Jobless

At this very moment, I am jobless for this next school year. Yes, yes you read that right. I more or less quit my current job. I do have other options - stay at home for a year or indefinitely OR transfer schools. I told my principal about a month ago that I wasn't enjoying part-time as much as I thought I would (from a teacher's perspective). I enjoyed being home with the kids in the afternoon and having time to go to the gym, but as a teacher I am out of the loop and never there for anything. I told her I wanted to come back full-time or I would probably take a leave of absence for a year. Three days before my deadline for turning in my leave paperwork, she came to me and said she couldn't put me full-time AND she had changed my position to solely teaching remedial math. I teach a remedial class to 6th graders, and while I don't mind one class, I didn't like the prospect of having three of them and not teaching regular math that I've been teaching for the last 12 years. So, I told her I would turn in my leave request.

The frustrating thing is that there is another 8th grade math teacher who just started this year and doesn't have a permanent teaching license yet. She has taken the test two times and has failed. They can't offer or give me her position because "it's not open." She has one more time to pass and then they would probably give me her job. I don't wish for her to not pass the third time around, but it would make my life a lot simpler!

At this point, I'm applying at another Littleton middle school who has openings. However, this school is east of where we live and the kids' daycare is 15 minutes west of where we live. So, we'd either have to find a new daycare (which we hate to do because Case loves his friends and it's a great Christian environment) or we're going to have to work out getting them there and back to work in the opposite direction. That's assuming I get the job. If I don't, I'll stay home with the kids for a year and hope that something opens up at my school.

As of now, I'm planning on packing up my classroom in May and not returning. I've been sad because I work with such great people and the location is convenient to the daycare and to where we live. I do get excited about the thought of staying home with the kids, however I feel that if I get my foot out the door of education, it will be hard to get back in if and when I do decide to go back. Who knows, but I'll keep you posted. The good thing is that I have a great husband, with a great job, who is supportive of whatever I decide to do.

Get-Away

This weekend we took a quick trip up to Silverthorne to get away for the night. Living so close to the mountains one would think we would take more advantage of them than we do. Jeff and I had a four day weekend so we left Friday morning and came back Saturday evening. Here are some highlights of our weekend.

Siahna gets all bundled up to go watch Case & Jeff go tubing.
Case gets his helmet, goggles and new mittens on. He's so excited.
Jeff and Case are waiting to get their tubes.

Later that day we get ready to go swimming at the hotel.
Siahna's first time in the pool. She loved it!

I Don't Like It!

Siahna has had a had time learning how to eat - part of her motor skills development. She's getting better but does not like anything that is hard or crunchy. She really doesn't like her cereal which I'm trying to get her accustomed to, but as you can see she'll have nothing to do with it.

Thank You

I know that I probably don't do the best job in my blogs explaining everything that's going on with Siahna and that some blogs are off the wall or don't make sense. It's just my way of venting and trying to keep people up-to-date. I also know that very few people know exactly what we're going through because they don't have children with disabilities or their child's disability is different from Siahna's so they handle it differently than we do. Even when you have been in someone else's shoes, it's still hard to find the right words to say to comfort that person.

I have a friend who used to live in Denver and moved a couple years ago down south. She sent me a message today on Facebook that said that she reads my blog and has been praying for us. And then she said, "Just remember that you are the only person in the world that God equipped to be her mommy." Thank you, Kelli. Seriously, I burst into tears as I was driving down the street and read those words. I don't know why we're going through this struggle and sometimes I feel incapable but those words spoke to me. No matter what may come our way, she was designed for me and I for her.

Kelli - thanks so much for those words of encouragement. It really meant a lot and when I'm feeling down I will remember that I am capable of this and equipped to get through this.

Living a "Normal" Life

I realized tonight as I was doing dishes that Siahna's delays have become a part of our everyday normal life. I feel like she's doing so great until I see a baby who is younger or the same age doing all these things that she's not yet doing. Then I get down. We had our third therapy session tonight and Jeff started by telling JD that she really hasn't done anything spectacular this week. Maybe that's why I've felt kind of down about her progress. We kind of felt that this week we didn't see a lot of growth in her. But, after spending 15 minutes with Siahna, JD could see that she had made leaps and bounds over the past week. I guess we had become used to it or didn't notice the little things. She was rolling over tonight back and forth. She kept bringing both hands to center. She sat up and reached for a toy using both hands. She even reached down and grabbed onto her pant leg - something we've never seen her do. It was encouraging to have an outside perspective because sometimes I think we do get used to our "normal" life.

After JD left tonight, we did a little dance in the kitchen and gave Lou high fives to celebrate her accomplishments for the week. She is making progress - we just need to take the time to see it and appreciate it!

A Great Week

There are some things in life that just make you smile. This has been one of those weeks. Although Jeff has worked a lot in the last two weeks making things stressful for me having the kids all to myself for two weeks, but hopefully that is settling down soon and life will return to normal. I have had a great week though.
*Big Love Season 4 came out on Netflix this week. I don't know what it is about that show, but I enjoy watching it. I could never live in that environment or under that belief but it is interesting.
*iPhone joined with Verizon and Verizon customers got to pre-purchase their phones today. They were supposed to go on sale to customers at 1am so I set my alarm and got up to make sure I got mine. Then I discovered at 7am that they were still selling them and there wasn't a shortage so I could have slept and bought it this morning. Oh well.
*Siahna has made so much progress over the last week and really she's done this on her own. I don't really give the therapist credit for this. She is sitting for extended periods of time. She is tolerating tummy time for extended periods. The other night she started trying to push up on her legs so maybe she'll be crawling soon which would be amazing. We took her off her reflux meds this week as she seems to hopefully outgrown that stage in her life.
*We had two "Cold Days" this week. Never in my 12 years of teaching have I had a day off for it being too cold out, but this week we had two. Crazy.
*Lastly, I'm headed to Omaha tomorrow to spend the weekend with some of my closest girlfriends. I'm super excited to sleep, hang out with the girls, laugh and sleep!