Back to Work

Well we have survived the first two weeks of me being back to full time work. And I don't use the word survived lightly. It has been HARD. I am with elementary students this year so they are smaller than my middle school kids last year but if possible, their behavior is worse than middle school students. I constantly have to remind myself that they are at BVS for a reason, their needs are severe to profound. There is always a reason behind their behavior and how to deal with it won't be solved in two weeks. But we will get there. I also need to get used to working with my new staff members. I was placed with a new teacher (but I knew her since she was a student teacher in my room last year and she is awesome), an aide from the high school part of BVS who is new to behavior problems, and another aide who has been with BVS for 7 years but definitely has a different outlook on working with the students at BVS than I do. We also have a new time schedule at school. I am now there at 9:15 until 4:15 versus 9 and 4 last year. Not extremely different and it makes for an easy morning not having to get up early but for some reason leaving at 4:15 seems a lot later and it makes getting a run in, dinner made and some quality time with Linnea before bath and bedtime very difficult. There are also fewer bus aide subs and I have already had to ride the bus once, make me get home at 5:30pm and waking myself and Linnea up an hour earlier. I don't like it. But we will get used to it and it will get better or I will try to find a different job where I am happier, but for now this is where I need to be. Chris was also doing some research in the Lab at the U of M 3 times a week to finalize his degree so that was hard too. It helped having some premade frozen meals in our freezer and a groupon to Quiznos and a meal with my parents and GG once too! Linnea had some better dropoffs at daycare which helped and she continues to make me smile everyday. Potty training is almost complete...just have to figure out when she needs to poop before she is actually doing it! She usually makes it but every now and then we need to change the undies. Preschool is just around the corner! whoa baby! Sorry for no pictures...in the busyness I didnt get any and I didnt get the camera charged :( but here is a video from we left for the Weezer Concert...she was really into that wand, playing her cat piano and having Winnie the Pooh on. All at once. she would also sometimes try to say abracadabra, you're an elephant (or whatever animal she wanted us to act like).