For those of you who are curious....yes, we survived the entire two weeks sans Dan. Then Dan came home for a day, and then he left again for a day (this time only to San Fransisco--those day trips to India are kinda crazy!) . But we are all back under one roof.

I have to say that the last little part was really hard. Last Thursday and Friday were parent-teacher conferences. I have not had any problems with parents since I've been teaching. I am good at explaining things, being empathetic and negotiating, offering different solutions, etc. So I don't fear them because of bad past experiences or whatever, but conferences just make me nervous. Maybe this won't be the case after another 10 years, but they're big business to me now!

Then, Dan came home on Sunday and flew out again at 1 on Monday. I had my formal observation on Tuesday. Of course, this was a tough bed-time night for Alex and so he and I were up until about 10, and I was not very happy when I had to get up. I dressed up a little nicer, actually blow-dried my hair all the way, instead of just enough to not look a total mess :-)
It went all right. The kids were great until I had them try to put something together involving tape and two steps. Then it was all over. They had all been sitting, participating, doing a great job, and suddenly the room was full of "Missss Waaaaateeeerssssss...I can't doooooo iiiiiiiit." If this had happened without an observation, I might have had them all stack their things up and I would have done it while they were away, just so we could move on, but I didn't want to forfeit the activity, so we chugged through. We got to the cool second "experiment" --we were studying the brain, so we learned how the skull protects the brain using playdough first in baggies and then in the playdough containers--it was good, they were adequately excited and interested and impressed, but not too rowdy. Of course we didn't get to the "wrap-up" part of the lesson because we had to go to lunch, but whatever.

The end of this story is that later in the day another teacher saw me and said asked if I had my observation that day, or if it was the other first grade teacher. I said actually, we both did, one right after another. She laughed and said that explained it. She had passed the principal earlier in the day and the principal had sighed, shaking her head and said, "Those first grade teachers should be canonized." Yeah, I teach at a Catholic school, so sainthood is the ultimate in compliments :-) Apparently she was not too turned off by all the helplessness.

Dan is trying to put Alex to bed right now. I heard a lot of giggling at first, but then it got serious. Some kicking the wall, and some crying. I guess Daddy disapproved of wall-kicking. My tactic was to move his body so he couldn't kick. This could go on and on, a hundred times. I would try rolling him over, laying him close to me, singing a song, talking about our day, blah, blah, blah. If he got tired first, YEAH. If I got tired first, we'd go the the big bed and try it out there. He didn't kick, although he would stand up and open the window (they open with a little crank thing) and look out at stuff. He would usually fall asleep fairly (FAIRLY is such a subjective word!) quickly in our bed, but I didn't like that precedent. Plus, it felt like "giving in." He USED to go to sleep alone every night. If I just hold on a little longer, I know he'll do it again...right?

It's gotta happen eventually. There are very few 10 year olds who are have to sleep in their parents' bed.

But overall, things are good. Glad to have Dan back. I made some little healthy-yummy lunches for the rest of the week (there is a teacher's menu of stuff to order, but it is all stuff that is less than healthy--sandwiches all on white bread, chicken katsu--this amazing fried-chickenish food that actually seems WORSE for you than KFC...you get the drift...it's just better to bring my own, but if I don't make an effort to do it ahead of time, there's just no way I do it in the morning.

It's bedtime now. I hope that Dan can fix the computer soon so that I can start adding pictures to the blog again!