1. Brandon was opening pools like a maniac, so weeknights and weekends together were fairly sporadic.
2. I was closing out the school year. Sending students to the next grade level, especially when it requires a change of schools (like sending my 8th graders to high school) requires a RIDICULOUS amount of paperwork. On each student. I teach 5 classes of 25-30 kids, so...well, that's a lot of paperwork on top of the usual day-to-day of grading and wrangling 14-year-olds who are so close to summer break they can smell it.
While Brandon and I were bogged down at work, Carson divided her weekdays between day care, Jana's house, and grandparent days at home. Little trooper.
A few cool things did happen this month though:
--potty training! Our whole approach to potty training was fairly...lazy. Basically, every once in awhile, we'd ask Carson if she wanted to sit on the potty. Usually, she didn't. We said okay. We know Carson's personality and trusted that pushing her would only lead to her digging in her heels. She'd be ready when she was ready, and we would just wait (what's the rush anyway??? With diapers, you can change them when you want. If they sit in a wet diaper for 20 minutes while you finish at the grocery store, it will not be the end of the world. Once in underwear though, the world must stop when they need to go. Not nearly as convenient).
We had underwear, a small potty, a potty seat...we thought we had everything we needed. The only thing we hadn't really tried yet was pull-ups. The idea seemed kind of weird to me: it's like a diaper but you try not to go potty in it...or it's like underwear but you can pee in it...seemed like mixed messages to me.
But Carson's day care wanated to move her up to the preschool class in June, and she couldn't go in diapers. So they suggested trying pull-ups because most of the other kids in class were using them. So we did.
And Carson was done peeing in diapers.
For some reason, pull-ups flipped that switch of wanting to potty train, which I think was the only one we were waiting on.
Anyway, we can count the number of accidents she has had since then, and we were so amazed and proud of how quickly she took to the change when she was ready! (pooping has been another story with another timeline, but we have since mastered that as well). Way to go, Carson!
--fantastic weather! We had lots of picnics, walks, playground visits, and our first trips to the pool in May.
There are few things Carson loves more than a picnic.
--I worked some this summer--I wrapped up a professional development project I had been working on and travelling to south Georgia for throughout the school year. Although it was a cool opportunity to help develop resources for the new nation-wide curriculum standards, it felt good to visit Perry, GA one last time this month (emphasis on LAST). I also got to be the Pre-Summer School Director for my school, which is a fancy way of saying "someone has to do all this paperwork for our federally-funded summer program--you win!" but it was easy and a good learning experience. And finally, I was a presenter at our county's annual Literacy Institute, where language arts teachers come to attend sessions, listen to authors, and collaborate about teaching. But all that was spread out over the course of May, June, and July. And so in May....SUMMER BREAK STARTED!!!
