Bein’ Franklin

Posted by mommyfranklin at September 6th, 2007

I have officially survived my first week teaching two-year-olds at Calvary. Only 35 left. Not that I’m counting.

I am having a very nice time with my classes. I have 9 kids on Tuesday, 8 on Thursday and 5 on Monday & Wednesday. Two of the kids come all four days, two of the kids come only on Tuesdays, and one comes only on Thursdays. They will all be turning three sometime this Spring.

The first day was Tuesday. It was hard, but not as bad as I’d expected to it be. I guess it’s one of those things where you expect the worst but hope for the best and get somewhere in middle. When all the other classes were crying around me, my class was quiet. The hard part for my class was naptime. And it was just one child who made it hard. I felt bad for the child to be so upset, especially when grandma arrived to find the child still quite upset. That all ended fine. I talked with the child’s mom to assure her that her child was really happy during most of the day, and that I truly believed this is something that would pass quickly. Today I once again prepared for the heart wrenching screams, but instead the child gave me a solution. All that was needed was to be held for a bit. As I walked around the room helping the other children go to sleep, I had a little shadow waiting really patiently to be held. One child never did fall asleep but was very quiet. That child’s mom told me that they’ve never gone without a nap, so I need to figure out how to help that child too without bringing on the screams of the first one. All the children in the class seem to enjoy being at school and doing the activities, and the moms seem fairly pleased with the care their children are receiving.

My class on Wednesday was a dream with only five kids. They all slept and they all did every activity. They were a joy. This helped tremendously as Timothy and Zachary were both having pretty rough days. Zachary’s problem stemmed from a toothache. I took him to get it checked out today, and they found no root damage or gum damage. So, Tylenol and Baby Orajel is the answer. I suspect Timothy was tired, but he wasn’t quite himself that day either, so it was good that I had not had a stressful day.

Unfortunately, there is a side effect of working in a preschool. It’s hitting us a little odd though. This morning, Scott woke up with a 102 degree temperature and sore throat. The kids and I all checked out fine, so off we went to school leaving Scott to fend for himself. By the time we got home after school, my throat was hurting so I decided I better take my temperature too. Just over 100. Great! Now I’m tired and achy, and I don’t know if it’s from holding kids so much or from beginning to get sick. It’s probably both.

So far, the kids are fine. I thought they were the ones who were supposed to be getting sick from being around other children. Cute little carrier monkeys.

Posted by mommyfranklin at August 31st, 2007

Yesterday was Emily’s birthday. Even though we’d already had her party, we made sure she got to feel special all day long.
When I took her to school that morning, I asked her teacher when her class went to lunch. Our eye doctor appointments were mid-morning, and we were a little concerned that they would overlap with her lunch time since it would have overlapped with when she had lunch in Plainview last year. After talking with her teacher, I learned that we’d have about 30 minutes if everything went on a good schedule. We packed Emily some lunch money just in case, but told her we would do our best to be there. She asked that we bring food from Subway.

Our appointments lasted a little longer than we’d hoped, but we did manage to make it to lunch on time. In fact, we made it with about 10 minutes to spare. The four of us hung out in the cafeteria until it was time for her to class to come in. This was another change from her old school, when we would go to her class to pick her up whenever we had lunch with her. Scott thought she’d be worried we weren’t coming, so he met up with her in the hallway. He walked her in and we had a very nice lunch together.

After lunch, we headed home so Scott could finally go to work. The boys and I headed to the store to get cupcakes and treats for Emily’s class. We made it back home in time for Zachary to take a very short nap, and then headed to the school again for a class party. It was a lot of fun getting to meet Emily’s classmates. Zachary wandered around the class and Timothy stayed close to me. That’s pretty much how I expected things would go.

Emily had requested a special dinner of Chicken Fingers, Mashed Potatoes, and Lima Beans. After eating, we headed to Toys ‘R’ Us so she could spend some of the money she had received for her birthday. She bought a spirograph, a Monopoly Jr. game, a Groovy Girl doll, and some ColorSplitz markers. Then, we went out for Krispy Kreme’s for a special birthday dessert.

It was a fun day.

Posted by mommyfranklin at August 31st, 2007

It’s been a hard week for Timothy. Now that Emily is gone to school, he has lost his playmate. Zachary plays with him some, but a two-year-old isn’t much of a playmate for a four-year-old. It’s plain to see that he is a little lonely. I am really hoping that will improve with his school starting next week.

One way that he has kept himself busy is by playing with our Fridge Phonics Word Whammer toy. He spends hours putting different letters into the toy to find out what it spells. When he succeeds in spelling a word, he comes and tells us the word.

Four years old and putting together words. Once Scott even caught him looking at a piece of mail to find a three letter word and then putting those letters into the toy so it would read the word to him. Now that’s thinking.

Posted by mommyfranklin at August 31st, 2007

I’ve spent the week getting the paperwork filled out for the boys to go to preschool this year. One thing that was required was a copy of their birth certificates. That wasn’t a big deal to me. We didn’t get a birth certificate from the hospital when Zachary was born, so I needed to go to the Health Department to get one. The health department is located on the East side of town, not far from Tech. It took about 30 minutes to get there.

Now this is where we get to the part that bugs me.

It cost $23 to get my own child’s birth certificate. I was there less than 10 minutes, and I had to pay them $23. It’s just not right.

When I went to the church so they could make a copy of the boys’ birth certificates, I learned that we couldn’t use the hospital birth certificate anyway. This was not the school’s rule, but is a rule for the licensing board. So, the certificate we had for Timothy wouldn’t work either.

Scott saved me from having to drive all the way of there again. He went to get Timothy’s birth certificate during his lunch break. I turned it in today, so the boys are finally registered for school.

Posted by mommyfranklin at August 31st, 2007

Scott and I went to the eye doctor yesterday. We have been having some trouble with our contacts, and are in need of some new ones. When we arrived, we filled out the typical paperwork and I was soon called back to the room with all the little machines. I don’t know what they all do, but have gotten used to them. This doctor had one I hadn’t seen before. It had all these big bright red circles on it. I was told to sit with my chin angled so I would looking at the red circles through the side of my eye. I think this one took a picture of my eye, but really don’t know.

While we were waiting for the machines to print out the results, the doctor’s assistant asked me some questions about my contacts that I had before. She asked how long a pair generally lasted. I told her 1-2 months. She asked if I knew that the ones I had were only supposed to last two weeks. I had no clue! I figured there were at least one month contacts, so this came as quite a surprise. Turns out that Scott’s were also two week contacts, so we both got a mild talking to about it.

Despite the fact that we wore our contacts far longer than we were supposed to, the doctor said there was no irreparable damage to our eyes. We both had some slight corneal distortion, but nothing too serious. The doctor fitted us both with one-month contacts, so hopefully we’ll not have as much trouble with our contacts as we were having before. She said if we wear these the correct amount of time, our eyes would return to normal. I know my eyes feel better today than they have in months.

Posted by mommyfranklin at August 31st, 2007

It’s been a little over a week since my last post. Generally it wouldn’t phase me a bit to go that long without posting, but I had kind of gotten accustomed to blogging more often than that.

It’s been a busy week.

My last post was the 22nd. I’ve had plenty of blog topics jump into my mind since then, but just haven’t had a moment to sit down and blog. Since then, we’ve had meet the teacher night at Emily’s school, Emily’s sleepover for her birthday, visited another church, Emily’s first day of 2nd grade, meet the teacher night at Calvary, registration for the boy’s school, doctor’s visits, and Emily’s birthday. Not to mention that the Fall semester of the Virtual Campus is well underway.

And now I have about an hour before I need to go anwhere. The boys are watching cartoons and Emily’s at school. What should I blog about first?

Posted by mommyfranklin at August 17th, 2007

Our mailbox is a few houses down. It’s like one you’d find in an apartment complex. There are about 10 small boxes all together, and we have to use a key to get our mail. The kids love to go down the street to get out mail. I usually send Emily and Timothy to get it while I am laying Zachary down for his nap.

After spending yesterday morning at Calvary, we checked the box when we got home. The mail had not arrived yet, so we went about our business. We were expecting some friends from Plainview to come over soon, so I opted not to lay Zachary down for his nap yet.

Our friends arrived and all the kids were playing upstairs in Emily’s room. Soon, Emily’s friend came down to get her mom’s keys so she could go get a doll from the car. This reminded me that we had not gotten the mail, so I decided to send Emily and her friend to get it. Timothy got wind of this and decided he wanted to go to the mailbox too. The only problem was that he was not wearing any shoes. I told him he could go without shoes, but he said the sidewalk was too hot. Emily and her friend didn’t want to wait for him to get his shoes on, so they promised they would wait for him at the mailbox.

Timothy soon appeared at the top of the stairs wearing one sandal and informed me that he could not find his other one. I suppose if I were a nice mama, I would have gone upstairs and helped him find his other shoe. But, I was visiting with my friend and didn’t want to do that. He’s pretty bad about losing shoes, and it drives me crazy. One shoelace from his dress shoes was missing for a couple weeks. He’s been missing one tennis shoe for a week now. I told him to go look again.

By this time, Zachary had decided to come downstairs too. He had messed up his pullup, so it was necessary for me to go upstairs to change him. By the time I got done changing him, my friend had left to go outside. For a reason I still don’t quite understand, Emily had returned from the mailbox without her friend. My friend had gone to retrieve her daughter from the mailbox.

I got my mail. Timothy’s shoe has been found. Zachary is clean. My friend and her daughter went home.

When we got ready to go the store last night, I couldn’t find my keys. No big deal. Scott had his, so I figured there were just pushed under the couch or something. As I was getting ready to leave to go work in my classroom this morning, I searched high and low and still couldn’t find my keys. I called my friend who had come to see if she had inadvertently stuck them in her purse after retrieving her daughter from the mailbox. She didn’t answer the phone, so I left her a message. I was really wanting to go to Calvary, so Scott came home to work from home for the afternoon so I could use his keys. This worked out even better for me, as it meant I could go by myself. I made a lot of progress in my classroom and managed to visit with the director for a bit to learn some more about my responsibilities. Then I got home to a message from my friend saying that her daughter told her that my keys are between the top cushions of our couch. I had taken off all the cushions but hadn’t looked between the top cushions. Sure enough, that’s where they were! All is well.

Posted by mommyfranklin at August 17th, 2007

I’ve mentioned before that we are potty training Zachary. We’ve been working on it for about 4 weeks now, and it’s really going fairly well. At home, he wears cloth training pants. We only had two pairs when we first started this process. It wasn’t going great. I was having to launder them daily, sometimes twice! I’ve since bought more from Target, though now I probably could get by with the two we had leftover from Timothy. I guess he just wanted his own!

We’ve been going to Calvary every day this week, and he has been wearing pullups while we are out. That hasn’t slowed him down a bit, as he’s been staying dry and clean the whole time we’re out. He really likes the little bathroom in my classroom, and asks to use it every hour or so. That’s a good thing and I hope he’ll do that for his teacher. Yesterday, I was in meetings all morning so the kids stayed with some teenagers. They said Zachary never asked to go to the bathroom, but his pullup was still clean and dry when we got home. I guess he just held it all morning.

He is now in the phase where he getting very good about telling me when he needs to go. He thinks it’s a good excuse to stay up just a few more minutes before going to bed. We’re having to limit that one! We went to Plainview on Monday so Scott could drop some things off for his online class. Zachary was in a pullup. Two times he told me he needed to go, and both times he succeeded! We ventured out of the house in the cloth training pants for the first time yesterday. He asked to go one time, and we made it with no problem. With the exception of overnight, he hasn’t wet anywhere except in the potty in two weeks. The other end is about every other day. He’ll get there. I’m sure of it.

With all the money we’re going to save on diapers, I think it’s going to be a good Christmas!

Posted by mommyfranklin at August 17th, 2007

The kids and I have spent a little time each morning of this week at Calvary getting my classroom setup. It’s slowly coming together. I will likely go up there today to do a little more work. I know what I want to do, but need to do some hunting to find the things I need. The directors have asked that we try to recycle the borders and posters that are already there, so I have been spending some time figuring out where the various resources rooms are. So far, I have found three rooms.

It’s a little different being on this side of the classroom. The last time I taught in a classroom was before Emily was born. I am not a stranger to Parent’s Day Out, since I was the director in Plainview. Still it’s going to take me some time to get into the swing of things as a teacher. Yesterday was orientation, so I got to meet my coworkers. I think it’s going to be a fun group to work with. The director of our program has taught the last three years, so she is going to be very helpful. I just need to ask for help! That’s not always an easy thing for me to do.

I still have a few weeks. School starts September 4th. Hopefully I will get my classroom done in the early part of next week and then can start concentrating on what I will actually be doing in the classroom.

Posted by mommyfranklin at July 22nd, 2007

Poor Emily. She lives in a world full of boys. She has some first and second cousins that are girls, but she doesn’t get to see them much. She’s so good natured that it’s not a big deal to her now, and I hope that continues. I was the only granddaughter of my paternal grandparents, so I have an idea of what she’s going through. It’s a little different though because she’s the oldest and I am the youngest. I’ll never forget the year that I got a hot wheel truck for Christmas, especially with it being on home videos. I always played with the boys’ cars, so it just made sense that I would want my own, right?

Two weeks ago, we were in Granbury. My brother and his family had come over for a visit. His son is now 8 months old. So, it was Emily, Timothy, Zachary, and Drake. Emily adores babies, so this was fine with her. He’s at a fun age now, so she really enjoyed trying to get him to laugh.

Last Saturday, we drove to Abilene to meet up with Mom and Dad after the kids had spent the week with them. We also met up with a friend who lives in Abilene. My friend has two boys, age 2 1/2 and 4 months. We went to the zoo. The youngest slept most of the time and Timothy and Zachary buddied up with her oldest. Emily didn’t mind too much. She’s good that way.

Yesterday, we went to a park not too far from here to meet up with a friend from high school. She lives in Midland, but has come to Lubbock on the weekends while her husband has been attending summer classes. They have two sons, age 4 and 22 months. Everyone had a great time, but I once again walked away with a picture of Emily with a bunch of boys.

Emily has two best girlfriends from Plainview. One from church and one from school. One is an only child. Her parents are good friends of ours, so she has pretty much adopted our boys to be her little brothers as well. And believe me, they get along like brothers and sisters. Her other friend has an older brother. Emily had this one over her first ever sleepover this week, so she got to have a little girl time. I could tell they both got a little put out when the boys kept traipsing through the middle of the barbies they had set up in Emily’s bedroom, but they still had a good time and even let the boys play with them once in a while. I imagine it won’t be long before she asks the other one to spend the night as well. She’s already gearing up for a sleepover with both of them for her birthday at the end of next month. She’s pretty much had that one planned since we moved.