Resolutions

Happy New Year! Well, I'm jumping the gun. I should really be saying that at midnight tonight. Confused? As a teacher, I always feel like the rollover from July to August is much more the start of a new year than the actual year change and holiday. And with my new year starting tomorrow, I feel there are some resolutions I want/need to make with regard to the new school year. While I have been a working mama before when I went back for the last nine weeks of school last spring, going back to work in just two short weeks will be very different. Lawson is a different baby than he was two months ago with a completely different schedule. I feel it will be even harder to go back to work this time around than it was in the spring knowing that I have 36 weeks of work to get through before I can spend each day with him again versus the nine weeks I had to get through the first time. With all of that said, there are some vows I'm making to myself as I sport my working mother hat here in a couple of weeks. Here they are:

1. No working on anything for school before Lawson goes to bed.

Justin and I are probably crazy but we are working opposite schedules again once school starts. While we don't see too much of each other, Lawson doesn't have to go to daycare. I don't have anything against daycare, but we can make this arrangement work for us, so we do. Lawson has been going to bed lately around 8 p.m. (sometimes a little earlier, sometimes a little later) so that will give me a few hours in the evenings to work on what I need to before I go to bed. Sidenote: With my school hours changing, I don't have to leave for school until around 8 a.m. each morning so I get to nurse Lawson when he wakes up and spend an hour with him before I go to school, which is awesome.

2. No school work in the bedroom.

I have a really bad habit about taking work to bed with me. However, I always get too sleepy to do it and it never gets done. Plus, I want to really relax at night before I go to sleep. I decided that I will keep all school work out of the bedroom. I already removed all the books/papers/workbooks/etc. that were cluttered on the floor and they will not be going back in!

3. Work on Friday nights when Lawson goes to bed.

That doesn't sound like fun does it? Well, Justin will be at work anyway so I figure if I can still work on school stuff on Friday nights when Lawson goes to bed then I won't have to work as much when Lawson is awake on the weekends, and hopefully I won't have as much to do on Sunday nights when I normally try to cram it all in and get depressed about Monday approaching way to quickly.

4. Save the TV for the weekend.

I love TV (and I'm not afraid to admit it) and DVR a lot of shows. I can get distracted by these pretty easily. I honestly feel accomplished when I can delete shows off the DVR. Silly, I know. So I'm going to try and save my shows for the weekend. This will allow me to get more done during the weekday evenings and hopefully not have as much to do on the weekend.

5. Make more good phone calls home to parents.

No parent likes to get the call that little Susie or Johnny is doing poorly in school and I certainly don't like making those calls. However, they must be done. So in order to make phone calls home to parents a little more bearable, I want to start making some good phone calls to parents. I'm sure some parents will love to hear that their son/daughter is doing great...what parent wouldn't?

6. Grade, grade, grade.

I always get behind in grading. Always. So once again, like I swear I'll do every school year, I will try to keep up on my grades. Hoping some other resolutions will help this one to fall into place.

7. Say no.

Want to serve on this committee? Sure! Want to help with this event? Absolutely! Want to give up your entire prep period to do me a favor? Yes! That's how I used to be. I feel like I'm always saying yes to everything. However, I'd like to say no more this year. I need all of my time during my prep period and when Lawson goes to bed to work on grading and planning so I don't want to take on anything else to take away from me not getting done what I need to get done. Doing that would ultimately take away from time with Lawson which I definitely don't want!

8. Implement new lesson plans and activities.

With four years of teaching under my belt, I feel very comfortable with knowing what works and what doesn't. However, I think that a teacher can get into a rut of just using the same lessons and activities all of the time, and I'd like to implement some new things that I've had floating around in my head and see how they work.

9. Get to know more students on an individual level.

It's easy to get to know the student that raises her hand each day in class and is outgoing, but it's difficult to get to know the student that sits in the corner in the back of the room. While I do my best, I don't get to know all of my students like I'd like to. I'm going to try to remedy that this year.

10. Have fun!

The Leavell household will not be ready for me to be a stay-at-home mama anytime soon and that's OK. In the meantime, I'd like to try and have fun this year and really enjoy my time at school as well as at home.

Here's to a good year!

Lawson: A Little Photo Update

Cuteness overload! I imagine you are currently gushing about how adorable my baby boy is. Don't you just want to stick him in a pita pocket and take a big bite of him? Oh...just me? Well, while I refrain from doing that, here are some details as to what my little man has been up to.

1. When Lawson smiles, he smiles with his entire face. I love this about him.

2. Silly bear...he was removing his hand from his mouth (that's rare!) to lunge for the camera.

3. What do you do when you can't stack the blocks yet? Eat them.

4. I'm shocked Maggie let Lawson get this close to her. And even more shocked at how big she looks. Believe it or not, Lawson weighs more than her.

5. Crazy baby after a bath.

6. This is Lawson's new position of choice. He has been rolling from his back to his belly with ease for about three weeks now. He could always do it before then, but he's a pro now. He is just now starting to get on his knees instead of his belly. But I don't think full-on crawling is around the corner...he still has a long way to go. Oh, and I made that blanket he is wrapped up in.

7. This picture is from a couple of months ago (I can tell by the paci that is in his mouth and the length of his hair...only things a mommy would notice). He takes his morning nap in our bed and that's how he fell asleep one morning. We have a picture of him like this from when he was a few weeks old. I guess old (sleeping) habits die hard!

8. I made that rug he is sitting on out of old T-shirts. I'm pretty awesome. And he was a very good model.

9. We take pictures of Lawson every month with the same teddy bear so we can see how big he gets from month to month. This is his seven month picture. We made that bear at Build-A-Bear for him for Christmas. He used to be the same size as it...crazy.

10. Lawson has learned how to play toss. That basketball in his hands is squishy so he can grab it and the other night Justin taught him how to throw it. You may think this is impossible for a baby to learn, but he totally does it. If Justin tosses the ball into Lawson's lap, he picks it up and throws it back. Justin is convinced we have a baseball prodigy.

11. You would think that with Lawson chewing on his hands (and everything else) so much that we would have seen teeth by now...we haven't.

12. Lawson's first time in the baby swing at the park. It was still really big for him. His first time in a swing was really at Grandpa Rick's house, but I don't have a picture of that. The swing Grandpa got him is much better than the one at the park and will be delivered to our backyard soon!

13. This is one of Lawson's favorite toys to chomp on. It goes in the car seat with him or the diaper bag every time we leave the house. Other toys we don't leave the house without? Sophie the giraffe (a teething toy), his plastic letters that link together, and his stuffed Mickey Mouse...he loves Mickey.

14. Batman! Please don't tell him that you saw him without his mask...he will be very upset.

15. I just think this picture is cute. Well, I think all of the pictures are cute.

16. Lunging for the camera again. And isn't his paci cute? Mams makes the cutest pacis. And when I'm trying to get Lawson to give up his paci (which is ALWAYS in his mouth), remind me of when I begged him for three weeks to take a paci when he wouldn't. I'm sure I'll regret my efforts.

And the middle picture? Plain adorableness.

Hope you enjoyed all the cuteness! Now about that pita pocket... 

Feeding My Little Bear

A mama bear must feed her baby bear. And with that comes this realization: I have a new favorite thing.

Making baby food! I explored the idea of making my own baby food while I was pregnant but didn't give it too much thought when I was in the "newborn survival mode" and then the "working mom survival mode." But once Lawson hit six months and was ready to eat solid food beyond rice cereal (which he never liked anyway), I began researching making baby food again. We gave him Earth's Best Organic jarred baby food for a couple of weeks at first to see what he liked. I didn't want to make batches of one type of food if he ended up hating it. Fortunately, this kid will eat anything. So we had out first adventure in baby food making in the beginning of June once school was out and I had some time on my hands. Turns out that it isn't that hard. In fact, it's easy, and for me, incredibly addicting. We bought a cheap food processor (cheap as in it has one speed but works just fine), a bunch of produce, some ice cube trays, and some freezer bags. I got Justin on board with the idea (his favorite perk of making baby food is that we save money buying produce vs. buying jarred food) and we baked, steamed, pureed, froze, and stored. Easy! I decided I would try the method of freezing the purees in ice cube trays and it has worked very well. Each cube is about an ounce so we can grab two or three ounces as needed. 

In the past six weeks we've only made baby food on three occasions since we can make so much at one time. The first time we made pears, peaches, butternut squash, peas, and sweet potatoes. I also made carrots toward the middle of June and green beans and mango about a week ago.

I mainly use the website www.wholesomebabyfood.com as a resource. There are tons of baby food recipe books out there but I don't have any. I basically look to see what type of foods are appropriate for the age Lawson is at the time and then puree them accordingly. The first batches of food I made were very smooth purees but the ones I made today were a little thicker and chunkier.

Lately I'm having a lot of fun mixing different fruits and vegetables as Lawson is ready for combinations. He is also eating cinnamon in his fruit and oatmeal on occasion and loves it. I have yet to find a food that he doesn't like. I tried giving him avocado the other night and he wasn't a big fan, but I'm convinced that was a texture thing instead of taste thing since he is used to having smooth purees. I'm trying to introduce chunkier food every now and then so he can start to practice chewing (with his gums...no teeth yet!). Today I made peaches, pears, apples, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and froze some banana slices. I didn't realize that you can freeze banana slices until I read about it today. Bananas are easy since you don't have to puree them but obviously they go bad. So I sliced up five bananas and froze them so I can use as many slices as I need and not let the bananas go bad. After I make green beans and peas in the next couple of days we will have enough food in the freezer for about six weeks.

Wow, I just read through this post and realized that I sound like some kind of pro-baby-food-making commercial. I promise I'm not trying to sound that lame. It's fun for me to make Lawson's food and very satisfying when he likes it. See?

He is still getting all of his calories from breastmilk (still nursing like a champ five times a day!) since baby food mainly provides different flavor and texture experiences for him right now. And the biggest bonus about solid food--jarred or homemade? Solid poop! No more blowouts! Now that's a reason to celebrate!

I miss my mom.

I know I don't blog often at all anymore. I could give you a list of excuses as to why, but I won't. The truth is, I'm hurting right now and I need to get it out. I'm not writing this for anyone to feel sorry for me. I just need to write it.

I miss my mom. This is an emotion I have daily but has been very heavy lately. It's been stronger than ever since Lawson was born, which I kind of expected. Sure it kills me that he won't know her. But sometimes it kills me even more that I can't call her with the simple baby questions. Or call her and let her hear Lawson laughing because I know she would love it. Ever since she died I get these very minute moments when I think to myself, "I haven't called my mom in awhile. I should call her." The moment doesn't even last a full second. I can't explain it any better than that. I just get a feeling that I haven't spoken to her and that I should.

She was in my dream the other night. I was a cheerleader in high school again and parents were invited to our practice and she was there. I walked into practice and for some reason I hadn't seen her for awhile so I ran up to her and gave her a hug. I felt the soft skin of her cheek up against mine and she smelled like she always did--like peppermint and her perfume. She wasn't sick in my dream. She looked like she did before she got sick, which is how I picture her to look now.

I get scared sometimes that I'm forgetting her. Sometimes I challenge myself to think of a memory of her. I try to think of one moment with her. And I can't. I try to picture her in my head and I can't. It's like a bunch of pictures and memories flash into view all at once but nothing sticks. Nothing rests in my mind for a moment so I can really see it. It scares me. It makes me think that I'm forgetting everything about her. But then she'll show up in a dream of mine like the other night. That helps, but it's not enough.

I knew I would miss her more when I had Lawson. I remember crying the night before he was born because it wasn't fair that she wouldn't be there to meet him the next day. I cry now because she doesn't get to enjoy him. She doesn't get to hold him and love on him. She doesn't get to tickle him and make him laugh. She doesn't get to spoil him. I hate that. When I think about all of that I want to throw a five-year-old's temper tantrum and scream and kick my legs and cry and shout "It's not fair" over and over. Because it's not. It's not fair that  Lawson doesn't get to have her as a grandma. But then I get selfish because I also don't think it's fair that I don't get to have her either. I don't get to hear her voice or hear her laugh. I don't get to see her smile or hold her hand. I don't get to lose minutes and hours on the phone with her talking about The Young and the Restless and what we did that day. I don't get to waste Sundays with her or stay up late eating popcorn together and watching mindless television. I miss all of those things.

I don't know what else to say. Sometimes I have nights like this. Lawson is sleeping in his crib and Justin is at work and I just cry. I cry for her and for Lawson and for me. I cry until my shoulders shake and I run out of tears. I listen to some of her favorite songs and songs that remind me of her. I look at pictures of her. Then I take a shower and try to do something to distract myself. I wonder if it's healthy to do this. At least it makes me feel better.