Lots of Updates

I know I don't post as much as I'd like to: I don't sleep or shower or read or see my friends as much as I'd like to any more either, so there you go. Here's a few updates about things that a few of you have been asking me about:

**I'm feeling much better. I still have the horrible cough and I'm still sleeping propped up on pillows, but I am sleeping and the cough is manageable. I talked to my doctor yesterday and she said it could take up to 2 months for me to feel back to normal and I still need to get lots of rest (that's funny) but I'm feeling 100% better. One side note: because I was so weak and couldn't eat anything when I was sick, I lost almost 5 pounds!

**One of the questions I get almost every day from someone (if I manage to actually talk to them: it's usually just a message on my phone) is how work is going and how are Maelin and I adjusting and whether or not it's getting any easier. The answer to that is no, it's not any easier. I think I'm just getting used to it. My heart breaks every single morning that she's squealing and kicking and eating my face and being so amazingly cute and I have to strap her in her seat and take her away from me for over 9 hours. I don't think that will ever be "easy" but I am getting used to crying a little bit every day in the car after I've left her. She's doing great at daycare: I almost have to wrestle her away from Sandra when I pick her up. They absolutely adore her there and she smiles and laughs and is in a great mood all day long. I realize how lucky I am that at least I don't have to worry about her once she's there, but I hate that I'm missing so much of her life now. Being at work 4-5 hours every day would be perfect: where's that job???

**Work is going okay. Being gone for a week has been really hard because I was just getting ahead with grading and planning and everything and then I fell back behind. However, I have a great student teacher who's going to start her "solo" time in my classroom in a few weeks so I'll have time to get all the data and administrative stuff done while she's teaching that I haven't been able to do thus far. My class is okay this year. I have some great, amazing and creative kids but I don't have the time to spend with them because I'm dealing with my incredibly low kids or my kids who start crying uncontrollably because they're autistic or calling home about my rude kids, etc. I just read a great article in the New York Times about how the NCLB act is forcing "higher" kids to leave public schools for private schools because the teachers have to be so focused on getting 100% of the kids up to grade level (how realistic is that, really?) so the higher kids are bored. I may post that article for you all when I get some time: it was pretty interesting.

**My mom is coming for a visit tomorrow! I called her crying a couple of times and told her how cute Maelin was and how she was missing it and I needed her to come out and babysit for a few days so she could spend time with her Nana and I wanted to just be with my mom so she's coming tomorrow and staying till Saturday afternoon. She'll get to babysit while I'm doing parent-teacher conferences on Thursday and then again Friday morning and then I'll get to see her Friday afternoon and evening before she leaves on Saturday. I think we're going to hang out with Jeff and Kat and my aunt Laura wants to see her too, so we may all get together on Friday night, but that's still up in the air.

**I don't do anything anymore. People ask me to do stuff and I usually just say no because I'm either too tired (or sick) or I just want to be with Maelin. I miss her so much during the day and only having two days on the weekends to "reconnect" with her doesn't really work either because I'm usually trying to catch up on laundry or grocery shopping or stuff like that. I haven't seen a few of my friends in months. So if you're one of the people that I haven't seen in a while, I miss you!!

**We desperately want to sell our house and move someplace where the young princess will have room to crawl around (she's getting close), but with the housing market being what it is, it looks like we'll have to stay in our current place for about a year longer at least. We plan on moving almost all of our stuff into storage for the time being. Any volunteers to help out????

That's about it. Maelin is almost 6 months old (can you believe it?) so I'm sure there will be more posts coming soon about the little pumpkin. Her new trick is to only have one poopy pants per day so it's usually a big one that goes up her back. Yesterday, Sandra told me it went into her neck! I guess there are some benefits of daycare...