Life of the Hatchers: Firsts...

This was my first week back to work officially and I am completely exhausted! Who knows how I am going to feel after a week with students!

I went in on Monday with Rebekka to set up my classroom. It was fun to talk teacher talk with Rebekka since she will be doing her student teaching this Fall and hopes to be in her own classroom this Spring. She also helped me out majorly and I was able to not go in Tuesday. I would like to say that Tuesday was a relaxing day with my boys...but it wasn't. Steven decided to be fussy with a fever all day. I took him to the doctor that afternoon and she had no answers. The fever was gone the next day so maybe he was growing his molars some more...?

Wednesday through Friday was filled with meetings, setting up my classroom some more, getting materials together, figuring out my students' homerooms and sending many e-mails. They were longs days but at least we were given extra long lunch breaks so I was able to visit my boys then. I wish I had time for that always because it helped me feel a little less sad the rest of the day.

Thursday was Meet the Teacher Night and I was surprised that I saw a ton of parents (by ton I mean like 11 out of the 18 parents). Usually they don't come visit their child's ELL teacher even though I have their children for 4 hours a day. It was great to meet some of them, hard to understand others because of their thick accents, and then there was one lovely parent who told me he hated my program because it made his children stupid. Yes, parents can be so fun! After all was done, I have decided that it's going to be a difficult year. 3 children are coming into the school speaking little to no English (on top of the one I have from last year who seems to have lost all the English he had learned). Then I still have my fav. ADD one coming back and a few first graders who have similar disorders. I will definitely need to focus on finding joy in the journey this year.

Also these past two weeks, I have been trying to get Ben to sleep through the night. One night he slept through without waking until 6:30am for the first time. However, he is still not consistently sleeping through the night. Some nights have been a success where he may just wake up once, whine quietly for a minute and then go back to sleep. Others he wakes up multiple times and whines for 10 minutes. And most of the time he wakes up by 5, not the beautiful 6:30. It's not an easy process but I think (and hope) full success is just around the corner...

Ben also had his first try with solids this week. Although I'm kind of not sure that liquidy rice cereal can really be considered a solid... It was fun and I am not entirely sure he is ready for solids but fun still the same...See below pictures.