The first week of school

The first day of school was a week ago, and I'm barely finding time to blog now. I'm sincerely hoping that the beginning of next semester is not so crazy. Starting a course more or less from scratch has taken up a massive amount of my time. I've also realized that the last time I taught we only had two kids and Mr. Fob was in school and not working full-time. That being said, he has been a big help and we are so blessed that he has a flexible, at-home job. I'm becoming more and more convinced that outsourcing is a great way to strengthen families--and it helps the environment because there is no commute (but that's a post for another day). I teach at eight and nine in the morning and I usually get home a little after ten o'clock. I just get up, get ready, nurse the baby, and go. Mr. Fob gets the kids ready, sends S-Boogie out the door to school, puts the baby down for a nap, gets Little Dude a video, and then goes to work about 9:00. So far things have gone smoothly but I'm sure we'll have a few bad days with unexpected events here and there.

I am having mixed feelings about teaching so far. I'm teaching first-year writing for the English department and it is quite different from teaching Spanish. I generally feel pretty confident while lecturing but then I get done with class and start feeling insecure about whether all my students think I'm completely incompetent. I think that's normal. While I'm actually in class I really enjoy it, but the lesson prep and getting the syllabus and everything else set up has been draining. Transitioning from spending most of the last year with low demands on my time to suddenly having very little flexibility in my schedule has been hard. Not to mention the fact that I've been having a hard time going to bed early enough to deal with my earlier mornings. However, things are starting to feel like they are getting better and I hope the rest of the semester will go as smoothly as possible.

The older kids started school last Wednesday also. S-Boogie is a big second grader and so far seems to like her class. I've heard many good things about her teacher this year and she seems like a good fit for her. She's had a little stress adjusting to the fact that second graders share recess on the big playground with some of the bigger kids, but I'm sure she'll work it out. I signed her up for dance classes again, and then last week her friend talked her into signing up for soccer with her. Soccer is just for the month of September and hopefully we'll survive without going too crazy. Little Dude started preschool a few afternoons a week and loves his class. I was worried that he wouldn't want to go since he can be shy. The first day he eagerly went off to class and came home with tons of fun things to tell me about. I mostly love the two hours in the afternoon when the older kids are in school and the baby is taking a nap. Thankfully she is pretty mellow and is usually willing to go along with all the crazy adventures that the rest of us have.