Counting My Blessings

Before I open the paper and look at all the "Black Friday" ads that will send me into a list-making frenzy thinking about all the things I need to get for someone (or wish I could buy for myself) I'm going to take a minute to count my blessings.

I am thankful:

Joey is home for Thanksgiving. He even made dinner for us last night....one of the two specialties he's developed during the first semester in an apartment. It was delicious and awesome to have a night off!

Ben completed his senior year football season with no injuries. That is amazing when I think about all the hard tackles that can easily send a player to the emergency room and the sidelines for the rest of the year.

Perry appreciates me working full time. Somedays he surprises me and walks into my classroom with a cappuccino...just the thing to put a spring back in my step when I need it most! Every month at payday he says, "Have I thanked you for working?" We laugh because he says it all the time, but I love to hear it and I hope he never stops.

My mom comes to volunteer in my class two mornings a week to listen to students read. I'm glad she gets to really see what I do. My students get to benefit from an extra "grandma" with smiles, hugs and encouragement for their hard work in reading.

Pam, my childhood friend, who recently moved back to Boone. I get to play auntie with her two little girls who are a blast to have around. Plus she and I drop in on each other some weeknights for a spontaneous glass of wine and heart-to-heart talks.

Sam, who walks out the door every day to deliver 80 papers. He picked up an extra route this summer which has been an enormous time commitment. Now that it's cold and he's finishing his route in the dark, I am thankful for his perseverance and work ethic that keeps him going each day when many kids would have quit already.

For flu shots, Airborne and general good health at our house this fall. It seems like strep throat and stomach bugs are all around us, but so far, we have avoided most of the icky stuff.

My first grade students, who think I'm smart, tall and funny.

My two little dogs, who are always glad to see me and ready to cuddle whenever I am. They agree with everything I say, and never talk back.

For God, the source of all my blessings, who gives me wonderful things I don't deserve, and keeps me from things I certainly do deserve. He gives me hope when I feel discouraged, strength when I feel exhausted, and peace when I feel worried.

Now those shiny newspaper ads with the coupons don't seem quite as appealing as before. 

Let's be "Thankyou"

Yesterday at school I did a little activity to help the kids focus on their blessings. At the top of a chart I wrote, "I am thankful for:" and we brainstormed the blessings we have. Once we got past family, food, home and friends, they really got into it and lots of great ideas. Soon our chart page was full and it was time to decorate their Thanksgiving tree craft. One little boy, who is just filled with passion and energy, bounced over to me several times that day to announce, "Guess what else I'm thankyou for?" Even though he didn't quite learn the word, I know he got the concept.

A Sign of Winter

We know it's getting cold when the dogs start laying across the heat vents! It doesn't look very comfortable to me, but Pearl has started lounging on the floor vent near our kitchen. Our dogs have very little fur to keep them warm, so Buddy and Pearl are always eager to seek out any warm place to cuddle up. If anyone in the family is lounging with a blanket, it's a "given" that the dogs will show up and want to cozy up and join in the warmth. On sunny days, they often look like cats, lounging on the living room carpet in the sunlight as it shines across the floor.

Forget the weather report or the Farmer's Almanac. Now that Pearl is laying across hard metal strips to get warm, that's a sure sign that winter is nearly here.

Baby Shower

This week I went to a baby shower for a teacher friend of mine. It was so much fun to see Julie's excitement as she talked about preparations for the birth of her first child. She was so thrilled with each gift she opened, and it was interesting for many of us with older children to see how baby supplies have changed since I had a baby in the house. 

When she opened the baby-wedge thing designed to keep the baby on his back as he sleeps, I remembered how my babies slept on their tummies. They were spitters after all, and I couldn't risk them sleeping on their backs and choking to death. Now tummy sleeping seems to be a dangerous practice. It's a wonder my kids survived!

The gift I brought was something that didn't exist when my kids were babies. It's a cover for shopping cart seats and restaurant high chairs. The fabric covers the edges where a baby often puts his hands. I remembered to myself how all three boys would lean over and suck on the handle of the shopping cart at Fareway.  Ugh !  How did they live to see their second birthdays after ingesting all those germs!

As an additional "gift" to Julie, we were all supposed to write down a piece of advice for her from our years of parenting experience. My advice was for her to keep the baby monitor out of her bedroom. Having the monitor next to her pillow will ruin those precious few hours of sleep by hearing and worrying over each little squeak and grunt. After all, when a baby needs to be fed, he will make his needs loud and clear! 

As the party continued, the conversation turned to the newest standard for baby sleeping arrangements...to keep the infant in the parents room, next to the bed, for the first six months of the child's life. Apparently this is supposed to reduce the likelihood of death due to SIDS. Many of us reacted with surprise and disbelief to hear that this is the new accepted practice.

After the party, I wished I could tear up the page of "advice" I had contributed . Becoming a parent is hard, but it's even harder when you get conflicting advice from well meaning friends and family members who had their babies at least a decade before.  I remember the frustration I felt when  helpful people urged me to feed my baby boys rice cereal sooner than the doctor advised because that's what they did back in "their day"? 

When I saw my friend the next afternoon, I knew I had to apologize if our good intentions and conversation made her feel confused. Then I couldn't resist giving her one last piece of advice. I reminded her that I (and all those veteran moms at the party) got experience through a lot of trial and error. We all made mistakes and did the best we could with what we had and what we knew at the time. I urged her to simply listen to her doctor and trust her gut. 

My friend may have picked up some baby-care tips at the shower, but I learned something that day, too.

Fall Leaves

Having a non-English speaking student in my class this year has been such a fun challenge. This student of mine started school here just three weeks after moving from Mexico. I admired the courage it took him to walk into our school and join a classroom full of people who spoke a language he didn't understand, and a crazy teacher who tried to overcome the language barrier with wild gesturing. 

I've been studying and practicing my spanish for the past 3 months which has helped refresh a lot of my forgotten high school and college spanish, as well as picking up some new vocabulary. Each morning before I go to school, I even check an online dictionary to help me with words I might want to use with him that day. That has helped some, but I'm very lucky that children are fast learners and pick up new languages quickly.

The season of fall has been fascinating for him, and he has marveled at the leaves that have been falling from the trees. During draft book time, I helped him make a picture plan of trees and piles of leaves on the ground. I thought carefully, then explained in spanish that he could write about how he makes piles of leaves. I turned around to help another student, then realized in horror what I'd actually said to him, "Many children like to make piles of eyeballs in the fall."

He just smiled when I rushed back and said, "Hojas, not ojos!" What a patient little guy. What he's missing out in his education, he's making up for in entertainment from his bumbling teacher.

Date Night

Perry and I went on a date last night....the first time in a long time. For the past few months, our Friday nights have been spent cheering for Ben and his friends at the high school football games. Even though it was sad to see the season end, Perry and I can now enjoy some much needed time together.

I've been wanting to see the movie Fireproof, but according to the listings, we would have to drive to the Des Moines area to see it. Since we want to keep our date nights inexpensive, we decided to skip dinner out at a restaurant. The snow flew in the air as we drove and we were amazed at the recent change in the weather. It would have been a bad night to sit on bleachers watching a football game!

The Jordan Creek theater is huge and impressive with it's fancy concession stand area and stadium theater seating. After paying $9 apiece for the tickets and buying the $6 bag of popcorn, we laughed at what was happening to our cheap evening! How do people afford to go to the movies on a regular basis??

Fireproof was an awesome movie with an excellent message for couples at any stage of married life. Even though there were many other shows we could have seen, at theaters much closer to home, making the drive to see that one felt like a positive investment for our relationship. A box of Junior Mints would have been nice, but other than that....it was a perfect evening!

Flu Shot

This morning, I went to school with a sore arm from getting my flu shot. Since a large part of our school's  literacy program involves teaching reading and writing at the same time, we teachers do a lot of modeling to demonstrate writing skills while the students read along. I decided to use my flu shot for a teachable moment, and began my writing demonstration by explaining why my arm was sore.  I explained the reason people get flu shots, and helped the children say the word "in-flu-en-za". At the end of the lesson, before the kids went to their tables with their draft books in hand, I overheard one little boy re-tell my story to his friend, explaining "She had to get a shot so she doesn't get godzilla."