Alex who?

We are still alive. I know that it's been a long time. A very long time. Work has sucked every ounce of energy out of me, and then Alex puts me in the negative every evening.

I thought I could handle first grade. What's so tough about first grade? They're just a bunch of little kids...right? I come home every day so exhausted. It's amazing how much energy those 18 little rascals take. Just amazing. When I taught 4th grade there were these glorious streches of silence, where all the little minds were working, the only noise was the scratching of pencil on paper.

Now even "quiet reading time" is noisy. I had to bring in music to play because the kids were getting on each other's nerves as they read aloud. I found out that first graders cannot read silently to themselves. They are in the "sound it out" stage, and that means a literal need to "sound out" words. So, during "quiet reading time" all I heard were complaints of "he's reading too loud." Which really meant "he's reading so loudly that I can't hear myself reading out loud." Seriously. But the music helped.

Anyway, about those stretches of silence. It's not that I enjoy silence. What I enjoy is being able to get something done during the day. Instead, I can't walk away for a minute. If I try to go my desk or organize some papers, I immediately have at least 3 kids saying my name, usually within a foot of me, always asking something that I've already explained. *sigh* This was not meant to be a long tirade about work. It was meant as a meager explanation of why I haven't posted in a hundred years. I've found the reason that little kids seem to have so much energy--they actually suck it from the adults around them.

That, and my camera broke. I think it was banged on the floor one too many times. Or it might have sand in it. The hazards of living with a small child, in Hawaii. There are many possible sources for camera damage. There is no place to get it fixed on the island. We have to send it away. I'm working on that. In the meantime, G-ma Bette has taken some freakin' cute pictures that should be forthcoming. As soon as I figure out how to get them off the CD. Excuses, excuses....