The most wonderful time of the year?

Two days ago it was 70. One day ago it was 60. Today it's 40. I can feel the cold invading our house. It's like it's poking a beer with a stick only in this analogy I'm supposed to be the beer but if I was the beer I would be considerably warmer because of all the fur I'd have and I would have a really really great excuse to sleep in. It's called hibernation. The sleeping is the number one requirement! Yeah! The weather man keeps talking about snow. I don't hate snow but I really don't like it. The kids are all "SNOW! SNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOW!" And I'm all "NO! NONONONONO!" They don't have to drive in it, they don't have to scrape off the windshield while it's falling, and with the exception of the 40 foot walk from the front door to the bus in the morning they don't have to be out in it if they don't want to. Me? I very much want no snow and if there is snow, someone to get rid of it for me. The one time I do like snow, though (ha! I rhymed!) is at Christmas. I love a white Christmas. I think it goes really well with my Christmas Tombstone pizza and my Christmas pjs. The rest of winter? Um, is it too late to go back in time with the winning lotto numbers, buy a ticket and make myself rich? What do you mean time travel hasn't been invented yet? Crap... looks like I'll have to deal with impending snow, huh?

Cosmic Giggle

I think my parents are having a good laugh right now. When I was a kid of 7 or 8 year old, I would play in our living room. I'd set up a chalk board in front of my barbies (each named after characters from Sweet Valley Twins- thanks Francine Pascal) and I'd "teach" things. It usually involved something from the scrap paper sociology tests that my Dad would bring home from the classes he taught at the local community college. My dad would come home, we'd watch "You Can't Do That On Television" and he'd tell me "You should be a teacher, Jessie." And I would nod in agreement. Then, I became a rebellious teenager and the thought of following in my parents footsteps sounded completely awful. "You should be a teacher, Jessie." I would respond with "No! And don't call my Jessie!" I did the whole college thing for a minute and a half and then found a guy, pulled a "But Daddy, I love him!" Got married and knocked up, had a kid, life got in the way and then divorced the guy, life got difficult, married my best friend, life is still difficult but at least it's fun and I have a wonderful family. This is the part where I finally looked at my parents and said "I think I want to be a teacher." It wasn't so much an epiphany but a logical next step. I teach my own children on a daily basis as a stay at home mom. I love it when they learn new things and love bragging about how cool they are. I want to teach them as much as I can and I want to guide them as much as they can. I see friends' kids and I want to impart my own wisdom on them too. I'm controlling like that. SO, I did the only think that I could possibly do... I enrolled back into college and I've been taking classes for 3 months now and it's going really well. Casey is being super supportive, although he says I've never really given any indication of wanting to be a teacher (he wasn't there for the whole kid-Francine-Pascal-classroom-thing). I just recently got my substitute teaching license and I'm hoping to start that in a couple of weeks. Here we go... another adventure! And besides, the more on my plate, the more I feel accomplished!

Baby's Day Out?

Megan is now officially 16 months old. Well, she's been 16 months old for a couple of weeks. The two older kids are finally sleeping in their own rooms (after a summer of having "sleep overs" where they'd sleep in each others' room, like a sibling slumber party) and I'm thinking it's time for the baby to be moved out of our master bedroom and into her own room... or bunking with her big brother as the case may be. Seriously, I'm tired of not being able to fall asleep talking to my husband. The last time I got to do that was the night that we filmed the jazz festival and all the kids were on an overnight at grandma and grandpa's house. We came home and other than the dog completely freaking out it was quiet. Almost eerily so. We got home around 2am, immediately headed upstairs and crawled in bed. We were both exhausted but wired at the same time. So, we stayed up and talked until about 3 and then we made out until we were to tired to actually put forth the effort of "strenuous exercise" (as my mom calls it - ewww by the way). Last night, we went to bed and the baby was all quiet and everything so we started whispering about our day and whispering led to hushed talking and then the baby sat up in her crib and said "Hi!" If she knew more words she probably would have been like "Ohmygod! You're awake! And you're having a conversation! I want to have a conversation, too! Ooh! Can I totally come and jump on your bed? Just give me a minute, I can TOTALLY get out of this crib! Watch!" And then she did climb (it was more like flip) out of the crib and crawled over and gave her daddy big hugs because Meg is SUCH the daddy's girl it's not even funny. Time to move her? Yes? I'm thinking with her Houdini-like escape abilities though we're going to need to put a gate at the top of the stairs before we do any kind of moving about of the crib. If we put her in a toddler bed, she'll just come back into our room and that's not cool. We're trying to get her out of there. So yeah.. crib with gate. This makes total sense. Because she'll just shake the gate and yell, she won't try and scale it. Yet. Yeah, now I'm getting a little nervous... And it has gotten far too quiet in this house for it's own good... Time to check the kiddos!