First Day of School

For me that is! I’m nervous. I haven’t bee nervous about a first day for a long time. Today my alarm clock went off for the first time in over a year. I went to teacher prep day, but still don’t feel ready. My presentations are all set and I know what I’m doing, but I’m still nervous. I had to move classrooms this year and I don’t really like anything about my new location. I am in disbelief that it is really happening. And it feels weird that my students won’t know me. My favorite group graduated and I wasn’t there to make the special videos last year, so no one will know who I am. I will be like a stranger, even though I have been at the school longer than my students. I am collaborating with a new teacher, so that makes me feel good. And I might be getting a student teacher, which is even more exciting because it is what I want to do after I finish my Ph.D.; work with student teachers.

I don’t like leaving early in the morning and missing the reading and snuggle time that has become our morning ritual during the past year. I don’t like the fact that I will have to brush my teeth and be presentable before Fiona’s nap time (when I can usually do those types of things). And mostly, I am going to miss Fiona terribly.

She started taking real steps! Every day, a step or two here and there. And her vocalizations are starting to sound like words. She handed me her “Wheels on the Bus” book and said “buhbuhbuh”, then when I started singing to it, she started humming, and moved her arm when I did the “move on back” motion. I think she was trying to say  Yesterday when she was in the car, we heard some little whispering. Fiona was turning the pages of her new favorite book, Brown Bear Brown Bear, and mouthing something to herself. I think she was pretending to read the book!

John told me a cute story about something that happened the other day. Fiona was lying (on her tummy with her tush in the air, as usual) at the foot of the bed when he went to get her up for the day. When he entered the room, she sat up very quickly, turned around, then scrambled as fast as she could to the opposite corner of the bed, retrieved Panda, and handed him to John. Se crawled the whole diagonal length of the bed, lunged for Panda, and handed him to John. He said it was as though she had been waiting for him for a long time just so she could give him Panda.

We recently had a photo of Fiona in a box. Here she is in a tube:

Fiona eating and drinking out of her sippy:

 

She was very excited to get some yogurt. She really likes to drink out of my glass, so we let her sometimes, holding it for her because it is much bigger. Her theme with food and drink seems to be that it tastes much better if it belongs to mommy. She also chews on things, then takes them out of her mouth and hands them to me and has tried to feed me yogurt and cottage cheese using her hands. Lovely.

Fiona in the planter:

John said she climbed in her self. She handed us leaves and dried tangerine rinds.

I am really going to miss our mornings, even if I am only working half days. She makes it so hard to leave the house. I still can’t believe how much my love grows for her every day.

Oh, and I’m pretty sure her head and her feet grew this week. Her head barely fits through the openings of her shirts and her feet look like they belong on a larger baby.