Thursday, September 20, 2012

Hearing the Heartbeat with the "rents"

Countdown: 5 weeks, 3 days til Baby Campbell arrives.

Today, I had a doctor’s appointment. My hubby had gone with me to almost every appointment, thus far. I had to reschedule this appointment since I thought I had a meeting yesterday, and because Mr. Campbell and I work at the same school, he was able to cover the last 15 minutes of my class, so I could make my appointment.

I decided to ask my parents if they wanted to come with me. Since, they are retired and my dad has finished most of his projects around their house, they didn’t have anything going.

During my pregnancy, I have been very fortunate, my blood pressure has been good, the baby’s heartbeat has been strong, I don’t have gestational diabetes, etc, etc—so I figure it is safe to have them come along.

We get called back and the nurse came in. We made our usual chit-chat, and then she got out the Doppler to get the heartbeat.

This is what my parents were the most excited about.

Her heartbeat was nice and strong at 130 BPM. When the nurse walked out of the room, both of my parents thanked me for having them come along. They had tears in their eyes. They thought it was so cool to be there.

Afterwards, we went to lunch and they thanked me again and told me how excited they are. Obviously, this is their first grandchild. But, it really made me happy to see them and hear how thrilled they are to meet Kedzie Emmalyn Campbell.

Too bad, Jon and I made them wait over 9 years to be grandparents.

On the other hand, I have a feeling this baby will be worth the wait.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Day before baby shower: Gorilla Glue Disaster

In my continuing pursuit to replicate/create “I love Lucy” episodes, Friday night I learned a very important lesson. I learned that Gorilla Glue expands with pressure.

Since July, I have been on the lookout for creative ways to put our daughters name up in her room. Some of my friends have attached letters to bows, others have painted their baby’s name in stencil or on a wreath.
My mom picked up a home décor magazine and as she was looking through it, she saw letters hung up in a babies room with trim hung around it. They were white letters and the trim was white. The trim was custom made perfectly fitting around each letter. We both thought that was a cool idea, and my mom volunteered my dad to complete the job.
I found some cute, funky letters at Hobby Lobby. Luckily, they had all the letters to spell our daughter’s name, K-E-D-Z-I-E.
My dad bought the trim and took it to his parent’s house to cut it. They live about an hour away. My grandfather took one look at my dad’s new project and told him it would never work. He is a pretty experienced carpenter, so, dad broke the news to me and started thinking about other ideas.
As I was looking around their house, I realized that each of the letters would fit perfectly in an 8 x 10 frame. We made our way to Garden Ridge and I started looking at prices and frames. Man, being crafty is expensive!
I kept looking around and found a full-length mirror that you would hang on the back of a door. It was framed in white and had some cute detailing. It was long enough to fit all the letters and I was mentally composing my pinterest upload. Dad was going to glue it all together.
He brought it over to our house and the I had already fallen off. This week, when he went to hang it, the D and Z fell off. So, all we had left was K E     E.  Dad did buy some gorilla glue and told me he would fix it.

Well, Friday night, I decided to glue the letters back on. I carefully followed the directions on the back of the gorilla glue and then put hubby’s toolbox on top of the letters to make sure they were compressed properly.
We went out to dinner and when we came back I went to look at my creation. Little did I know that Gorilla Glue would expand. There were huge globs of gorilla glue protruding outside each of the letters.

I laughed so that I would not cry.


Luckily, my dad was over at my house and he, hubby and I worked on getting some of the glue off from the letters. We got out my nail polish remover, found a few plastic knives and got to work. After about 40 minutes it was still a mess—so dad took it home to work on. He has pretty much every tool/chemical imaginable including paint thinner, acetone, razor blades, etc.
n Saturday, the day of our baby shower, Dad proudly brought cleaned up and majorly improved version over to our house. I could not believe he was able to fix it. It looks great! I am so thankful for his patience and mad home improvement skills.

This was the finished product...before the letters started falling off.
Now, if I can only get the Gorilla Glue off my hands.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

3 things that I have no control over: Technology, Air Conditioning, and Scheduling

I wish I could say the first week of school was perfect.

Three things stand out to me that are not my friends.

1.       Technology

2.       Air conditioning

3.       Scheduling

Technology = Not my friend. As for the technology bit, these were the very same things that bothered me last year. (Printers not working, computers not working, drives for students that should be there but aren’t.) These are the things that I really have no control over, and have to refer to a higher power, i.e., put in a Technology Work Order, and pray to God that they see the work oder and come to my rescue. Usually it takes them about 2-3 days to come in, but I have become friends with the guys in the Technology Department, so if I label something URGENT, they try to get to my room the next day. Or so I like to think.

I did forget how much fun it is to “teach” 6th graders how to log into their computers for the first time in their school careers. I also forgot that they know nothing when it comes to finding “stuff” on their computers. I have to walk them through where to find various programs like PowerPoint (Go to the green start button, click on programs, go to Microsoft Office and find PowerPoint—that’s PowerPoint, NOT Publisher) and teach them how to navigate the internet. I really don’t mind teaching them the big stuff because those are skills they will need in their future careers. But, I will say, after the first day of teaching 4 classes where to go STEP by STEP, I was really wishing I could have a strong adult beverage.  

Total Work Orders Put in to fix random computer problems in the first week of school: 15.

Air conditioning = Not my friend. Air conditioning in a computer lab with 29 not so energy efficient computers is a joke. There were two days when I was giving instructions to my kids and it was 84 degrees in my classroom. I kept hitting that over-ride button but with no luck.

Total Work Orders Put in to fix A/C: 3.

Scheduling = Not my friend. I love the conference period I have off…4th, which is when all of the lunches are. So if I play my cards right, I can be extremely efficient and still eat lunch. On the other hand, the downside of being at a “new” school with brand new curriculum is that somehow, someway, approximately 20 kids got put into the advanced class that I teach who haven’t taken the basic class. I can see that they probably got coded wrong because they are all 7th graders, but I really don’t think it will be possible to move 20 kids schedules. This is really frustrating because a) I take my job of teaching my elective class extremely serious and b) these kids need about 10 weeks of curriculum that they should know and would get if they were in the basic class.

Total Children that need Schedule Changes =  20 (and increasing as kids are still enrolling in school) and emails I have sent to my admins and counselor: 7.

But, the students have been really good this first week. I like my students a LOT. I am hoping I can sit down a little more this next week, but I did lose 2 pounds from all the walking and sweating I have done.
That is not too bad. It will get better. I know it.

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