He has a tooth!

Today is November 10, which means Baby Ethan is now eight months old! Wow, time goes by quickly. A couple days ago I noticed that if you look in his mouth, you could see some little white teeth on bottom (still inside the gums). Then today I reached in and there is a tiny tooth poking through! This explains all his fussiness lately, and makes me feel bad. He kept waking up from naps early and screaming, and I didn't know what his problem was. I was frustrated, so I even let him cry himself back to sleep this afternoon (he only cried a few minutes). But still! The poor guy was in real pain, and I just let him cry. He's over it by now, if you can't tell from his picture below:

I will post tooth pictures once the tooth gets big enough to catch on camera.

The video below I took last week. He had been laughing even harder before the camera came out (of course).

If you are wondering how my teaching is going...it's a roller coaster. Planning lessons and correcting homework, quizzes and tests is like doing laundry. It is NEVER DONE!! And as for my students, they have good days and bad days. Sometimes they drive me up the wall and I can't wait for that bell to ring. But other times we have so much fun that the bell rings with out me even realizing that class is nearly over. I recently went to a Foreign Language conference, and got tons of ideas, so right now we are on the fun side again. Hooray!

I guess a good way to measure how well things are going would be to not ask me (since I'm too negative about myself), but rather ask others. For example, my students often tell me French is their favorite class (yay!), my administrators often tell me what an excellent job I do (yay!) and my mentor usually has only good things to say (yay!). Plus, they have put me on as Jing's mentor (the Chinese teacher who I share a room with), so that says something, right? A first year teacher mentoring another teacher? I was flattered.

Ha ha, do you like how I tricked you into reading about my teaching with pictures of my baby?

Yes, I have my moments!

pea in a pod

We had a fun fun Halloween season, and are sad it is over! We went to a corn maze/pumpkin patch with some friends and had a blast. Cassidy and Ethan got to ride the cow train. Cassidy's friend Emma was such a big girl and held Baby Ethan on the train.

They had a huge "sand box" filled with corn! Brilliant idea; Cassidy loved it! I thought about putting one in my back yard, but it smelled kind of funny. Plus, where do you find that much corn?

We all had fun making our pumpkins. I am anti-guck so I painted mine and so did Cass. Joel's pumpkin got a little hungry and ate Baby Ethan's pumpkin.

Cassidy was a cheerleader for Halloween and I thought she was SO cute! But she didn't think that was good enough. She insisted that she was a "cheerleader princess."

Baby Ethan was a pea in a pod!

After trick-or-treating to our neighborhood for a while, we went to a fun Halloween carnival by my sister's house.Showing off her cheerleader skills!"Forget trick-or-treating!

This is WAAAAY better!"

This has nothing to do with Halloween, but I thought baby Ethan looked so adorable in his little suit that I had to post it!

Happy day-after-Halloween, everybody!

top ten

I thought I would write about my kids' top ten favorite things/things to do. This is probably just as much (or more) for me than it is for you. But enjoy:

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Baby Ethan:

10. pretending he can't sit up on his own...we know he can; he just won't!

9. car rides...they still put him fast to sleep.

8. mornings...he is always smiling when I go in to get him.

7. breakfast, lunch and dinner...he gobbles them up! We even made up a silly song about how much he eats. It goes:

He eats when he's happy,
he eats when he's sad...
and when he's not eating, he gets really really mad.
So we feed him when he's happy;
we feed him when he's sad;
we feed him when he's really really really really mad!

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6. sucking on things...toys, fingers, his toes, our toes (we don't let him, although he's tried), mommy's necklaces, etc.

5. snuggle time in the morning with Daddy, while Mommy races off to work.

4. Momm'ys hair...he loves how it tickles his face. He gets so excited.

3. the Jumperoo...he loves to jump!

2. peek-a-boo...what baby doesn't love that game?

1. Cassidy...he loves his sister the most; she can make him laugh so hard!

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Princess Cassidy:

10. singing silly songs all day (see example above)

9. teasing her baby brother

8. going to Elizabeth's house (her sitter)

7. going pee in potty while we are out and about (and while the cart is full to the top)

6. her "princess movie" (Enchanted)

5. riding her little pink "bike"...she needs a new one; she has totally outgrown that push bike.

4. shopping...go figure

3. playing with friends or cousins

2. her princess dresses

1. dance class...she will do ANYTHING to get to go to dance class!

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Baby Ethan recently started growling the word, "dadadada". Last week Cassidy said, "Baby, say 'dada'," to which he replied, "dadadada." Cassidy then said, "Good job. Say 'Elizabeth'."

La famille

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Voila les photos!

I have not put many pictures on here recently, so here they all are. Enjoy!

This was at the TreeHouse Museum like two months ago. SO FUN! I HIGHLY recommend it.

There are tons of houses and "countries" to visit there, and lots of dress-ups.
Joel had fun building a tower. He's just a big kid at heart!
Cassidy was very excited about the idea of destroying the tower! This is it half-destroyed.

We had fun making up silly plays.

When Baby Ethan figured out how to jump in his Jumperoo a month ago, suddenly, he was a much happier baby! He LOVES his Jumperoo.

Cassidy started dance class and LOVES it. It is the highlight of her week!

Cassidy tried on Baby Ethan's "pea in a pod" halloween costume.

I thought it was pretty funny.

Hiking last month in Ogden

The kids love hiking.

Mommy was not careful when opening the door to JCPenney and it went right over Cassidy's foot. She had to get four stitches. Bad mommy! Cassidy was screaming while they were stitching her, and I said, "Isn't it numb?" They said, "Yah, she's just mad we are holding her down." Poor thing. But she LOVES telling the story of how mommy gave her owies.

Baby Ethan was the inspiration for this post, as today is his seven month birthday! Whoa, he is an old man! Time goes too quickly. Isn't he SO cute? We just adore him.

Happy birthday, bubbies!

Cheer up, baby

So this afternoon Baby Ethan was being very grumpy. I was trying to make treats in the kitchen for Joel's birthday and Ethan was in the high chair fussing. Suddenly I noticed that the crying had stopped. I looked over and Cassidy had taken things into her own hands. This is what I saw:

Baby Ethan was covered in Cinderella dolls. Nice, Cass!

p.s. Happy birthday, Hunny. I love you!

I started teaching

So I never get around to blogging. I often think of it, but then I decide that I must have some new adorable photos to upload before I post. Once I have the photos to post, though, I remember what a pain it is to upload the pictures from the camera to the computer, and then from the computer to the blog. Plus, for some reason, I have a hard time putting them where I want them in the post (I'm not so computer-savvy). The point? I am realizing that I can blog without pictures. It's a lot faster.
School has started, and I am teaching French at the Jr. High in the mornings. I have two French 1 classes and one French 2/3 split class. The French 1 classes are a blast. The seventh-graders are so wonderful. They come in, sit down, then say, "Bonjour, Madame." They even raise their hands and volunteer. It's like an old movie. My French 2/3 split class, on the other hand...is a work in progress. It is difficult to deliver content to both French classes, and keep them working and quiet all at the same time. But we do have fun in there, though.
Also, the homework and lesson planning is stacking up. Blah. I just work half-time, and so I try and keep it that way. By that, I mean that when I come home at noon, I want to be with my kids, not planning lessons. So I do a lot of late-night correcting of homework and lesson planning (once the kids are in bed). I keep thinking I will get ahead someday, but right now it's all I can do to keep my head afloat.
As for the kids, that is another story. Baby Ethan took a few weeks to get used to the whole bottle thing, but he is taking them like a champ now (not formula, though. He won't even taste it. Boo.) Cassidy did great the first few days of my teaching. But now each morning she says, "I come too! I come too!" She is so sad that Mommy has to go away to work. This morning, I called as I was in the car and Cassidy got on the phone. She said, "yay, a Mommy come home?" because I usually call her on my way home. I had to explain that I was just leaving for work, and would be home later. Poor thing. She is way sad when I am home, and very clingy. Today she peed her pants twice, and pooped in her panties. So frustrating! We were so close.
Speaking of, she's crying right now. Off I go. More to come...