still working our way back up to 7:00 bedtime but the last 3 mornings she has slept in until 7:40 or so...yesterday she woke up at 8!  Yeah!!  Being the schedule freak I am, I was nervous about it and felt like we finally had things down...and then it all changes!  I suppose that's how it is with babies though and I just need to make the adjustments and loosen up a bit.

On a side note...don't you just want to EAT up these thighs!!  Oh how I love my girl!!!

She's onto solids.

I wanted to make sure I write down the process I've been using with Keira so for my next baby, I can look back and use it as a reference.  I will admit, introducing solids has made me a little nervous.  Every time I feed Keira, I'm so scared she's going to have some crazy allergic reaction and not be able to breathe or she's going to choke and I'm not going to know what to do.  I make sure to mush, mush, mush up what I'm feeding her really good, but there's still a little part of me that gets nervous.  Especially with all of Pete's allergies...I think that's why I've been so cautious.

I gave Keira her first food (rice cereal) when my mom was here back in the middle of September.  Keira was just at 5 months and she loved it and did great!!  :)

Mmmm....what's that Mom??

I'm ready, let's do this eating thing!

Love it!!

We made use of the bumbo chair and that worked until we got her a big girl high chair!  :)  I, of course, researched all the high chairs and this one got 5 stars out of 193 reviews on the babiesrus website.  But don't think I spent $179 on a high chair.  I did my research and hunted and hunted and got this exact one for $86 on ebay.  Yes, the waiting paid off, I'm a bargain shopper!!  :)  Here's my girl in her new chair - 

Anyways, the eating has been going very well and Keira is loving solids.  I started with the rice cereal and then introduced bananas and then avocado.  At first Keira HATED avocado (she gagged a few times while I was giving it to her).  My mom suggested adding some cereal and breastmilk to it to soften the taste and that helped a ton.  She now loves it and gobbles it up every time I feed it to her!

I knew I wanted to make my own baby food since it was so much cheaper.  One jar of baby food is $0.79 at the store and there's no way I was going to buy a ton of those when I could make about 10x that much by doing it myself for $3.00.  I went to the grocery store and bought pears, peas, squash, sweet potato, peaches and apples.  I then had a "baby food making morning" and went to town.  I cooked the sweet potato and squash and steamed the apples and pears and peaches.  After a ton of dirty dishes, pureeing, and lots of scooping into ice cube trays and freezing, what I was left with afterwards was many, many frozen cubes of baby food that will hopefully last us for another month or so.  For a grand total of $14, I will feed my daughter healthy, homemade food for a good month.  :)  I think I'll do it this way for awhile and while the convenience of baby food jars is nice, I'm all up for saving money.  Next...bring on the Cheerios.  :) (well maybe not for a couple months)

What kind of mom am I??

I was thinking this morning of the way that I "mother" Keira and I got to thinking about all the different kind of "mom's" there are out there.  As I've gone through this whole process of being pregnant and now parenting the first 6 months of Keira's life, I'm realizing that the people I've gone to and asked questions to are people I see myself with similar parenting styles.  So here are the different types of mom's I've thought of:

* Organic Mom - I see this mom as the mom who buys all organic food, organic bedding and clothes, cloth diapers, has a super tight reign on what her kids are doing, when they are doing it, who they are friends with, what they eat, carries hand sanitizer for anyone who wants to touch her baby...basically a mom who is super, super intentional about anything and everything that has to do with parenting and raising her kids in the "right" way and making sure that they aren't subject to any "germs" so to say.

* Relaxed Mom - This mom is the one who is parenting in the way that she lives her own life - super relaxed.  Not super strict, no schedule, when the baby naps (IF the baby naps) is different everyday.  No set bedtime and her schedule didn't change one bit when the baby was born.  She carts the baby around to and from whatever she has to do that day.  The baby fits into HER schedule, not the other way around.  Super, super flexible.

* Schedule Mom - Schedule, schedule, schedule....down to the minute.  This mom has her baby tired at the exact minute every day and in bed in the exact same position.  Eating is all planned out and thought through very strategically.  Waketime is intentional and not overstimulating.  Babies schedule is first and the mom works around nap time(s).

* Do-It-Yourself Mom - This is the mom who doesn't buy anything new and makes all the baby clothing and bedding and blankets and toys.  Her lifelong dream has been to be a homemaker and a homecooked dinner is on the table every evening.

(I'm sure there are plenty more but these are just the few I thought of this morning)

It's been an interesting process to watch myself parent and learn how I do things.  It's funny because before I was a parent myself, I would look at the things that I saw other moms doing and often times be like "Are you kidding me?!?!  Ease up!!" or "Seriously, you baby has to be exposed to germs at some point.  That's why they are always sick!"  Now that I'm there myself...I find myself doing some of the things that I would get so annoyed by before parenting.  For instance...if I had to put myself into one of the categories above, I would probably place myself in the scheduled mom category.  I am a HUGE fan of routine and schedules and predictability.  This has been a major adjustment and at the beginning was extremely hard for me.  Keira didn't always sleep when I wanted her to or eat when she needed to which would throw me off.  It was frustrating and took me a few months to ease up.  This is kinda OCD and I fully admit this, but I keep track of (and have been since she was 6 weeks old) everything Keira does on my phone using an app called "Total Baby".  Everything from diapers (wet, poopy, what kind of poop), sleep schedule, eating schedule (what side, all her solids she eats, bottles), baths, medicine, vitamins, doctor's appointments, growth, vaccines.  It's kinda ridiculous....I am fully aware of that.  :)  Regardless...it's my brain.  Since not every day is the same (to an extent), I'm so dependent on watching my phone.

Anyways, all this to say, some of the things I'm now doing as a parent myself have surprised me.  I am a super intentional person and while I don't fall into the "organic" category... I do think about almost everything that has to do with or happens to Keira and how it's going to effect her now and in the future. I try to be intentional with the way that I talk to her and interact with her and intentional in the ways that I pray for and with her.  Before she was born I read anything and everything about what was happening to her and how she was growing.  When she's approaching a new stage, I research it to a large extent and learn everything I can about how to do it right and the most effectively.

So these were just a few of the thoughts running through my head this morning.  Keira is growing like a WEED (especially since she started eating solids....I feel like she's gained like 10 pounds!) haha.  She is SUCH a JOY these days and her laughs and kisses and giggles make me fall more in love with this little girl than I ever, ever could have imagined.  It's the deepest, most intense love (besides my husband) that I've experienced.  I guess when I reread through this before I hit the post button, the question that came to mind is not what kind of mom am I but what kind of mom does GOD want me to be?  He has given us the gift of Keira Blair and how can I parent her in the way that God desires her to be raised?  Something to think about I suppose.  Anyways...those are the thoughts going through my head.  God help me to raise this little girl in a way that honors you and may she grow up to have a kind, gentle, loving spirit.  May she come to know you at a young age and may her heart always seek to know you more.  Thank you for the blessing of my sweet, sweet baby girl!!