20 Years

Last night in class I told about a time in the fall of 1992 that my sixth graders wrote letters to the editor regarding a political issue. It hit me later that was almost 20 years ago! I've now spent just about the same nuber of years as an educator (4 years as a teacher, 7 years as a principal, and 9 years as a professor) as I spent as a student (Kindergarten through Bachelor's degree = 15 years, master's degree completed in 1994, and after taking a break from higher education for a few years I earned my doctorate in 2002). I'd like to spend the next 20 years as a stay-at-home mom (beginning in October). I say 20 years in case the Lord allows us to have our fourth in a couple of years (FET). It would be incredible to have at least one child under our roof for 24 years (2008-2032), and at that point we could hopefully start looking forward to becoming grandparents in the not so distant future! On a day like today (one in which I could be with the kids all day), I have to admit part of me wishes I was already a SAHM. I'm still busy even on days I don't go to school - today I baked 4 dozen Heath bar cookies, went to the library, picked up a gallon of milk, did a load of laundry, did a load of dishes, etc. If the only thing my job required of me was teaching, that would be one thing. That's the best part of the job. However, we have other duties. Yesterday I conducted a peer observation of an adjunct and reviewed two applications for promotion. I have 30 more applications to review. Last Friday my department chair gave me a curricular project to complete. The list could go on, but you get the idea. If I didn't have kids, my heart would be more into those projects, but I'll admit if I had the choice, I'd prefer to be with my munchkins. It doesn't help me emotionally that Nadia has been struggling emotionally every time I have been leaving for school the past three weeks. She got used to Mommy being home all the time.
Although I'm looking forward to becoming a stay-at-home-mom, I wouldn't actually enjoy being in our house every day, all day long. I'd get cabin fever! Nadia gets it before I do. She wanted to go somewhere yesterday, but we stayed at home in the morning as I knew I was leaving for work at 1:20 (earlier than usual). Today I decided to give our local library's storytime a whirl, as we hadn't gone there in several months. The good news is that the librarian read two books (she only read one the last time), and she had a Valentine's Day craft ready for the kids to do (she hadn't been doing crafts). The bad news is that there always used to be quite a few kids in attendance, but if we hadn't shown up today, there would have only been one child there. Obviously we aren't the only ones who stopped going. I don't plan on going every Friday like we used to do, but I will probably take the kids there every now and then. The previous librarian did a much better job. She read more stories and interspersed them with songs and other things that got the kids moving.

Tomorrow will be the big day when I reintroduce solid food to Ian. Please pray it goes as smoothly as possible. He gained quite a bit of weight over the past week as he weighed 27 lbs on Wednesday at the WIC office (with his clothes on). He's  been drinking TONS of Elecare/ almond milk every day (as much as 80 ounces in a day). Today he really cut back on how much he drank, which was good timing since I won't be letting him have anywhere near that much tomorrow. He threw up at the WIC office on Wednesday afternoon and in his booster seat on Thursday morning. I was going to call the Allergist to see if we should get him back on Pulmicort if he threw up one more time, but he didn't throw up again since that time.