The Beginning of June

Yesterday I took the boys for another run in the BOB. We went around the pond three times. Last time I checked the distance, I think it was about 0.75 miles around. I'm still working up my endurance and hope to be jogging four laps (3 miles) soon. Here is a top view of the BOB through the little skylight windows in the canopies. I like being able to take a peek at the boys when I'm pushing them. Reid is on the left sucking his thumb (and holding onto the red ring), while Aiden is asleep on the right. He fell asleep during the second lap.

Marita had arrived in town so we headed over to Grandpa and Grandma's house to say hi. The boys were still in their pajamas from the night before. Grandpa asked if they slept in. Ha, ha, ha. Good one, Grandpa. Reid is like a rooster, and once 6 A.M. arrives, it's "Da-da, da-da, da-da..." Even when Eric is out of town.


Later on that day, Marita came over to our house. Aiden enjoyed showing her how good he is at pushing the cart around the couch. I'd say his walking borders between Frankenstein's monster and completely out of control. He usually manages to stay upright and within the last day he's gotten much better at turning the cart when he runs out of room. The boys' previous solution to getting stuck was to start squawking until we turned them around.



Today we decided to give the boys haircuts. I had been using scissors, but that was getting too dangerous with all the squirming going on. We bought some clippers at Target last night. Neither boy was in a very good mood when we started.




Reid was soon sobbing, so we transferred him to Eric's lap where I was able to finish. Here he is, still giving me the stinkeye.

We had Aiden sit in Eric's lap the entire time. See, it's nice to have two. We have the benefit of quickly learning from our mistakes and trying again. We put them both down for their naps shortly after the haircuts. The natives were pretty restless after the haircutting torture.

Grandma and Marita came back after lunch to hang out. Reid was showing off to Grandma. OOooohhh!


Marita, Grandpa, and Grandma came back over for supper and Marita read some bedtime stories. The boys weren't too keen on having their pictures taken, but they really enjoyed being read to.



Tomorrow we have a play date with cousin Jacob at a park near their house. We're excited to see him and Jeani. This is our first official play date and hopefully the first of many with cousin Jacob!

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I've noticed that when I first switch the boys to bigger sizes, they end up in the same outfits. However, after a while we start mixing things up. Right now is still the matchy-matchy phase.

I had a couple inquiries about my teaching part-time next year. I'm going to do something called job-sharing. Another teacher and I split a job, but at the high school level it doesn't mean we even have to split the same job. In fact, she's an English teacher. However, in the future, it sounds like the district is going to be a pickier and I would only be able to job-share with another math teacher. (At the elementary level, job-sharing teachers tend to actually share the same set of students.) At my high school, a full-time teacher has five section both semesters. I'll probably have three sections first semester and two sections second semester.
Last fall, I initially started talking to Eric about the possibility of job-sharing. At that point, I would have bet quite a bit of money that I was going to end up in the hospital due to exhaustion, but I kept plugging away. My parents said that they would prefer doing part-time next year, so when we looked into the costs of full time day care, we would be paying about the same amount of money on day care versus me getting paid half my salary. Right before winter break, we had pretty much decided that I could sign up for job-sharing and I turned in the paperwork.
In the mean time, my district announced huge budget cuts and all of our employees are taking pay cuts next year. School districts tend to lag behind during bad economic times, which probably means it will be a few years before we see the same kind of recovery as the private sector. So, that means I'll end up making less than half of what I'm making now. I don't know if I'll job-share more than one year. With the budget crisis, there is some job security risk involved if I don't return full time within two years. We'll just take it a year at a time and see how it goes. I am really looking forward to the opportunity to continue teaching and spend more time with the boys. I think it will be worth every penny.