Three Posts in One

I am having trouble adjusting to this new work at home lifestyle. I went from having too much time on my hands to having not enough. Where is the happy medium. I never realized how busy I am being a wife and mother until I lost all the contemplation time I had. I love contemplation time. You might call it watching TV, reading, blogging, gardening, staring out into space thinking of things.

I have been so busy today that here and now at 10:30PM I am drinking wine and writing a blog post instead of going to bed. I have to get up at 10 til 6AM tomorrow and I usually like to have a good bit of sleep. Today I am feeling like I need a good bit of contemplation instead.

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Lily's school thing seems to be working itself out. She loves school. Her teacher works harder than most 20 teachers put together. Lily comes home and works hard on her homework, wanting very much to get it right. Who am I to throw a wrench in the mix. I may have taught Lily to read, but. I taught her the memorization method and at school she is learning phonics. The vocabulary that her teacher uses and uses to test Lily is unfamiliar to Lily. She therefore tested poorly. Everyday she is catching on to this vocabulary and phonics stuff. Knowing how to read most of the words she is sounding out is an advantage. She still has to sound out some words and she understands this concept. I am so excited she is learning at school. I think that the entire school uses this phonics system and so learning it the teacher's way is going to be advantages throughout her elementary education.

I guess I have decided to not talk to the teacher about the difference between my impression of Lily's abilities and the results of her test. Her teacher is very A personality. Like Lily, they should be best friends. The teacher works so hard and everything in the class is just so. They have so much structure and the pace is so fast. It is just right for Lily. It took her awhile to adjust.

Every day Lily comes home and tells me or her stuffed animals about how much she wants to yell at her teacher. Whenever a kid gets in trouble it makes Lily so mad. The teacher has a system of colored tickets, you start on green and if you have to pull a ticket you go down to blue, then yellow, then orange, the red. Red means you have to go to the principal. Lily came home on blue one time. She was blowing in other kid's faces and would not stop when asked. She thought it was funny. Lily had to pull her ticket. Every other day of the entire year she has come home on green. but, that one day, oh boy.

Whenever another child has to pull a ticket I think it reminds Lily of how it felt. She wants to yell at the teacher. Or hit the teacher. Sometimes she tells her stuffed animals about how all the kids should scream at the teacher, you are mean, we don't want to pull our tickets. It hurts our feelings, etc. She will go on and on about this. Daily. I love her never say die attitude. I want to join her on the no pulling tickets picket line. But, I tell her that the teacher is trying to help the kids to remember their manners. I tell Lily how much her teacher likes her and how great it is at school and how she is so lucky to have such a great teacher. She looks at me like I have two heads. I wonder if my propaganda will ever work? I can't believe I am sticking up for the man (teacher is actually a woman) against my own little rebel. On the inside I am with her.

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Lily and I are on the mend. She has been back in school since Monday. I am able to sleep through the night. Jeff came home from work today sick. He is distraught as this is the 3rd time he has been sick in a year. Previously not having been sick three times in his entire life. He says there must be nasty awful bugs and viruses here in Mississippi, I said, you have a young daughter dude. She picks it up and passes it all to us. He said, oh. I thought I would have built up an immunity with all the sickness from Mandy's younger years. Appears not. Joy. Poor Lily has had one thing after another since school began. She handles it well and fights it off, but I don't think she has been completely well in a very long time.

Weird trivia, Lily has never had an antibiotic - military is stingy. Mandy has only had them a couple of times long ago. Weird, huh.

Blue Skies and Sunshine

Lily came home early from school on Tuesday for throwing up and has been home with me ever since.

She has been battling a fever.

I have been battling a cough.

My cough is keeping me up at night.

The combination of worry for her and lack of sleep has left me in a fog.

Today is better.

Lily's has been fever free since 1PM yesterday. I did keep her home again from school today just to be sure and she is doing very well.

I slept last night too.

The sun is out and the sky is blue. Do you think it would be bad for us to enjoy the weather when she is home sick from school?

I am so very grateful that I have the opportunity to be able to drop everything and be here for her until she is completely well.

Lily just got herself a glass of water while I was typing this out. I love five!

Lost My Voice

I cannot seem to shake this cold I have. Which is annoying because the rest of the family got it and got over it just fine. I must be the weak one.

I lost my voice over the weekend. After awhile the family gave up talking to me and I went into Lily's room and took a nap. All by myself for about 3 hours. Every morning Lily asks if I have my voice back or not. She doesn't want to have anything to do with a whispering mom. Trying to talk makes me cough. I think my sign language and funny faces are hillarious. Lily not so much.

People keep calling me on the phone asking for me to volunteer. I have been staying away from the school while I am sick. They normally nag, but with the voice I currently barely have they just tell me to get well.

I have to work at the office today. Hoping I don't cough all over the boss. Better stop for cough drops on the way.

I hate being sick.

At the Bus Stop

Neighbor Lady: Just to let y'all know I am having a party this Saturday.

Me: What time should I be there?

Neighbor Lady: ..... {blink.blink}

Neighbor Lady: You can come if you want to.

*****************

My first invitation, aren't my southern neighbors lovely?

Kindergarten Testing

Lily's school has thus far given her two standardized tests. One was administered by the school counsilor and Lily scored very high, way above average on her ability to read for a kindergartener. The other test was adminstered by her teacher and on that test Lily scored about average or even below average on her ability to read. The teacher wrote in the note that the kids were sat at a computer and had to listen to the computer asked questions and then respond.

The school says that these tests are given in order to establish where the children are when they enter the school in order to monitor if they are improving. I guess to assess if the teacher is actually teaching the kids.

In the first test there isn't a lot of room for improvement as she maxed out on the test. They were not testing if she could write her name, because she definetly could use some improvement on that. This was a test to see if she could read and she can read apparently very far above her grade level.

The second test was controlled by the teacher. I think that a) the teacher's impression of Lily is that she is not all that bright. Because she doesn't listen and she can't write. But this was a test to see if she could read. The categories on the test are things like can she recoginize her letters, match the capital and the lower case - she scored very low there - which is an obvious testing error becuase she could do this very well since she was two year old. Lily has a fondness for letters and numbers and flashcards are one of her favorite toys. She lines them up in ABC order first capital and then lower case - for years. If the tests says that she cannot identify which capital letter goes with which lower case letter the test is flawed. Or is it the test taker? B) This teacher's assessment of her job is based on Lily's improvement - is it really in her best interest to say that Lily has maxed out on everything at the beginning of the year. Doesn't really make her look all that good.

I guess that makes me sound like I don't trust or like the teacher. I do trust her and like her very much. I just feel that this test is not a reflection of Lily's abilities and that the other test backs me up. At least there is the other test.

I don't know if I should say anything to the teacher. Like, your test is completely wrong. I don't think that this test is reflective of anything other than the teacher's opinion and my telling her she is wrong is not going to change her mind. Perhaps I will say something at the parent teacher conference. I have not as of yet told the teacher that Lily reads at home.

Lily's hand writting is improving by leaps and bounds. We still get what I call nasty grams on her school work, things like:

practice your handwritting

practice writting your name

color in the lines

or my favorite

don't scribble

We have had one "good job". I saved it. I don't read the mean ones to Lily. We do practice handwritting every day. She loves to practice handwritting and we sit at the table and she is the teacher and tells me what to do and how to do it. At first I was correcting her and very worried about teaching her to make it perfect. But, that isn't how I taught her to read or count and that method has never worked with Lily, especially when I tried to potty train her. {shudders}

So I am taking a back seat, I am encouraging her to learn to write on her own. I give her the resources, like examples. But, I give encouragment for her efforts in order that the effort is fun and she will continue to practice. A part of me feels that I am not being hard enough on her and she needs to be told she is doing it wrong, when appropriate, but experience tells me that method doesn't work well when it is one on one her and me.

When I was helping Mandy with her homework as a elementary school student (she is now a senior) I would grab the pencil out of her hand, take the paper and show her how it was done. I was very smug and she always felt like I was saying she was stupid. So I sit on my hands, I have grabbed the paper from Lily, but I try, and I am working on listening and encouraging.

I guess I just took a major detour from the subject of kindergarten testing. I am a little frustrated that this one test did not accurately reflect Lily's ability to read. It did accurately reflect her ability to listen and follow directions. I guess I feel those are two entirely different things. But, I am asking you, does it matter?

One possible scenereo is that by the end of the school year Lily's teacher's test will show that she is now way above average and attribute Lily's success to her great teaching abilities. Another scenerio is that at the end of the year the teacher will still beleive Lily is on the slow side of average. I don't know that it actually matters what this one woman believes. As long as Lily does progress in the areas she needs help like writting and listening, abilities that are not tested. perhaps that is not entirely true as a person who is not able to listen well does not do well on reading tests where there are complex directions which must be followed in order to establish you understand the that B and b are both the same letter in different forms.

Procrastination is the Cornerstone of Productivity

This morning I could not tell if Lily was too sick to go to school or too well to stay home from school. She ended up going.

In other news I am getting a bit burned out on all this work, work, work. Adding 4-5 hours of work to my schedule 7 days a week is starting to get on my nerves.

My bosses are very nice though. They are appreciative of how hard I work, they have amazing work ethic. I get my first pay check tomorrow maybe that will perk me up.

Yesterday, the Kindergarten at Lily's school had a picnic to celebrate the letter p. We brought foods that begin with the letter p for our picnic. Parents were invited. One of my new friends whose daughter is in Lily's class and they also live around the corner, her husband has been deployed to Iraq and came home yesterday in time for the picnic. I cried. I cry just talking about it. The kids didn't know he would be there. What a moment. The dad is a critical care nurse. I always find it amazing how strong some people are at their core. I am horrid in any type of emergency. I have trouble watching a dad and daughter be reunited - imagine I would fall apart if I had to administer to the wounds of a fellow solider - every day for six months. Yikes.

Guess I better get to work. Been procrastinating for about 3 1/2 hours... Maybe one more cup of coffee first. Anyone want to go out for some sushi?

Hurricane Ike

A gallery of photos cataloging the destruction left in Ike's wake, taken by Austin American Statesman can be seen here.

The Red Cross:

• Has 25 mobile kitchens moving into the ike affected areas, ready to serve up to 500,000 meals.
  
  
• Are ready with 1 million ready to eat meals for those impacted by Ike.
  
  
• Have 2, 000 disaster relief workers on the ground. 1,400 more on their way to help those affected by Ike.
  

Here in Mississippi on Thursday Morning the Gulf of Mexico rose up about a block from where it normally gently laps the shore. Roads, bridges and homes were flooded. During high tide it was impossible to get in or out of my neighborhood. This flooding continued through Friday until Ike made landfall in Texas several hundred miles away. We did not get any rain that I know of the flooding was the entire Gulf of Mexico being pushed inland. The storm was so big it lifted the Gulf up and pushed that enormous body of water about a block inland. It was unbelievable to see.

It has been my experience here on the Gulf that the Red Cross does excellent work. If you are inspired to help, donating to the Red Cross is one option that I can tell you will make a difference here today and in future tragedies.

Feeling Needed

Just a quick note about my new job.

I love it.

Now I am off to shower and voluteer at the school. Someone has to cut out all the letters for the kindergarten teachers and coalate all the construction paper for the first grade teachers. I am pretty sure I am going to be asked to continue to count the fund raisier monies. I guess I like all that too. Is it posible to be more boring than me?

I went to the home of my new employers yesterday. They work out of their home. I got to hear their Katrina story which is that they stayed, their home and cars were destroyed, they found themselves with a shopping cart full of things that were salvagable from their home and covered in dirt and scratches, with no where to go and no way to get there. What a story. What a run-on sentence!

They got a new home after Katrina, one that needed a lot of work. They are so busy with the new business that the new home is still under construction. It is also their office.

I was there for about three and a half hours. The pace was incredible. They are both incredibly smart and juggling a million things at once. Happy and loving their life but the pace was staggering. It was amazing that I was able to keep up. I think I was a bit impressive, my mind still works.

I was up after midnight last night getting things in order and working. Up at 5:30 to get the girls off to school. I couldn't help but notice the mommy pace is very peaceful and slow. My darling kids do not do well with rushing. We get up with plenty of time to get ready and we end up doing a lot of waiting and goofing around in the morning. I think I was missing the pushing my brain to the limit.

I was feeling like I had nothing to offer the fast paced working world. Here I am feeling like I am a valuable part of a team. I never thought it was posible to walk my kid to the bus in the morning, be there in the afternoon when she gets off the bus and still be a vibrant part of a team. I love the internet and the fact that it has working outside of an office possible.

I guess that was more than a quick note.

Please say a prayer for my friend Angel. I believe in prayer and if you do too, she could use some love.

Good at School Bad at Home

The Friday before Gustav, whenever that was, Lily came home with a note from the teacher saying she had been chosen as Star Student of the week for doing a great job. You could have blown me over with a feather. Her teacher and assistant teacher describe my Lily as being sweet and bright.

This same girl gets off the bus everyday with a smile. She gets on the bus with a smile. However, on the short walk from the bus stop to our home she has almost always begun to cry about something. This crying usually continues off and on until she goes to bed.

She seems to be able to behave beautifully at school, but she saves it all up for me. How sweet of her. I do realize this is entirely my fault and the child needs more discipline. I am slowly holding her more and more accountable at home. I cannot tell you how happy I am that she is doing well at school.


Today Lily started asking me questions like, "what would happen if ...."

.... If I run in school?

.... If I yell in school?

.... If I hit the teacher?

I wonder if she is contemplating trying some of her less than favorable behaviors at school. I have no doubt she already has plans to take over the world.

So Ends the Summer

I never got the chance to tell you the story of how swim lessons ended. To recap: Lily took three - two week sessions of swim lessons over the summer. That is a total of six weeks of swim lessons four times per week or 24 lessons. Lily had a blast and loved every minute of it.

At the pool there is a big slide. Lily had wanted to go down the big slide since our adventures in swim lessons last summer. The slide was closed due to damage it sustained in Katrina. However, this summer on the last day of our first session of swim lessons the slide was re-opened and all the kids got to go down the slide. All the kids except the little ones in the mommy and me swim class. Lily was so upset because everyday she had been asking me if she could go down this slide for over a year and now others were going down, but not her.

The second session of swim lessons Lily was now in the level one class and eligible to go down the slide. It is all we talked about for the entire week. One of the mothers told me that the kids would be taken down the slide every Friday. I told Lily and it turns out that was misinformation. The plan was to take the kids down the slide every other Friday, on the last day of a session. So dumb. Lily was again devastated, but her very sweet and cool instructors took her down the slide on that day. Lily was on that day the only child who was given the opportunity to go down the slide. She got a pretty good dunking after flying threw the air and I wasn't sure how much she enjoyed the slide.

The following week was the end of the second session of swim lessons, Lily was in a class eligible for going down the slide, all things were a go. Again she was extremely excited. And everything went well and Lily had a blast. Lily was the only child in level one who went down the slide unassisted. The other children went down on an instructors lap and had their precious head held up above the water so as not to be dunked. Lily asked if she could go down alone and she did. She had a blast even with the dunking and she went down the slide several times.

The next Friday there was no slide and Lily understood. But, the final Friday of swim lessons the weirdest thing occurred. Lily was excited and talked of nothing but the slide. However, when the time came for her to go down the slide, another child was crying. He did not want to go down the slide even on the instructors lap. He was hysterical and he was Lily's friend. His mother said he did not have to go down the slide and he sat over with the moms to watch the kids go down the slide.

The instructors had Lily go first because the other kids were all afraid of the slide. They love Lily because she is always so excited about everything that it sometimes rubs off on the other kids. However, this time it worked the other way. At the top of the slide Lily refused to go down. She even refused to go down on an instructors lap. She said she was afraid. What is that some sort of peer pressure?

They had Lily climb down the ladder and in doing so she somehow managed to rip the toe nail off of one of her toes. It was completely crushed and blood was everywhere. Lily was crying and it took me awhile to figure out what was wrong. I carried her over to the lifeguard office to get a band aide. The lifeguard was more worried about putting on rubber gloves then in handing me a band aide. Once she got her rubber gloves and put them on she opened the most awful and dirty looking first aide kit I had ever seen. Everything was wet, rusty and gross. I scooped up Lily and took her to the car. I was not going to let anything from that first aide kit touch my precious baby.

The swimming pool is only a block from Jeff's work and as luck would have it he works at a hospital. I called and told him we were on the way. I had to park very far away. I couldn't put a shoe on Lily so I had to carry her. It was about 100 degrees and with 90 percent humidity and I was carrying my kid in a steaming parking lot for what felt like miles. We arrived at the hospital and of course there is so much construction I had to walk all the way around the the other side of the hospital and then back through all the halls to find Jeff. We arrived and Jeff had an enormous amount of gauze for Lily's tiny little toe. He did not have a band aide. He also had tweezers that did not look clean for me to remove the hanging bits of toe nail. I decided to just use my fingers and then made him go and get me a regular band aide.

After putting on the band aide I put on her she and she was able to walk. We bought cookies from some fund raiser and then went back to the car. Luckily she is brave enough to walk all that way or I would have passed out from heat exhaustion. As we exited the parking lot we had to drive back by the swim lessons and I decided to stop in to say goodbye to her instructors. Even though it ended badly Lily loved her teachers and they treated her so very well. All the other kids and parents were gone by then but we went and gave hugs and said our goodbyes. And so ended our summer swim lesson fun.

I got the job

I had my interview this morning. Last night I HAD to go out and get a new outfit for the interview. I am already in the whole. But, I got the job. I start Tuesday. I am still going to be able to do volunteer work and most of my new job will be from home.

I am not going to be taking photos of cars. I am going to be doing data entry from home and some secretary work at their home office a few hours per week. Works out perfect for me and I am glad I will be able to contribute to the family.

We have always had an emergency stash of savings. This summer we seem to be having one emergency after another. The house needed to be painted and we had dry roted decaying boards, our car died,and then there was the hurricane evacuation. Our emergency money has all disappeared so this job seems to have landed at just the right time.

It is weird because I decided to look for a job and this was the first job that popped up on my screen, my new boss needed someone like me (a jack of all trades willing to work as an independant contractor without a guaranteed weekly salary). She turned on her computer and mine was the first application she saw out of more than 20 and I was called within 10 minutes. If it works out it is like the universe aligned for both of us in that moment. If it turns out to be a disaster ...

There really aren't any other jobs available during the hours I can work. Especially not at this rate of pay. So life is good today. Next week it looks like we are going to have to evacuate for another hurricane. I just want to go on the record saying that there is a difference between a tropical storm and a cat 3 hurricane. Also I would like to point out to the people working at the weather channel that Mississippi is located between Louisiana and Alabama. They chose to ignore our existence all together during both Katrina and Gustav. I hate the weather channel.

Job Interview

I haven't had a job in about 7 years I think. I mean a paying gig. I work all the time, all day, all night, work, work, work.

I am going crazy being home alone during the day. I have things to do. But, I have totally lost my mind. I think I am grieving the ending of Lily's baby years. She is after all my last baby. The walls are closing in on me and I am so depressed I am having to force myself to eat, shower, etc.

I have been volunteering a lot. That is nice and all. But, it is not enough. I was talking to Jeff about it and I told him I really want to get a job. I think if I had a purpose, someone counting on me, during those long hours I might not feel the walls closing in on me. I am disappointed in myself for not being more productive. But, I hit the wall of funk and I went splat.

Jeff tells me that financially we are hurting. This summer killed us. He said any money I earn would be tremendously helpful. So I looked online and I found the coolest job. It is a contract position, paid by the job, no set hours. Much of the job is done at home on the computer. Other parts can be done around my schedule.

So I applied. They called me up 10 minutes later and I have an interview tomorrow. They said that they were looking for someone just like me. That they are a home based company, an Internet start up and that they are so small that they need someone who can do a lot of things. They said that my background as a secretary and computer information science major are great. They need a little bit of secretary stuff, a little bit of data entry stuff and a little bit of in the field stuff. This company takes picture and posts information about cars that are for sale on lots. They also enter this info onto craigslist. I would have to go to dealerships and take pictures and gather info about the cars on the lots and then upload all that to the Internet.

They ask if I know how to upload photos from a camera to the Internet. Ha. I explained about the hours I am available due to wanting to be home for Lily in the morning and in the afternoon and they are willing to work around my mommy duties. They also said that they are rapidly expanding and that there is opportunities for growth within the company.

It all seems to be falling into place so smoothly like it is meant to be. Or is it too good to be true. Very excited. Next thing you know I might have an actual paycheck.

We're Home

We made it home safe and sound. Our home is fine no damage. More later.