I’m A Slacker!

So I have totally been a blogger slacker!  I will try to catch up on the last – um month??  I totally missed Brynn’s 5 month post and in only 7 days she will be 6 months so I will just wait until 6 months and fill you all in on Brynn.  She wasn’t up to much between 4 and 5 months, but wow has she been up to a lot this last month.  Stay tuned!

Well here is the latest:

School, school and more school!  The first and last month of school are the craziest for me since I am in charge of testing and entering scores for all 550 plus of our students.  Yes, it is a tad bit stressful, but every year I survive and I come back and do it again the next year!   I actually get to start TEACHING my students next week, imagine that.  I have to say I love my job!  Now how many people can say that.  I love teaching kids to read, I love the students (okay most of them) I love the people I work with and yes I love being away from my absolutely darling children 20 hours a week.  I have officially decided that I could never be a stay at home mom.  Yes half of my measly paycheck goes to child care (I am paying fifty bucks a day for child care and full day kindergarten this year – yikes!)  But I am a happier person and my kids are happier because I’m happier!   Being a teacher I do get a lot of time off, so right about when I start feeling like Tanner, Brynn and I need a bonding day a school break rolls around.   Really, it’s great.  This year I also have Mondays off (I work Tuesday-Friday mornings) and being the great mom I am I send Tanner to full day kindergarten on Monday so Brynn and I get the whole day to ourselves.  I figure Tanner had 4 1/2 years of just  me, so Brynn deserves her Mondays.  I do love my Mondays of cuddle time with Brynn!!  And thanks Don for making the big bucks so I can work whatever schedule I want and then spend all the  money I make on fun stuff  like traveling and scrapbooking!!  Wow I do have it good – no more complaints from me!  Geez, I almost feel guilty for not cooking dinner every night and keeping the house cleaner.  Oh nope, got over that real quick! Now I do have to say that I have gotten much better about cooking a real meal every night (although a cereal night every once in a while never hurt anyone!) 

On to Tanner news:

Tanner is loving – I mean absolutely loving school!  Thank goodness.  I can’t believe how much this kid has learned in just 5 weeks.  He amazes me and he is totally into reading and writing right now.  I really want Tanner to enjoy reading.  I love books and love reading and I so want Tanner see how much fun it is to get lost in a book.  We have been reading Tanner chapter books at night and he is really getting into them.  He is a huge non fiction boy so he likes the chapter books of the Magic School Bus and the Magic Tree House, but he did not get into Charlotte’s Web so I gave that up.  We are going to give the Mouse and the Motorcycle a try after we finish  High Tide in Hawaii our current Magic Tree House book!  My favorite thing right now is to hear him sounding out words when he is reading or writing, it is the cutest thing!  And when he writes notes or letters and then brings it to me to read, oh I just love it.  I love to decipher his writing and see how he spelled words.  I will have to scan some of his writings soon. Tanner is also all about the monkey bars and is determined to make it all the way across soon.

Have I mentioned lately how much we absolutely love this kid??  Full day kindergarten has solved Tanner’s sleeping problems.  This boy is exhausted by 7:30 and barely makes it through reading time some nights.  No more bedtime battles – thank goodness!  Now if only he would eat more. . .

Other ramblings:

I am a year older!  Happy Birthday to me.  My big birthday present was the photography conference I attended in California so I wasn’t expecting much but I still got some beautiful roses and two yummy cakes.  My parents came up to visit and my mom and I did some shopping and bought all the goods to make Brynn’s Halloween costume, it is going to be so cute!   Unfortunately, Tanner has hit the super hero stage and will no longer let me make him cute costumes, he has to be a Power Ranger and we went for the store bought costume – sigh – I hope I can find him with the other 50 Power Rangers in the school parade.  But he is excited (that’s what is important) and I know why he really wanted the costume is so he can dress up and play Power Rangers at home, but I told him hands off the costume until Halloween.  I’m not dealing with the tears and running from store to store the day before Halloween when he rips his mask while playing with it.  I know the mask will break sooner than later (cheap plastic masks) and that is going to be a bad/sad day in the McIntosh house when that happens.  Many folks have asked about our adoption and yes we are still adopting and yes we are still waiting!!  We just had to renew our immigration forms and got to drive down to the immigration office and get fingerprinted – again!  Don and I will never be able to commit a crime we have been fingerprinted so many times and by every different agency for this adoption that we have to be in every database.   We are hoping now with the Olympics over that the adoptions will start again in China and go really really fast so we get our baby really really soon.  I am not complaining because we have our beautiful baby Brynn and many of the families we have met don’t have any babies yet and this wait has got to be terrible for them.  We do think about our little girl everyday and wonder if she  has been conceived yet (we think yes) or maybe even born already (probably not).  

Yep another long post from me!  I do tend to go on and on.  So this is enough for now!