Since this is a time of thanksgiving, let me tell you five of the things I was thankful for this month.
1. Mary's school
Mary is having a wonderful year. It's turning out even better than expected. She is confident and fulfilled. I am prone to grumble about the cost and distance. But sending her there was clearly the right decision. I am grateful she spends her day in a place where she is safe and loved, a place where she is comfortable enough to let down her walls of reticence, allowing her true self to shine. I am grateful that she spends her day in a place where she can develop her gifts and feel the joy and satisfaction of work and learning. (And I am grateful that I get to enjoy these benefits by having a child who is much much less whiny, bored, and needy!)
Here are some pictures Kim, the assistant, snapped of Mary and a friend hard at work in the classroom.
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| Mary scrubs the floor while best friend Brooke does some laundry the old-fashioned way. |
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| Mary (top) and a friend work on fractions. |
Earlier this month we had a chance to visit Mary's school in the evening, so she could show us some of her favorite lessons.
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| Mary works on the trinomial cube. Right now, for Mary, it is a puzzle, but later it will be used to teach trinomial algebraic expressions. (Don't ask me how!) |
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| Mary shows us how she is learning to count by 7's. (There are similar bead chains for counting by 2's, 3's, 4's and so on. She doesn't know it yet, but she's already learning her multiplication facts.) |
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| Mary works on adding two 4-digit numbers. |
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| She hasn't learned carrying yet. But she does know to start with the units column, even though she doesn't know (yet) why it's so important. |
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| Yes, she's definitely been into numbers this year. |
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| Mary let David look on. |
2. David's school
I am grateful for David's school too! David's teacher appreciates him, and she has been really proactive in finding ways to help him have a great, successful year.
Every month the school meets together for a short 15-minute assembly called a "Community Gathering." One grade-level performs, and then the whole school sings the school song. It is short and sweet (very sweet). This month the second graders performed a couple of thanksgiving poems.
It was very cute.
3. Phew! That's over with.
So I'm seriously considering going to graduate school (again). It's probably not the most convenient timing for our family, but as a military wife you don't always have a lot of choices about timing and places in life. Anyway, I'll eventually write more about this, but suffice it to say, for now, that I had to take the stinking GRE. My scores from last time are old and expired, so, yippee for me, I got to take it again.
ETS recently changed the test. It went from a reasonable 2-1/2 hour exam to a whopping 4-1/2 hour marathon. Yikes! People, I'm pregnant! Do you know a pregnant lady who can sit for 4 and a half hours straight?! (Oh, wait. There's one 10-minute break. Gee, thanks.) I was registered to take the test earlier in the fall, but it became clear that wasn't going to happen. I could barely sit for 10-minutes, let alone almost 5 hours. Plus, I found it hard to study when I wasn't feeling well. It was really, really hard to relearn all that math while in bed. Even worse, it wasn't just relearning math--this time around, because the test had changed, there were plenty of concepts I actually had to learn for the first time. With a foggy pregnant lady brain. (It didn't go very well--Greg can attest to that.)
Ugh. This stupid test had been hanging over my head for MONTHS. I was beginning to realize that I was going to have to try to take the test with a nursing one-month-old and an utterly sleep-deprived brain. That seemed like a bad idea. So I rescheduled my test for the end of November, said a prayer, and hoped I'd find enough time to take some practice tests, and, most importantly, that I'd miraculously be able to sit through the test itself.
Miracles happen! I took the test Saturday, and I have lived to tell the tale. Nothing went terribly wrong--my rib cage didn't start aching, I didn't have heartburn, my bladder was never on the verge of exploding, I didn't have a headache, my blood sugar was under control. Miracles galore! The test administrator (a mother of four) even gave me a private room, so I could stand up as much as I needed throughout the exam. Miracle! The test was tiring, but not any harder than I expected. I even got a perfect score on the verbal. With my foggy pregnant lady brain no less! Woo hoo! And I managed to score above average (slightly above average) on the math. Now that's a miracle!
Miracle, yes. Nevertheless, it's a miracle I'm glad is behind me. Mary has been praying lately, "We're thankful that Mommy took her test." Amen.
4. Thanksgiving
I am grateful for Thanksgiving. It was a low-key affair this year. Greg ran a 5K with one of his Boy Scouts in the morning. Then Greg's cousin, Deserae, and her husband, Mikhael, and their son, Elim, joined us for the day. We hung out, watched movies, ate, watched movies, ate, played games, and ate. They are our only family in the area, and we were so happy to share with the day with them. I definitely think Thanksgiving is a day to be shared. We're pretty selfish about Christmas--we aren't ones to travel somewhere or host a big group for that holiday. But Thanksgiving is definitely lonely unless you share it with someone else. We had a lovely time. To mark the occasion, I will even include a very unflattering picture of myself.
5. Baby!
Now that the stinking GRE isn't hanging over me and now that I'm feeling much better, I can finally focus on what is the most exciting. Our baby girl! She'll be here in less than five weeks. No, we are not ready. At all. But I figure, hey, we've done this before--we'll pull it together just in time. Right?
I am very grateful for this baby.
This glimpse of the baby (which I know is sideways--grrr--I'm sorry) is from the summer. She is much MUCH bigger now. Trust me.
