Diversity Day

What does "diversity" mean? Well, let's take a look at one day in my life:

• Up at 5:45 am to feed a 4 month old baby
• At 6:30 am 3 year old crawls into bed with me and asks what stuffed animals I like to sleep with at night. Awwww...then procedes to jump on bed and wakes up sleeping baby.
• Have conversation with husband about marathon training after he returns from 10 mile morning run. Feel terribly lazy and inadequate, despite the fact that I was up and out of bed 4 times the past night.
• Grandma arrives at 9 am to help take care of 3 year old and baby.
• I run to the computer to create a syllabus and some grading rubrics for a graduate level reseach class I'll be teaching in a month.
• Receive email from a woman I'll be working with this weekend to teach a class in Fort Collins. Oh crap! I need to prepare for that class!
• Feed hungry baby, again.
• Back to email.
• Take children to McDonald's for lunch to celebrate successfully using the toilet. Realize nothing on their menu is really fit for adult consumption.
• Play peek-a-boo with 3 month old while trying to counsel a student over the phone on how to apply to a PhD program (yes, both simultaneously).
• Hungry baby...
• Naptime for everyone 3 years old and under. I may have eaten my own lunch in there somewhere.
• Back to the grading rubrics.
• Talk to husband on phone.
• Change and clean poopy underwear...so much for the potty success of yesterday.
• Take garden tour with 3 year old...we find tomatoes and basil and decide to make homemade pizza with homemade tomato sauce using herbs from the garden. Eat shelled peas on the deck. I love my garden!
• Hungry baby (see a pattern here?)
• Get praised by 3 year old and husband for pizza - yea!
• Crazy bath and bed time routine.
• Back to the computer to plan class for this Saturday. I wonder if what I'm putting together is even coherent by this time of day. I also wonder what it would be like to sit down and work for a couple of hours at a time on my job...I remember the days when I had a nice 9-5 work schedule...
• Attempt to set up babysitters so that husband and I can have a dinner out for our anniversary and a short trip to Saratoga next week.
• See emails from students needing me to review their work. Decide to put that off until tomorrow, although I have a strict policy of getting back to students within 24 hours. But, I think feedback that is written in cohesive English is probably better than what I'd produce right now!
• Sit down on couch with husband and he asks me what show would keep me awake. I laugh at that and promptly fall asleep (it's 8:45 pm).
• Wake up at 9:00 pm when baby cries. Decide she's had enough coddling and let her fuss a bit. Miraculously she goes back to sleep quickly.
• Drag self off couch and decide after this day I only have about 20 seconds of energy left. That 20 seconds goes toward brushing teeth...contacts will just have to stay dirty.
• Last 5 seconds of concsiousness is dedicated to a prayer that the baby sleeps at least until midnight...zzzzz

And, the craziest thing about all this is, I really had a good day!

I'm trained out

So, I'm new to this blog thing and I thought about not making this post. Then, I decided that this is my blog and posting my thoughts is kind of the point!

That being said, I am tired of "training". Sam is in the middle of potty training. I honestly had no idea how much of my day would revolve around cleaning up messes on floors, in underwear etc. once we started this process. I'm trying to be very positive and upbeat so Sam doesn't get discouraged, but after my third load of laundry and fourth time cleaning the floor for the day, it isn't easy!

And, as I mentioned in my last post, Anna isn't the world's greatest sleeper. Mind you, Sam completely spoiled me in this category since he started sleeping 12 hours straight at night by 2 1/2 months and has always been a great napper. But, Anna is still waking up every 3 hours at night, sometimes more. So, I'm working on also "training" her to sleep better. I have no idea if anything I'm doing will work, but the thing I do know is that it leaves me nice and sleep deprived!

Then, to add to the training woes, I am also in the process of "training" to work as a faculty member at Regis University. While I hope this will be a positive thing, the process is time-consuming and I now have two different institutions (Colorado State University and Regis) to prepare fall classes for. Maybe I'll get that prep done at 2 am when Anna is up...

On a happy note, we are in the BEST part of summer right now. Days are warm, the afternoon rain showers have stopped and Sam wants to spend all day in the back yard. Perfect!

Hello again...

Look at me! It's over a month later and I'm finally doing another blog post! At this rate, my blog will never become an internet sensation... But, to be fair, I do have 19 students in my class this summer who have all created blogs for an assignment. Keeping up with all of those has pretty much sapped my blog energy!

We are LOVING summer currently. Summer doesn't arrive in Laramie until mid-June, but once it does, the days are perfect. Sam has become my apprentice gardener. He has three flower pots that are all his...he chose the flowers at the greenhouse, he waters them, deadheads the flowers etc. He also knows the names of most of the flowers in our yard. We're not just talking about petunias and pansies here, but things like calendula, gallardia, and yarrow! He told me the other day that I "grow really pretty flowers". What a pround mommy/gardener moment that was for me!

Anna's second favorite spot to be (after her swing in the dining room) is sitting in her car seat on the deck. Granted, she is not a great sleeper, but at least she lets me eat and play outside a bit! You can't have it all. :)