Due Dates

WOW!  I cannot hardly believe it's been since November since I posted last!  I guess that makes me the slacker, ha!  Anyways...

Due Dates are REALLY important, even though babies are generally not born on them!  Samuel turned 1 year old (is that really possible?!?!) on January 27th, however we have not reached his due date yet, which makes him just over 10.5 months adjusted now.

He's doing great though!  During the day he likes to keep busy grabbing any papers/keys within reach, watching Momma work out and just generally causing any mischief he can get his hands on.  The music set and little car Oma and Opa gave him last weekend have been great for funneling his energy!

That said he's not mobile.... yet.  I truly believe he is able to crawl, just doesn't.  He does LOVE being on his tummy and goes in circles like it's nobody's business and eventually makes it a few feet across the floor.  He is increasingly enjoying standing (with support), but is definitely not interested in taking any steps at this point.  My only request is that he is fully mobile by August (more on that below if you haven't heard our news).

Currently he is also experimenting with dropping his morning nap, which means he will only have 1 afternoon nap.  I'm saddened by that because I love having 2 nap times to do things or nap myself, but alas I'll adjust to only 1 nap time!

So I really want him mobile in the next few months because...  I want to deal with the challenges that come with a mobile child before we have a newborn!  Samuel's baby brother or sister (don't even bother asking if we know the gender, we don't and we're going to keep it that way until birth) is due August 29th.  Samuel's due date was April 28th, so I guess we are trying our hand at the other A month.

So far this pregnancy has been easier on my than Samuel's.  I believe I had more morning sickness problems (which were still more naseau than actual sickness) this time, but overal my energy level has been much higher.  With Samuel I was simply exhausted and everyone would tell me that that is just the way it is when you're pregnant.  I really wanted to start asking people if they'd borrow my level of exhaustion for a few days and then tell me that it's normal.  It was not normal, I was more tired than most pregnant women and it only went away when Samuel was born.

A contributing factor to my exhaustion level might have been allergies.  Due to getting sick a lot last fall I switched doctor's, went on allergy meds and have had more energy than I have had in years.  In fact Ben told me one night that he had no idea what to do with me having all of that energy (that was just before we got pregnant).  I was definitely tired during first trimester, but it wasn't anything a nap couldn't help.  With Samuel sleep did not help my level of tiredness, I was simply tired all the time.

Right now everything is going completely normal with this pregnancy (and other than exhaustion, it did at this point with Samuel as well).  At the last check-up our baby was definitely hiding from the doctor and it took her quite a while to find him/her so she could get a decent read for herself (and so I could hear well too of course).  So this child is also proving to be quite active in the womb just like big brother.  My doctor asked me if I could feel the baby move already, well I hadn't at that point.  Since that appointment I think I have felt somethings that felt like it did when Samuel moved, but I am not 100% certain.  I'm sure I'll feel the baby in the near future!

That is the big update for now!  Hopefully I will not forget about my blog in the future and keep everyone updated!  We have been quite busy this winter and the coming months do not appear to be slowing down at all!  I'm loving my time home with Samuel!

The Last 3 Months

Hey World!  We're still here....  Though we have gotten quite busy!  I have not forgotten about posting, just all but forgotten about posting.  Once I give a quick drive by of what has been happening since the end of July I'm sure you'll understand!

I think we started August at a sprint.  Samuel had been sleeping through the night or waking only once in July, but a trip to Minnesota for a wedding, some diaper rash and 6 month shots all kind of stopped that I think.  It would not have been soo bad on his sleep, but once we were making progress I started teaching an online class.

To sum up my experience as an online teacher was that overall I really did enjoy it.  Now my first time doing it was rather trying...  During the second week I got Hand/Foot/Mouth Disease and doing anything with my hands and feet caused me pain.  I could not walk well, I could not change diapers and I definitely could not type.  I emailed (by that I mean pecking out the email with the least pained fingers) the class coordinator because of course this happened the weekend before Week 2 of an 8 week course.  Great way to start teaching, with a sub during the second week!

Needing a substitute teacher in my class really threw me off.  I was just starting to figure out what it was I was doing and then I was knocked out miserably sick.  So it took me a while to get my feet fully under me again and I pretty much was working the class at a sprint until the end.  Then throw in a parent that was difficult to work with and I was ecstatic for the class to be over.  Thankfully it was a rather unusual term and I know that.  It is not scaring me away from teaching online again.  I look forward to a (more than likely) better experience next go, but for my sanity I took this term off!

When I was sick we had to call in back up!  My poor husband was getting quite drained from taking care of Samuel (even though we nurse it really hurt my hands to latch him, so Ben even had to latch him for me so I could feed him), taking care of me and trying to keep up at work.  So we called my Mom after a few days of the misery and she really helped loosen up Ben's time and everyone was happier.

Of course the days she got here she comments, "So Samuel got a tooth!"  And I responded with something like, "Uh... Yeah...  He got a tooth!?!?!?"  With how the week was going we didn't even notice it sneak it.  We're guessing it came on August 22nd or 23rd, she noticed it on the 23rd.  About two weeks later he got his second tooth (so now he has two bottom front teeth).  Honestly the teething leading up to the teething actually cutting through wasn't that bad (this time around, we'll see what happens next time!).

We also started Samuel on solids.  First we did rice cereal for about 2 weeks, which he gobbled up.  Then we gave him oatmeal and he refused to have anything more to do with rice, because oatmeal is much tastier.  Then we gave him banana, which he loved.  Moved onto peas next, then sweet potato and then apple.  All of which he thought was the best thing invented since milk (have I ever mentioned Samuel's favorite activity in all the world is eating?).  Next we gave him avocado, which was definitely not a hit.  In fact he got VERY grumpy during the 2 days we tried to feed him some.  So we stopped and he instantly became happy again!  Then we did butternut squash, which he wasn't fond of by itself, but mixed with apples he thinks its just fabulous!  Finally we have introduced him to pears, which was also a hit.  I have zucchini and pumpkin waiting to be made into baby food, so those will be the next ones (I plan on getting the zucchini ready yet today for tomorrow, we'll see if that happens).  He's starting to get so many different foods that he doesn't zoom through what I make in less than a week now.

Of course he likes eating so much that I am going to ask his Doctor as his appointment on Wednesday about 3 meals a day instead of 2 and if we should start adding meats.  From when solids really started getting going (which I would say was when we did sweet potato first) he has really been packing on the weight.  Last week at Mommy and Me (did I say I go to a weekly play group with Samuel?) he weight 13# 9oz, but that was with his cloth diaper on, so he probably was just over 13# (not real sure how heavy the diaper is).  Wednesday we'll know his naked weight, then Thursday is Mommy and Me again, so I can get a rough estimate of the weight of the diaper.

Also at the end of September we made a trip back to Nebraska to visit Ben's Mom.  We were going to go on to Colorado and maybe Wyoming, but with how stressed I was between a son that wasn't sleeping and sprinting to keep up with my online class, we did a much shorter trip.  Hopefully we can do the longer trip soon, because I was definitely bummed to not do it all.

This weekend Samuel and I are heading to my cousin's son's baptism in Milwaukee then the following weekend we'll be doing Thanksgiving with my side of the family at our house, so I am headed into another busy month!  Also I am still working on my German I course that I will be teaching with the Wittenburg Academy starting the end of November.  It's an online classical Lutheran high school.  I'm very excited to be teaching with them!

Anyways I have a few more posts I want to write before I leave town for the weekend, so expect another post from me in the near future.  For now that is a quick run down of the last months' activities! Oh and we have really been working hard on Samuel's routine since my class has ended and since we have gotten him back on it, he has been ridiculously happy and a solid sleeper!

Much Has Happened

I haven't written since the very end of June and a lot has happened!  Some of the highlights have been that my husband and I went to D.C. on vacation.  My Mom, Dad and little brother came and participated in a 5K or 8K with us.  We had VBS at Church (I helped with the little kids drama).  Oh and I started a new job!

I really want to focus on that last point in this post, hopefully I can also post pictures of our D.C. trip at some point in the near future.  As for the race, I couldn't run it, I had to walk it because my knees are still bothering me...

So I got a job teaching Spanish III and IV at a private school.  As many of you know I wasn't planning on applying for teaching jobs.  It's amazing how things can change and how quickly those things can change.  Someone I know also works there and when one of their Spanish teachers resigned in July so came to me to ask me to apply, but I didn't want to.  So she came to me again to ask me to apply.  The more I got thinking about it the more encouraged I was to apply.  Here are two reasons of my I decided to apply after all:

• The school is a much smaller school than where I student taught.  I think I felt lost there because I come from an extremely small school background (in fact both schools I attended growing up were K-12 and both have been consolidated with other schools, due to how small they were, after I was there).  My schools always had 100-200 students in the entire K-12 facility and I student taught in a school that has more like 1400 students in the high school alone...  The school I am currently teaching at is a K-12 building (though much larger than any that I attended growing up) with less than 1000 students in the entire building.  Still many times the size I ever attended, but not nearly so large either!

• I also applied because I knew there would be another Spanish teacher there.  I wouldn't be left on my own at the school trying to figure out all 4 levels of Spanish out by myself.  I teach levels III and IV and our Spanish I and II teacher actually used to teach III and IV and she seems to be a wonderful teacher.  I am excited to be able to work with her!

Yes, there were other reasons I decided to apply, but here are two of the bigger ones.  Needless to say I applied and then got the job (exactly 3 weeks before kids would start school).  About a week after getting the job we left for D.C for a week and a half, then I came home and went straight into teacher in-service (that was almost 2 weeks ago now).

The first two weeks there have been extremely busy, but good.  Now we all could have appreciated having air conditioning several of those days, but we all made it through that.  Just pray for cooler weather so I don't feel like I'm melting!  :-)  The kids overall seem to be responding well to me and I do enjoy my students.  You probably won't find me writing in too much detail about my job here, but I wanted to at least let you know I have it and that I am enjoying it.  Though it is definitely not what I saw myself doing at this point, it is proving to be a good adventure (as all of life is an adventure).

Pray for me that I can teach these high school students to the best of my ability with keeping their needs in mind!