Back to work

We had a playdate last week with some of Isabella's friends. Aren't they so cute? From left to right, Maddie is a few days older than Isabella, Emma is 2 months younger, and whose mom is keeping Isabella for us this year, BJ is about a month younger than Isabella, and Rachel is about 2 or 3 weeks older.


These are Isabella and Maddox' feet. Yummy baby feet!

Well, I went back to work this week. I had very mixed feelings about it. I had such a great summer (once I got into the swing of things) and Isabella is just so fun right now! But I love Guilford Day School and I love my job so that makes it a little easier to leave her in the mornings. We had to switch sitters this year because Crystal's schedule changed. We are using a mom who lives in the neighborhood. Her daughter Emma is 2 months younger than Isabella. Although this was a rough first week, I think it will work out really well. It is convenient that she is in the 'hood and the girls have fun together and Heather is really good with Isabella. So once she settles into being a better napper for Daddy, life will be good! Work this week was really busy and I wasn't even required to be there. We don't start until Tuesday, but the pace has already quickened tremendously. I think this will be a really good year. We have such a great staff this year - 4 new people who are going to be a great addition. One of the 4 graduated a year behind me at Grimsley and another one graduated several years ahead of me at Davidson. Small world! Currently I am scheduled to teach one class, a 5th grade math class. Yay math!!

Isabella is crawling and she is usually pretty independent. I thought she would be kind of clingy after I pick her up in the afternoons, but she really isn't. The other day she crawled into her room and shut the door and read her books. I guess she is affected less by her day without mommy than I am!! We went to the Children's Museum today, which is SO fun now that she can crawl. She really likes it there. She will just crawl all around and play by herself, but she'll usually keep me in sight. Now that she's crawling, the pool is much less relaxing. The baby pool has a sloped entry and Isabella will just crawl straight towards the middle of the pool where the fountain is. If she could stand up it wouldn't be too deep but she'd probably crawl until her head is underwater if I'd let her. The other day though, she crawled all the way out of the pool and up to the gate. I was cringing to see her crawling on concrete but she didn't seem to mind.

So we're about 3 weeks into cloth diapers and we're still going strong! We still use disposables at night but at some point we may switch to cloth for nighttime too. After about 2 weeks I finally bought more diapers so now we have enough for 2 days. So I just have to wash them every other day, which really isn't too bad. We are lucky that our sitter doesn't mind doing cloth diapers, since she uses cloth with her daughter.

Since I went back to work this week I haven't had 2 hours per day of Isabella napping in my lap so I may have a little trouble finishing the book in time for Book Club this weekend. We are reading Peony in Love by Lisa See. We read another one of her books, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan earlier. I can't believe that Book Club has lasted 3 years already! We have lost some and gained some since that first summer but we are still going strong and reading some great books. Two teachers at school have been in the same Book Club for like 15 or 20 years. I wonder if they've kept a list of all the books they've read in all that time?

We've had a lot of fun watching the Olympics this year. Of course, my favorite two sports to watch are volleyball and swimming (gee, really?). Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh are incredible. It is fun to think about the next time the Summer Olympics roll around, Isabella will be able to watch some of it with us. She'll be almost 5! :0

Hopefully I can continue to be good about posting on the blog. Once next week hits, it will be a crazy whirlwind at work. So forgive me if it is awhile between posts. But I'll try hard!