Saturday, August 20, 2011
mega update
#1) I went back to work this week. Well, technically I went back to school last week to start getting my classroom in order. And it was quite the ordeal as I left my room rather messy and told my substitute that she was NOT in any way expected to organize beyond what she needed to function. So when they took down my room for the summer clean-up; yeah, they hid my mess in all my little tiny cupboards. Oh well. I also have some big changes that I'm making to my teaching methods and I had to pick up a class of 8th grade US History due to the massive size of the class of 2016. They gave me the most challenging class; I've never had an aide in my room everyday but there are enough students that require push-in support that I get one. Frankly, I accommodate for all of my students. But I also got some low readers and some pretty lazy kids who could do a lot better if they just did their assignments. These will be my little loves. I missed them all a lot when I left for maternity leave, but they're mine again [cue megalomaniacal laughter here].
#2) Liam's daycare/preschool will be remaining open! Laura is moving to the Redding area, but she decided that her original plan of having a manager oversee the school in her absence would work after all. So this allows the daycare to stay open AND the gals to retain their jobs as teachers. I'm very happy all around. We won't be putting Colin in or having them go full-time until Jon gets a regular job however. For now, Yamster will continue to go in the mornings only.
#3) Colin finally (seriously we thought he was gonna be walking before he did this) rolled over on the 17th. This makes him just 10 days shy of being 5 months old. He's been scooting around and getting into all kinds of crazy positions when he's on the floor or in his crib, but he just hadn't quite managed that roll. And he did the more difficult one first. While I was on the floor watching him in the baby gym, he rolled from back to belly so quickly and got his arm out from under him in so short a time you would have thought he'd been doing it for months. Hooray! He's not done it many more times since then, but it's awesome knowing he can now. Just a side note on the rolling around in the crib thing ... well, several times now we've found him completely turned around from the direction we put him in and he's been managing to get those skinny little legs of his stuck out of the crib slats. It doesn't really bother him though. Have I mentioned before what an awesomely happy and chill baby I have? Well, I do; he is.
That's all for now. You wouldn't believe what a mess the house has become after 2 weeks of being back at work and the Hubster still needs to finish the craft project for the ladies room in the office at work.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Preschool Rainbow Cupcake - Pt. 2
Happy birthday to my Big Boy . . . the Yam turned 3 years old today!!! Can you believe it. He's done some phenomenal growing over the recent 3 months that he's been in preschool; I was excited to make cupcakes for his class in the preschool (and the school-age room as well). It's a little thing that I probably won't get to do a lot since Liam's birthday is in the summer and even if he were to have a party at school, well guess where I'll be – at school in my own classroom. (Colin is a risk too as his birthday may sometimes fall during Spring Break.)
When we dropped him off at school this morning, they had written on the window a birthday message for him. There was also a giant banner in rainbow dots between the two classrooms. How did they know I chose a rainbow theme?! I asked when we should bring the cupcakes by and they said around 10:30am so that there would be sufficient time before lunch to get a bit of appetite back. The preschoolers/toddlers were so cute in their little chairs. They all started to sing to Liam while I was handing out the cupcakes and Liam tried so so so hard not to dig into his frosting (which is pretty much all he eats of cake these days) until everyone was served.
Even two of the infants got to have some cake. And the school-age kids were super stoked when I said they could all have a cupcake too. The teachers were so impressed by the rainbows and called me Supermom! Awww. I told them it was easy but it just took a long long time. The little kids exclaimed “Wainbows!” when they bit into the cupcakes and when they saw the papers. The papers are beautiful actually; Jon said they looked like little tie-dyed shirts with their circular pattern that wasn't always perfect VBGYOR order.
It was a cool feeling, being that awesome kind of mom. You know, I hate to have a Back to School whinge right now, but I feel like I put this much effort into everything I do for others and that includes my friends as well as my students. Why oh why are my efforts not viewed as spectacularly by the administration or the parents? Maybe I need to make rainbow cupcakes for everyone at “B2S Nite” to get their appreciation. Um yeah; like that's ever gonna happen!
I hope Liam always enjoys cupcakes and being spoiled a bit on special days. I know it seems like we're going a bit overboard this year, but last year I wasn't even home because I was at a CTA conference and besides, this is like the first birthday he's going to remember anyway.
Oh, we finally got to learn the names of his little school chums. When I was loading the photos onto the computer this evening, I actually got Liam to tell me who everyone was. Apparently this Cami girl that he's confessed to holding hands with before is an older woman (she's probably four by my best guess). That was adorable when I learned about Cami. “Cami an' Weeum hold hans. Hold hans's OK to hold hans.” Awww.
Preschool Rainbow Cupcake - Pt. 1 Tutorial
Awhile ago, we had a friend from our junior college days post her daughter's 1st birthday party pics that included the most beautiful 6-layer rainbow cake with white frosting. Each layer was a different color of the rainbow and there was thick white frosting between all the layers too.
Well, I decided to go for it in cuppy cake form. And, I have a mini-muffin tin from our Sunday Champagne Brunch days in college.I got a basic white cake mix and made the recipe on the box:
1 box mix
1 C. water
1/3 C. veggie oil
3 eggs
Mix with electric mixer for 2 minutes.
Then separate the cake mix evenly into 6 separate small bowls. Add food coloring. I was lucky I didn't have to mix any primaries to get secondary colors. I had 1 pack of those Schilling 4-color liquid droppers with the pointy caps (you know the ones – all our moms had them when we were growing up). But in my recent forays into more talent required types of decorating (eg. Liam's 1st birthday giraffe cake with my first attempt at fondant), I've managed to acquire a few other gel colors which are great as they don't liquify your icing and have super vibrant colors.
I used Wilton gel colors in: violet, copper orange, and sunny yellow.
I used the Schilling liquid colors for: red, blue, green.
I was a little worried that the orange was too dark. I originally bought it because it was my substitute for brown since I didn't think that was appropriate for a child's giraffe cake. But as it turned out, the red was so pale, it was almost pink and that contrasted with the dark orange quite nicely.
Start adding your separate cake mix by spoon. I used a small tea spoon (note I didn't say teaspoon) and only about half of the spoon at that.
Time for the oven. I was a little worried about the fact that my cupcake wrappers were so full because you normally only fill them 2/3 full to allow for rise. As I was using the mini pan, I shaved 4 minutes off so I'd have more time if the centers were liquid and wouldn't really risk burning them.
Oven at 350F degrees for 14 minutes. *
The timer went off, the toothpick went in and came out clean. They were super puffed over the top and running into each other, but they really had a great mushroom top (a la Mario Bros.)
* Tip: Don't preheat your oven until you're almost done with loading up those cupcake papers. It takes forever to load those little guys with 6 different colors and I was dying in the warming kitchen! Remember, this is August in the Sacramento Valley folks. It's hot in here!
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Summer's early mornings
But, we didn't get to wake up to all sleepy and snuggly with our little man because somebody (ahem, the big boy) was waking up at the crack of dawn!!! Not fair. Saturday morning he was up at 6:30. Ugh. More amazing was the fact that he didn't fall asleep until after 9pm on Friday night because we drove into Marysville to meet my mom and grandmother at the house and then we went out to IHoP for dinner. He did crash really hard in the car on the way home though; when I changed his diaper and his clothes, he slept through the whole she-bang. So Saturday had an early wake-up and then no nap. Instead we played tag, red light/green light, and hide & seek all day.
Sunday we got to sleep in a little later as it was 6:55 when he came into our room and climbed on the bed. He was vibrating with energy all freakin' day!!! The kid didn't slow down once. He was a maniac. He was whiney. He was happy, then sad, then happy all within minutes. He was constantly glomming for attention. When I tried to sing the "inside voice" song, he countered by singing the "outside voice" at the top of his lungs. And of course, naptime was a bust as he spent 90 minutes locked in his room pulling clothes from the drawers, books off the shelf, jumping on the bed, and throwing his cup at the door (probably shouting some toddler obscenities too). By 6:30 he was begging for a bath. He and I hopped in the shower then I got him his evening milk but (bad mommy!) I drugged him with benedryl. Funny, he sipped that milk down tout suite. Then we went to his bed and I read him two books while he continued to talk and climb his feet up the wall and try to turn the pages on me. Then I started the second chapter of The House on Pooh Corner (which I grabbed at the thrift store for 50 cents last week). He mimicked me when I read Tigger's growl and mumbled some, then the next thing I know he's breathing slow, his eyes are closed, and I finished the page. He NEVER falls asleep while I read. He didn't even stir when I lifted him up to get him under the sheet or turn on his music. He was fast asleep by 6:55pm.
Yesterday, we were awakened at 6:15 by him crawling into our bed and laughing and giggling. Usually he says "goodmorning mommy, good morning daddy. Wake up." in his loudest whisper. But no, on Monday morning he woke us up with "I hungy, I soooooo hungy, I hungy." Luckily, he was loud enough to wake Colin (who was back to getting up at 3:30am again btw) so I got to stay in bed and nurse the baby for a half an hour while Jon had to get up and do the breakfast ritual. His school teachers were under strict orders to wear him out, but I guess that didn't happen since he didn't nap (although he did stay quietly in his room reading and playing for an hour which is, frankly, all I ask for) and then we played tag and MONSTER AHHH for an hour running around the living room table and back and forth. Surprisingly, Colin napped through all that commotion. During his "nap" I made a Good Boy Chart for him so we can reward him for doing his good behavior things. He barely touched his dinner which was funny because chicken nuggets are probably his favorite right now. It was a pathetic attempt to eat and around 6:30 he crawled up next to Jon on the couch and said "I so tired." Jon pulled him up onto his lap and then Liam was asking for his froggy and the next thing we knew he was sacked out! Again, he crashed so hard that we were able to change his diaper and get him snuggled into bed without a slight stir. I took this picture at 8pm to prove he was still totally asleep.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Mothers Day & school
On Saturday, I took Colin all the way down to Roseville very very early in the morning because I had to do my glucose tolerance test to see if my diabetes has gone away. I had to fast for 8-10 hours overnight and I just barely passed the fasting glucose. I still don't know what my 2-hour result is. Colin and I are also participating in a study about gestational diabetes/diabetes. So I had all my measurements taken; height, weight, waist, BMI. And then Colin got measured (basically the same thing). He's only 6 weeks and he's now 11lbs and 22.4". Wow! Then afterward, I took my mom and grandmother out for lunch at Spaghetti Factory. Granny kept sneaking glances at Colin about every 3 minutes. When we went back to Granny's house, I fixed her email and her Facebook page for her. She kept falling asleep in the easy chair and talking in her sleep. It was very funny.
I got some pics uploaded from Liam's milkshake adventure if you want to go back and view them. I have to admit, they are frickin' ADORABLE (and I'm not just saying that because he's my sweet little man).
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
a school milestone, a food milestone
It was a really nice place and the director and all the teachers seemed great. We got to see the preschool and infant rooms as well as the school-age room (which wasn't in use obviously because it was a school day). The kids all met Liam with interest and he fell right in to playing with them as they were getting ready to take their naps.
We will probably put him into the part-time program which means he can attend in the mornings from 7-12 everyday. He'll get snack, lunch, and lots of play time plus curriculum time around 10am. I think he'll enjoy it a lot. He's actually already ahead of several of the kids as he knows all his alphabet in capital letters (and many lower-case) and all his colors. I also hope this will really help him with his language development as he gets rather incoherent, mumbly, and unintelligible after lunch.
I also like this idea as it will give him a good starting point to going full days after the summer (hopefully, Jon will have a job by then) even if it's only for a couple days a week. And I will get to focus on Colin a bit more; I'll enjoy the time I have with my little monster all the better when he's home. And hopefully it might give Jon the motivation to clean things since he won't be watching after Liam all the day.
On our way home from my postpartum appointment yesterday, we stopped at Mc Donald's since Colin needed to breastfeed and I was really craving a milkshake. Jon got Liam his own chocolate shake (his very first). It was huge compared to him and heaven help us, he ate the whole thing without getting a brain-freeze or a tummy ache. And honestly, he was very polite and sweet about the whole thing (a wonderful change compared to the previous night when he was a downright turd to me). He even had his bath and went to bed calmly and lovingly. I may have to ply my child with ice cream more often.
Aww how big they get so fast.