Keepin it Real

I am by no means a neat freak.  In fact I'm a little bit of a slob.  Last year and the year before I won the cleanest classroom award at school and Dale just laughed.  And laughed.  Hard.  And then he laughed some more.  I didn't understand it myself...until one of the teachers came forward and said she got her whole team to vote for me because she spent an afternoon in my classroom and noticed all of my labeled bins.  I have somewhat of an obsession with bins.  5 years ago the 2nd grade team ended up with a surplus of textbook money and no one else wanted to spend it, so it landed in my lap.  I went a little crazy with my Really Good Stuff Catalog (awesome place for cheap teacher stuff), and ended up blowing most of the money on bins.  I spent an entire week of my summer vacation going through all of my teacher stuff and organizing it into these beautifully labeled colorful containers.  I didn't realize how many I had until I started sifting through my stuff in preparation to become a stay at home mom...54 bins folks.  54.  Now I have the fun task of finding them new homes.

Looking back I've actually been pretty organized at school...not always clean (my kidney table always has a pile on it), but organized.  Home is another story.  I can't keep it together.  I don't know how people do it, and honestly I haven't really cared until recently.  I've kind of been living by the mantra "Working moms are too tired to clean."  And I was okay with that.  I considered my off track time sacred.  I couldn't possibly taint it by cleaning floorboards or scrubbing toilets.  Then the thought of being a stay at home mom started looking like it could actually become a reality.  I started thinking about what I wanted our home to be like.  And the changes that would have to be made...because if I'm being completely honest, there are a lot of them.  So in December when I went off track I made myself a chore chart (must be the teacher in me :).  Then I stuck to it- and I loved it.  Our house wasn't perfect (18 month old on the loose), but I actually started letting people in when they came to visit instead of speaking through a 2 inch crack in the door so they couldn't see inside.

Now I've been back at school for awhile and once again I can't get a grip on the whole cleaning your house thing.  And I honestly don't know if it will get better once I quit.  I can't quite seem to figure out how to keep up with my 2 year old.  And I only have 1 kid!  I don't know how you moms do it with more than one.  So I guess that's my question- how do you do it?  How do you keep your keep your house clean with kids without spending every spare minute of your day cleaning?  Because I did that, and it's not for me :).  Wish me luck my friends because I'm about to dive into a whole new world, and I'm hoping I can stay afloat!  

Excited to be home with this little one...even if I can't keep up with him :)

  

Park Playin'

I love taking Trey to the park...mainly because when he gets home he's nice and ready for a LONG nap.  This kid has got energy- one of the parents of Dale's piano students assured me that my next kid would nice and calm, because nobody gets 2 crazy ones in a row.  Phew!  Now we can have another one :).

Trey loving the park...

Throwing a fit because he didn't want to leave...and yes, 

this does happen EVERY SINGLE TIME we go.  

 His shoes kept falling off- then he kept getting mad at me because I was taking his picture :).

Hey you guys!!!!

This here is our very own Sloth.  Last month he fell and hit his mouth pretty good.  Poor kid!  Don't worry, it only lasted for a couple of days and now he's as good as new :).

Sick Days

I have twenty or thirty-some-odd sick days at school to blow through right now and only 17 school days left :).  Dale keeps bugging me about using them- but any teacher will tell you the reason we don't take those sick days is because the sub plans are so not worth the time off!!!  Dale says, "Just show a movie!"  For 6 hours though? :)

Imagine having someone take over for you for the day- someone who doesn't know where anything is, or know your routine.  Now imagine having to put that routine into words- where to find things, what to do, specific things that need to be done, how to do things, etc.  Talk about a pain!  Sub plans seriously run around 6 pages long, not to mention the copying and planning that go into them.  Plus the aftermath of a sub is just as exhausting- the piles of work to go through, the notes the sub left, discipline issues (because with the class I have this year I have more than my fair share of those!), and of course trying to figure out what exactly did/did not get done while you were away.

Wow, that really turned into a rant :).  Bottom line: sub plans = huge pain!  

A couple of weeks ago I was forced to take a few sick days- I got some sort of cold and completely lost my voice.  Apparently you need your voice to be able to teach :).  And, I gotta admit, even though I had to write those awful sub plans, I loved spending the day with my sweetheart Trey!

Our sick day together:

Trey with his "Whee"- I used to say "Wheee!" whenever I'd put Trey to bed, because everything is more fun when you use the word "Whee" :).  So now that's what he thinks blankets are called.   

Then Trey got sick...so he had a sick day with Daddy.

 Dale nursed him back to health :)