Wow. I didn't realize my last post to this blog was back in August. Eek. I've been so busy with school and not losing weight and the baby and not losing weight and...well, you get the idea.
We're six weeks into the school year, 1/3 of the way through the semester, and I have yet to find a good rhythm for getting lessons planned and work graded. I tend to go in about half an hour before school starts and spend that time and my planning period (the first hour of the day) getting materials ready FOR THAT SAME DAY. While I have a general idea of what my classes will be doing from day to day, I rarely if ever have everything prepared ahead of time. That's going to make it really hard to ever miss a day if Brendan is sick and can't go to daycare, or even if I just need to stay home myself. I really have to do a better job of planning. Also, I've let ungraded work pile up. Thankfully, it did not get noticed by the students or their parents, because until the past week or so no one had access to the online grading system. But now that the portal is open for them to view, I need to do a better job of staying on task.
I need to do a better job of working out, too. Only this past week did I start walking to school, and only two days of the week. I have been told by one of the maintenance guys that I can keep a bike in the boiler room if I want, but I don't know where the boiler room is, and I'm a little embarrassed to ask. I don't know why. If I can figure it out, I'll walk on regular days and ride my bike on Tuesdays and Thursdays, since I'm supposed to stay after and work with the newspaper on those days. But I'm running out of time. I had hoped to be below 175 lbs by the time my brother gets married in May. Now that's only 7 months away, and that means I need to lose like 9 lbs each month. I basically need to stop eating. *sigh*
But on to the boy. He is walking. Heck, he's RUNNING. He has seven (and a half) teeth. He's working on eating chunkier foods, although texture seems to be a problem with him--too many chunks and he barfs. It isn't pleasant. He's almost a year old, two weeks from tomorrow. We're going to have a family birthday party for him, with my dad, my husband's parents, and one of my best friends in town. I thought about having a party for little kids, but we don't know many people, especially not with kids Brendan's age. The sitter who watches him during the day watches three other kids, but I don't really know any of their parents other than to say "hello" when we drop our kids off and pick them up. I might make some cupcakes and take them to the sitter the day after his birthday; the other kids, the sitter, her husband, and her two teenaged girls might enjoy them. I may send token invitations to my sister-in-law and her family, my brother-in-law, and my brother and his girlfriend, even though I know they cannot attend. I don't want anyone to get their feelings hurt. But I'll make a cake--I'm thinking Winnie the Pooh, although I've never decorated a cake before (my friend has, maybe she can help)--and I'll make a cupcake for the boy to smash to his heart's content. I wish the weather was probably going to be warmer; I'd make him eat his cupcake out on the porch in the back yard. But our weather finally got fallish this week--temps no higher than mid-60s for the next ten days--so I doubt it'll be particularly warm on his birthday. Oh well.
Oh, the boy also said what I'm considering to be his first "Mama". He babbles stuff like that all the time, but this morning when I went to get him out of his crib he said, "Mama" and reached up for me. I think that counts.
