Soft beneath our feet

When I set Elinore down on the new carpet, the first thing she did was run her fingers through it. It was like she knew how special it was. 

Camping

The whole walk back from the beach, Elinore sat there with her mouth hanging on the backpack. She cracks me up. I guess she'll be content for hiking in Colorado!! 

Smile

On a lighter note, I took these pictures of Elinore on Monday, she was being so cute I couldn't resist, honestly just look at that face, no one can be upset when you've got a cheerful face like that around you :-)

Cont...Poor Mrs. Norris

After having pulled her into the garage, the back windshield collapsed...here is what she looks like now :-(

Wed., June 7, 2006...Poor Mrs. Norris

At around 7 this morning Kevin awoke to my car alarm going off. Oh nothing to be alarmed about, he thought, car alarms go off all the time. However, when he got up to see what it was all about he discovered a smashed rear window. Nothing else on the car appears to be damaged, except the rear window...perhaps because I'm from Albion?? Who knows. The car was parked comfortably in their driveway at the time of the incident, and I, having taken some nyquil for my cold and to help me get some shut-eye, didn't hear a thing. Jen came and woke me up to let me know that Kevin was in the process of calling the police and having them come to make a formal report. There's a little bit of glass on the inside of the car, but for the most part the damage was contained to the entire rear windshield and the two side which seem to have burst up from their downward angle due to whatever force caused the damage. For dramatic effect, as well as documentation of the event I have a few picture to help you visualize what happened...

Elinore's First Party

Yesterday our friend Leif had his 3rd birthday. They had the party at Crazy Bounce (a big warehouse full of inflatable games). Most of us were adults, and we had just as much fun if not more than all the kids (who were all pretty little - I think Sam was the oldest). Elinore wore one of the little smocked dresses Mom made. She was SO cute. Everyone commented on the dress and were amazed when I told them that she made it, and that we wore it when we were little. She didn't do much bouncing, but she seemed to have a great time, nonetheless. 

The Wedding

Well, I always post pictures of Elinore because it seems like that's all we ever take these days. This is a photo of Kev and I from Jeremy and Lindsay's wedding last weekend. We had such a wonderful time and were so glad to celebrate with our friends. Glad to see you all this weekend, hope you are getting back into your week! 

The Exersaucer!

It's a bird, it's a plane,...no, it's Elinore in her exersaucer!! Amy lent me this exersaucer she had. Elinore kind of sits/stands in the seat and can spin around and play with all of these toys. It's not a walker (she can't move across the room or anything). The first time I put her in it she got so excited!! She just kept squealing and laughing and flailing her arms around. I can't wait for you all to see her and how big she's getting!!

Happy birthday to me.

I treated myself to a pedicure on the way home from work on Tuesday. It was a birthday present to myself. I reveled in my freshly painted toe nails, wearing flip flops despite the chill.

Then my toe got infected.

Now the French pedicure is overshadowed by the red, swollen big toe.

Happy birthday to me.

Ella Bella

I got to vistit Jen, Kevin, and little Elinore this weekend. It was much needed and SO nice. Ella is just as cute as ever! These are some of the pictures I took while I was there.

Hopefully, I will have a job this summer and I can live with them. It would be loverly.

Elinore Sits

Well, look at that big girl! I have to prop her up like this and then I only have a couple minutes before she falls on her face. She sure looks like she knows what she's doing, though. She also ate solid foods yesterday for the first time, and she rolled over for the first time on Monday! What a week! I better go take a nap. 

April 18

Well, yesterday April 18th was rather special. Mike and I have officially been together for a year. Big happy face on my part. We celebrated by taking a little trip to Don Pablo's Mexican restaurant, it was glorious and then we went shopping haha. Mike needed some nice clothes for some interviews he's doing for his social psychology class. Strangely enough, I kinda of enjoyed helping him pick out the clothes, and he looked SOO professional. I'll have to take some pictures and post them on the blog so you all can see how cute he looked haha.

For Easter I got to go home for a couple days, partly to go to the doctor and get some new glasses, but also to just get away from Albion and see Mom and Dad. We went to the Arboretum on Saturday and it was just BEAUTIFUL. I wish I would've been able to see Caity, but it sounds like she was having a pretty wonderful time in Texas. I can't wait to be done with school, to be honest, it's starting to take it's toll.

Homecoming

I couldn't have asked for a better weekend! I spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with Brandie, Ariel, and Greg, my 3 best friends from college, whom I haven't seen since graduation almost a year ago! Hard to believe the time has gone by so quickly.

We spent the time doing nothing special, and that was the beauty of it. It's been a long time since I've laughed so hard and felt so comfortable in my own skin. I have been blessed with really the most affirming friends a girl could ask for. This kind:

Friend #1: "You are sensitive, kind, and a wonderful listener. Your turn."

Friend #2: "You are beautiful, charming, and so talented! Your turn."

Friend #3: "You are intelligent and wise with a wonderful sense of humor. Your turn."

Friend #4 (Greg): "Umm, are you guys going to do this all night?"

Etc, etc. If you're friends aren't charged with making you feel good about yourself, who can you turn to??

We roamed the town, ate slice and bake cookie dough with spoons, reminisced about our past antics, took advantage of the $7.00 bottle of champagne Easter Sunday special at El Arroyo to accompany our Tex-Mex lunch, gawked at how strange it felt to sit around the apartment telling each other about our jobs, sat together at the Easter vigil service (where I accidentally snuffed out Greg's light of Christ. As we stood there with our accidentally unlit candles, Greg stoicly commented, "Ooohh you're going straight to Hell." Oops), gussied ourselves up for a night of Latin dancing, layed by the pool and came away with some terrible-looking sunburn patterns on our bodies, ate the world's worst guacamole dip while watching "Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants," and ultimately reveled in the time apart that we had. Greg even spiked his mohawk in my honor.

Not going to lie, I came back a little melancholy, having had a little taste of all the things I miss. I dearly, dearly hope that we will be able to visit one another more frequently than once a year.

Easter

Happy Easter, everyone! Elinore's first tooth appeared through her gums today! 

Delta Tau Delta Formal

These are some of the pictures I took at Mike's fraternity formal. We'll have been together for a year next Tuesday, and we FINALLY have more than 2 pictures of us together. We had such a good time, the formal was in Windsor, Canada. Dinner was at one of the clubs and afterwards we danced the night away, returning to the hotel at around 2 with the other guys from Mike's suite and their dates. The girl in the picture with me is my friend Amanda, she's dating Gary Peters, one of Mike's roomies. Anyways, we had sooooooo much fun and I'll be happy to be home for a little while next weekend.

Bath

I was just noticing how Elinore is on the verge of outgrowing her baby bath. Her feet hit the edge of the little tub. I was thinking about how tiny she was when we brought her home. It is hard for us to realize how much she has grown and changed. The bottom picture is from her first bath. The top one is from tonight when she got a bath. Her legs look so scrawny in the newborn photo; she's gaining muscle! Anyway, thought you would like to see a comparison.
 

Discoveries

Just today Elinore has sort of discovered her feet. She's been playing with them, trying to grab them, and tugging at her socks. It is so cool to watch as she discovers new things.

Yesterday I did this thing where I gave her silly kisses on her neck, and she started giggling. She's only giggled a couple times before, but this was the first time that something I did made her giggle. It felt so precious and amazing that I had done something that made her laugh. 

Re: Stories from the Front Lines

I walked into work the day after my distressing teaching experience to find a new star posted on our Teacher Bio wall. Thanks to the Hinsdale team for adding me to their ranks, even though my bio is slightly less kosher than all the rest. We keep it in the office so as not to worry our clientele.

Holland Adventure

Last weekend Mike and I went to Holland to see Jen, Kevin and Elinore. It was quite an adventure. We got there around 6 pm Friday night and then went out to eat at 84 E. It was scrumtulescent and really nice to get a chance to sit down and talk. When we got back we played some team sequence and then decided to turn in. Unfortunately, Mike wasn't feeling too well and ended up spending the night sick with food poisoning...and by sick I mean like SICK he spent the majority of the night in the bathroom, it was bad news bears. Saturday, he was feeling a little better and kept food down and we even took a walk to the beach. It was nice, when we got back we had some dinner and then Kevin and Jen went to something that was being put on the Holland High, so Mike and I were babysitting Elinore. He's just too cute with her, whenever he'd hold her he was soo afraid he was going to break her but of course he didn't. This picture was from when we were putting her to bed, he read her The Giving Tree and then we proceeded to both fall asleep on the couch for about a half hour, and then he went to bed because he had had so little sleep the night before. We all woke up the next morning feeling refreshed and he felt 100% better, too bad we left that afternoon. And when we got back we discovered that about 12 other guys from Mike's fraternity had gotten food poisoning also. So, even though he got sick and what not, it was fantabulous to see Jen and Kevin and Ella, we'll definitely have to make the trip again and hopefully next time there won't be any illness.

Stories from the Front Lines

March, March, yet another month of learning and bloopers on the job. Here's a rundown:

1. I recently left this message for a woman who called to inquire about our programs:
".... give us a call back at ***.***.**** (pause) Oh God. That's my home number. Please don't call that."

2. Just today I spoke with a VERY inquisitive mother who was asking very complex and specific tuition calculations as well as detailed logistics questions about summer programs. She must have called 3 times with more questions. The last time she called, my coworker answered and when she mentioned who was calling, I had my back to her. As I reached for the phone I said "greeeeaaaaaaat. I hope she's calling to ENROLL this time!" And when I turned around, Kelly had a horrified look on her face as she frantically indicated that the receiver was live and the woman had probably heard my response. Note to the public: Help your coworkers save a little face, and put a person on HOLD when you pass them off. PS-Her tuition for 10 weeks of summer programming came to $1182. She called back to ask if that was the per week rate. I nearly choked.. this is not boarding school!

3. One Thursday morning when I was the only director covering the center, our substitute Spanish teacher got his signals crossed and went to the wrong location. We were 5 minutes into the class when we realized he would be arriving VERY late, and with no other alternative, I grabbed the session plans and the Spanish teacher whose program didn't start until 9:15 and said, "Quick! You have 3 minutes to train me in teaching a class." In a flash she taught me how to lead 2 activities, and sent me into the room of seven particularly active 4 and 5 year olds waiting for my teaching expertise. I began the first activity where I pulled prizes out of a bag for the children to claim. (This is to get them to practice saying "I want such and such, please" in Spanish) Of course, the first prize I pulled out of the bag nobody wanted. Nor the second. Nor the third. Crap. Finally I dumped the contents of the bag on the floor and made them pick what they wanted. Part II of this activity was then to go around to get them to say what they had. When I started leading the prompt.. "Who has the ... " I realized that all the prizes where things like magnifying glasses, skateboards, chinese yo-yos, all things I have NO IDEA how to say in Spanish! The panic set in and I began to sing "Who has the thing, who has the thing..?"

Meanwhile there is a parent actually KNOCKING on the door of my classroom with 7 on-the-edge 4 year olds, to ask to speak to the director. (Sidenote: When I followed up with her later to find out what was so urgent, she informed me she just wanted to schedule her daughter's make up!) There are children telling me in English that they have to go to the bathroom, and seeing how I, as the director and not normally IN a classroom, am normally the one to escort the children to the bathroom, I had to get a mom out of the lobby to take the children. I finally get them to the table to eat snack and I try to drag it out as long as possible. I gave them all as many goldfish as they wanted, but soon I had some children still at the table eating, others climbing onto their chairs, running around the room, screaming, crashing into walls, CHAOS. And sweet Monica in the adjoining room with her Parents and Tots class is trying to help me by signing through the window while keeping the parents from looking through it! It was 9:40 and the missing substitute still had not arrived.

I had to move on, even though I had NO idea what to do. I hoped I would think of something during the 2 second walk to the carpet. Nothing came. One little girl told me she would just sit at the table since she wasn't feeling well. I made the rest get in a circle and make the circulo GRANDE and circulo PEQUENO. They all looked at me confused because we'd already done this as a warm-up activity. Meanwhile little Meg, sitting at the table, pipes in "Teacher, you're doing it wrong! This isn't how Spanish class goes!" WELL, NO KIDDING. Finally just before 10, the teacher arrived, and I bolted.

After I took some deep breaths I went into the office to call a non-Spanish speaking coworker in management and tell my story. He laughed as he told me of his experience getting stranded in a class with 18 children and a parent staring at him. He, of course, jumped right in with.. "Raise your hand if you have a birthday this month!" 4 little hands went up into the air. My coworker then proceeded to lead the group in singing "Feliz cumpleanos a ti (Happy Birthday).." 4 TIMES. Thank GOD the teacher had arrived by the end. I guess it can always be worse.


They say that an idle mind is the devil's playground (or something like that), so at least I don't have to worry about that! Boredom at work is definitely not high on my list of concerns.