Three weeks down...

Seven more to go!
Being back to school... It's craziness! I find that I manage my time a little better (or do I?), have something to look forward to, and am probably more committed to an online class than I was ever to classes that I physically had to be at! I definately took one hard class my first quarter. It's one of those ones that consumes pretty much all of my time, where as the other class doesn't take me nearly as long to complete. The only problem I have is the lack of sleep. I can't believe that I have two full time jobs (library & daughter), a partime job, and school (partime). I'm wondering if I should quit teaching. Part of me would like to. The rest of me says.. hang on to it... It's a good diversion. Plus, the owner of the studio would have a fit if I just upped and quit (i'd give her the 30 days notice as she requires). The other thing is that I've been teaching there for 5 years almost! WOO! Plus, it's a nice way to enhance my pocketbook.

Work is crazy. The schedule I have adopted is even more insane, however, I don't want to have to take Scianna in too much. She's good most of the time, but the other times she's somewaht unmanageable. I'm still not sure if I like supervising. One week, I'm okay, the next I'm not. I'd really just like to manage soley ILL. Although I enjoy working iwth the computer lab students, I feel bad, because there's nothing much I can really say or do at this point. Without having a list of projects that need to be done, I can't really tell them to do much but sit there and answer any questions that arise, do the walkaround, and enter the data into our less than efficient spread sheets. I applied for a job at Binghamton University. I havne't heard anything back from them, and am not really expecting too. I'm not too crazy about the idea of moving, but I guess I'd have to if it was for the betterment of learning and family.

Scianna is 2. I don't really consider her terrible yet *knocks on wood*--but I think I may be getting burned out. This week has been particulary wild. She's constantly moving chairs to get what she wants--in some ways it's humorous, but in other ways, it worries me that she's getting into things she shouldn't be. Just now in fact, she pushed her stool into the little bathroom, told me she wanted to go 'pee' and then continued to turn on the water and play instead. Keep in mind that she's not even potty trained yet! I feel like a terrible parent when I direct her to the telly and allow her to watch sesame street, little Einsteins, or something other so I can try and get my homework done. I did join a play group. I wanted her to have a chance to interact with other kids around her same age. We've been to a few events, and have liked it so far. Visit the Rochester Sweet Peas site for more information! We've been mall walking, to the Sandbox, an indoor playground in Fairport, and more recently to a story time at Barnes and Noble.

Actually the B&N storytime was today. It was rather amusing and rather disturbing all at the same time. I really like how the guy seems to remember kids who are there frequently. It's very crowd interactive AND very crowded. I always hoped that I'd be able to be that kind of person--not caring what everyone else thinks and being silly for the sake of laughter from the kiddos. I'm too conscientious for that I guess. He actually made fun of Scianna because she was so loud. What did he say,oh yeah-- "This one really needs to come out of her shell--she's so shy" Being sarcastic obviously! I never really realized just how loud she is until today. It's funny because I CAN recognize her little voice and laugh when I can't see her. What's really bad is when she starts the Nelson "Ha-Ha" laugh from the Simpsons. It's really loud and equally as annoying. After the storytime, Scianna commenced to play with their Thomas the Tank Engine setup. Lordy Pete I can't believe how expensive those things are! If I was made of money I'd A. have a HUGE playroom with color coded bins and shelves and B. have a swanky train set like that. Unfortunately I'm not made of money and I will make it a point to visit places that have fun toys like that :).

But.. on the bummed out side, I lost Scianna's very cute monkey hat :(. Hopefully I will be able to relocate the purple hat that came with her furry purple coat to take its place. It was really cool because this is the first she's really been interested in wearing hats or gloves!

On to the wonderful world of fast food dinner! Whoops!

Another one hits the dust

Two weeks into classes and I'm already starting to feel the burn. I'm not sleeping, I'm not functioning and I'm not giving each class equal thought. I spend far more time on the systems class than I do on the Information resources. I don't know why that is, probably with the anticipation that it's harder. I spend so much time reading and trying to answer the silly quesitons, but I don't feel like I actually achieve success.

The schedule at work is crazy!. What's even crazier is I spend additonal time there researching and trying to outdo myself on the posts for my class. I don't feel like other people are putting quite as much effort into it as I did.. and I don't even know what I'm talkinga bout half the time.

Scianna turned the big number 2 yesterday! I feel really bad because the birthday planning has gone awry, only in that I guess i wasn't there for cake last night... but still I feel bad that I chose to work and thend o more work instead of spend the time with my daughter. She was really fantastic at the dr.'s office today though. She didn't even scream at the stethascope this time. Usually she does. She did however, scream for the flu shot, but calmed right down. By the time we were leaving she was all smiles and chattering. Then we had to go get her blood drawn for the hemoglobin and iron tests. She sat still while the woman coerced two vials of blood out of the ring finger of her left hand. She seemed proud of the bugs bunny bandaid that she received!

Now my homework is done (the first part anyway) and Scianna's asleep (I hope--or not), and I'm resisting sleep still for reasons I can't even fathom.

Pic Spam! and trip back.

In reverse order of course!

The drive back from Philly was much more uneventful than the drive out. I think I had finally figured out how to navigate around the darned blocks... (good thing becasue I somehow lost the directions home--whoops). The ride seemed to take forever! I couldn't imagine doing a straight trip to North Carolina or SOuth Carolina....

At any rate.. here are some more pictures that I couldn't get to upload last night... The first picture is compliments of the Roberts Wesleyan Christmas party. It was nice to get Scianna all dressed up to go, even if we could only stay for 10-15 minutes or so. Next we have the plethora of Christmas cookies that we decorate so lavishly. We usually make enough to cover the whole long dining room (kitchen) table. Scianna even got into the cookie deocrating this year... although she mainly just wanted to eat the sprinkles... Okay.. More pictures to follow.. I promise.

I should have figured this would happen...

I go and start a new blog. Do really good for about a week and then BLAMMO! I fall off the face of the blogger world for almost a month! YIKES. Not that I like to make excuses for things, but I'm figuring I haven't been posting because the semester was over for the students and I didn't have a reason to post to the OTHER blogs that I keep for my job. Lame, I know. You'd think if I wasn't doing stuff to related to work, I could at least post to my own self initiated blog.

Well all that let out... I come back to my blog with my world rife with change. The babysitter for Scianna has gone back to school. I have decided (probably not in the best judgement) to avoid getting a new sitter for her. Instead, I've decided that I'm going to change my hours at the library to accomodate her being home. This means that my schedule will be most crazy and weekends will be worked a lot, or all the time. I'm not quite sure what I will do once the summer comes because the library hours change. My boss insists that she doesn't mind if I bring Scianna in--My 'office' is in the back where she can play and be non-disruptive for the most part. It seems that several people enjoy her presence... but, I'm not sure that it would be tolerated for a whole summer. I'm hoping that the babysitter will decide to watch kids during the summer, but I remain in uncertainty until then.

If that weren't enough, I've started course work at the ischool for Drexel. Not really knowing better I signed up for a class that may be better taken after at least one quarter was completed. This course has consumed many hours of my life in the past week. I'm trusting that the other course won't be as tedious for me. But I have yet to get into that information. I'm hoping that the courses and things will go well. If it becomes easier...I may consider going full time to finish up early.

I finally got my schedule set, and one of my students decided that she couldn't come on Monday evenings anymore. This means that my schedule must change once again. My new schedule starts this week. We'll see how well it goes! For those of you who know me, I apologize, but I might be a total walking zombie!

So.. now.. to the updates. I don't know that I can remember a lot of what's happened over the past few weeks, but I will try. Scianna did get better before Christmas. I was thankful for that. I was quite worried actually, that she'd be unhappy during the Christmas holiday and my week off. During the week I 'took off' during Thanksgiving week, Scianna was very very cranky and miserable. Now though she's been pleasant and amusing and funny as all get out!

Christmas was good. It was wonderful to see the family members that I don't see very frequently. My sister was home from Idaho for the Holiday. We frosted cookies on Christmas even and she stayed with up with me all night while I feverishly tried to finish a Christmas stocking for Scianna. I didn't really finish it all properly (ran out of time), but here it is (with all the others). You can just make out the nna on it. It's the bright one that hasn't been through so many years of use! I'm hoping to make another one next year the proper way. My sis even took a nap on the couch before we opened gifts.

Not long after that my Grandmother arrived (being up from South Carolina), and we dug into the presents. It took forever, and Scianna has to open each present to the 'playing' stage until she can move on to the next one. After all the work on the stocking, she didn't really care too much. Santa probably could have left a plastic grocery bag and she would have been happy (after eating a bajillion m&m's). Eventually all the presents were open and I felt like I was going to fall over with lack of sleep. By the time presents were finished, it was time to get started with dinner. Dad made spanish rice (very very very very yummy), and we had Steak!--Also very yummy. After dinner, we hung around at the kitchen table and chatted a bit. After that I took Scianna up to the mother-in-law apartment at my Dad's and crashed. That was about it.

One of the best things was going out for sushi at the Fuji Grill on Christmas Eve. We all piled into the car and drove down there. We ordered a ton of sushi and seaweed salad and miso soup and had a bit of a sushi party! My sister is very cute with Scianna. She swears she never wants kids, but Scianna seems to like her a lot. I'm always shocked when Scianna is good at restaurants and things like that. A couple days after Christmas I took her to Panera's after our first playgroup meet. She sat there and ate her sandwhich like a big girl--she even sat in a regular chair! She always surprises me.

New Years was pretty uneventful. I even went to bed before the ball dropped, I must have been tired! Then.. back to work... and then a week later school.

Right now, I'm in Philadelphia. The trip down was agonizing. I neglected to see a split and drove on the wrong highway for probably 45 minutes. After turning around, I ended up being late for my college orientation. Late enough to miss it entirely. Then.. we got lost in downtown Philly trying to find our way to the hotel. When we got to the hotel, the hotel people said they need to have the ID of the director of the library --which I didn't have! WHOOPS! So.. They had to put a hold--I was so afraid that they were going to turn us away! On the bright side, I got to eat more sushi, and some yummy mango chicken. The conference turned out to be really fun. After the driving incident the night before Lindsey and I walked to the conference building and then took the trolley back tot he hotel. After much confusion and indecision, we finally arrived at the liberty bell. We also saw City Hall and Reading Market (which I so badly want to pronounce Reading instead of redding). Instead of going to the swanky fondue restaurant, we settled for Chili's.

I don't know that I could live in a city day in and day out. I'd miss the quiet and the fresh air of the suburban areas. Plus, I get overwhelmed by tall buildings and excesses of people. I'll be glad to get home.

Thanks to my friend CIndy, I've become a Trader Joe's nut. So, when we were walking to the conference this morning I nearly did cartwheels when I noticed that there was a trader Joes on our route! It was considerably smaller than the one in Pittsburgh and Ohio.. but still nice to go into!

The internet is acting up at the hotel---time for me to take leave for now!