Over the past several months, I have been pretty quiet online. I love reading about all of
your lives, however, and seeing pictures of what you are all up to. Sometimes I miss connecting with people, though, and this blog was started as an attempt to connect up with old and current friends and acquaintances. Today, I felt like sharing just a bit of what I have been up to, especially with those of you whom I haven't seen for a while. This picture here is of a bubble machine. My little 1 year old just loves bubbles. Many of our lazy summer afternoons were spent on our porch, just simply enjoying the bursts of bubbles all around.
I have enjoyed being a mom to this little girl more than I knew I would. I always knew I would love teaching and taught school for a while before having a kid of my own. Now, I get to do both and that is the beauty of working part-time. I actually looked forward to going back to school this year as I believe I have really found my balance, though I do miss this little girl when I am gone. When I am with her, I try to make her life fun and happy. Here is a picture of her sitting on my mom's lap on the Chick-Fil-a train. She has a great time with my mom and I think we went on this train at least two or three times at the Highland Fling last month.
I think little babies are so cute in hats. My little girl has never wanted to wear a hat--she pulls them off right away. However, one day she got into my French stuff in the closet and she just loved a red béret that I had bought at a tourist shop in Paris. She didn't want to take it off. Her other favorite thing were some perfumes from a perfume factory. You can't see her hand very well, but she has one of those perfumes in her hand and doesn't want to let it go.
She is just fascinated by anything in the kitchen. Her favorites include the dishwasher, the popcorn machine and the mixer. Here, she helped make my mom's German chocolate birthday cake. I think she is going to really enjoy baking.
She is 14 months old, yet she doesn't want to walk. She much prefers crawling. I did finally get a picture of her standing up all by herself, though. Awe, it's so much fun to be with her as she makes so much progress and catch all these little smiles.
When it comes to teaching, I feel I have really hit the jackpot in French classes this year. I was a bit worried to have two classes of 40 kids on the first day of class. I felt like that was just asking for discipline issues. However, my first class of the day, French 2, which is often at a time when they are all still asleep, has been so fun and energetic. I have been teaching them for nearly a month and they are always on task, asking questions and truly wanting to learn. This past week, I set them up with penpals from La Réunion. La Réunion is a small island to the east of Madagascar. From what I understand, there is an active volcano there and it is just green and filled with waterfalls. This has been awesome because nobody seemed to have heard of La Réunion before this penpal project. Now they all want to travel there. I have added it to my "Must See" places and the English teacher on this French island has been awesome to correspond with!
I really feel that teaching is such a great job. Even if it isn't always easy, there are always kids who need teachers that love them and are passionate about their subject area. I feel so blessed to have a great mom and neighbors to take good care of my baby so that I can teach other peoples' kids and learn lots of new things myself. I also can't believe how much I truly love part-time. I have time to cook, go to the library and do all sorts of stay-at-home mom things on my off-days but I can really put 100% into teaching when I am at school!
