Revel in My Lameness...

Soooo... it's been quite a while since my last update (almost 5 months!) and I feel like now's the time. The problem, of course, is that I'm on my mom's laptop and don't have any pictures! I'll just have to summarize as vividly as possible.

I start school on Monday, and I can't believe that the summer is already over! It truly flew by. I don't even really feel like I had a summer break.

This is where I would have put a picture of me frowning.

Here's what we did this summer:

The last week of June and first week of July, Halen had a break from daycare, so we got to spend a lot of quality time hanging out and playing. I honestly don't remember what we did. One thing I remember is that we got a zoo membership, so we got to hang out at the LA zoo a few times.

Imagine Halen with some giraffes or something.

For the 4th of July we had a BBQ in the backyard for some friends. We bought a little blow-up pool and did some "swimming" (lounging) and splashing around. That was a good purchase, although I wish we'd gotten to use it more often. It's still sitting out in the yard, so it's not too late I guess.

Here's where you would see Halen in the pool with his little swimsuit and rash guard thingy. So cute!

The following week, I was summoned to jury duty, which ended up lasting 2 weeks, so Halen spent those 2 weeks in daycare full time while I sat in a courtroom fulfilling my civic responsibility. It wasn't altogether too bad. I was the foreperson on our jury, and I did find the process to be pretty interesting. I guess I'm kinda nerdy.

Picture my face on Ally McBeal's body. It was pretty much exactly like that probably.

Almost immediately after the case ended, I started feeling yucky. I knew it would happen any day, but I'm glad I didn't feel gross in court. But as I was saying, pretty much the day my jury duty ended, I started getting morning sickness. That's right folks, Halen will be a big brother in March.

If you know my mom, picture her dancing around a bit. Now shrieking.

So I basically spent the rest of July and most of August on the couch. I'm probably skipping over some fun and/or interesting stuff, but as far as I remember, the summer went jury duty, sick on couch, vacation. Which leads me to right now, where I'm writing this on my parents' couch and feeling much better. Just exhausted. I'll try to get around to writing another post when I get home highlighting our trip. With actual pictures! But, of course, I start school Monday so... yeah...

This is where you picture me not blogging.

Halen's One! (Photo Extravaganza)

I can't believe it! I think I've said this before, but it truly feels like the blink of an eye and an entire lifetime simultaneously. How can my precious baby boy be a thriving one-year-old? It seems impossible. We had some family and a few friends over today to celebrate Halen's first year.

Before the food.

David's mom Shanna, step-dad Wes and brother Andrew are in town (more on that later), and my aunt Sherry came, along with my brother Chris and sister-in-law Laura who drove up from San Diego with their 6-week-old daughter Quinn!

Wes, Chris and Quinn

Laura, Quinn and Halen

Halen loves his Auntie and baby Cousin!

Laura, Sherry and Quinn

Halen with Gramma Shanna. Guess who discovered his nostrils this weekend?! And so it begins...

David being his usual bad-ass self...

The Strattons and the Coxes. Not my best photo, but look how good everyone else looks! Taking this one for the team.

Halen and his Daddy!

Mr. Happy

The birthday King!

Slobber Chin

Birthday cupcake!

Birthday frozen yogurt is more up his alley...

Yucky cupcake gets the drop :)

I love this picture!

Mr. Halen has 8 teeth. He weighs about 20-21 pounds. He is crawling and standing like a madman, but afraid to walk and not quite there yet. He will, however, pull himself up to a table or couch, grab anything he can get his hands on, and start tearing/chewing/smashing. He’s our little destroyer :)

Halen is sleeping really well these days. He'll go down around 8, and more often than not he'll wake up between 1 and 4 to eat, and then he goes right back to sleep until sometime between 6:30 - 7:30. Often times, he doesn't wake up during the night at all. During the day he takes 2 naps, usually around 11:30 and 3ish.

Halen mostly drinks milk, but he also has 3 meals a day of organic jarred baby food. His favorite foods are pears, bananas, carrots and sweet potatoes. He’ll eat other veggies and meat if I mix in fruit and rice. He’s a pretty good eater, but he still doesn’t do anything solid or chunky. He gags on the smallest bits, so we just do the mushy stuff for now, and occasionally give him something solid to gag on, like fruit pieces or tofu.

His favorite toys are his mailbox, his train and car, and his books. He has a curly blondish mullet and giant blue eyes. His favorite words are “mama”, “dada” and “giggle-giggle-giggle-giggle-giggle…” Sometimes I look at him and I’m in awe because he’s just so beautiful and I can’t believe how much I love him. All the poopy diapers and cranky-pants tantrums are well worth it.

Where Has the Time Gone?

Sheesh. Where do I ever begin?? Here's a quick summary of my life from September - March:

Monday through Friday I get up at 5 am. Okay fine, 5:15... I get ready for work, (which includes about 45 minutes of pumping), run out the door and hit the road. It's a 25 minute drive into downtown, and I'm usually there by 7:15. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays we have staff meetings at 7:30 and then school starts at 8.

This year, we got a class-size reduction grant which requires all 9th grade classes to be capped at 20 students. Since we weren't in compliance until early December (I had 30-35 kids in each class), we had to drop all of my classes to 15 and add about 4 new sections to compensate for the overflow. Until then, I was the only geometry teacher at my school, but now there are 2 other teachers with 1-2 geometry classes and I had to give up my English class to make way for a 6th geometry class.

Since all of the 9th grade classes shrunk, we had to rearrange all of the classes to make everything work. Unfortunately, we can't find any teachers to fill our vacancies because we have 1-3 openings for almost every subject, and no teacher is qualified for all of the subjects we need. LAUSD has a shortage of biology/spanish/world history/pe teachers (that's one teacher qualified to teach ALL of those classes). As a result, we're all teaching extra classes without a planning period. Of the 18 teachers at my school, only 2 of us have a prep period. And no, I'm not one of them.

So, basically, this has been good and bad. Good for me, because my classes shrunk significantly and now I only have to prep for 1 subject instead of 2. But bad because all of us are majorly overworked and no one has time or energy to do anything. That's bad at a small school like mine where there are so many out-of-class requirements. It's just simply a lot of work.

School ends at 3:10 and if I don't have meetings or 10th grade presentations to attend (don't get me started) then I leave to pick up Halen from daycare. David drops him off every morning at 8, and I'm usually there between 4 and 4:30 to take him home. Part of me has some maternal guilt about how much time Halen spends at daycare every day, but I know that he has a great time there, and they love him and treat him well. I've come to terms with being a working mom, and I feel blessed to have a career that gives me so much time off! (Like spring break, which is only 1 week away! Counting down the days...)

What else has been going on with me? Well... nothing. Life right now is work, Halen, work, Halen, etc. My favorite times are visits from family, which have been happening a lot lately :) For more on Mr. Halen, click here.