HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Baby Jo!

Mom wanted to see some more pics of the baby... here she is!!!

I think this was last Saturday morning. Jo and I and Stella were all too comfy on the couch and Chip had to capture it on camera. Excuse the glasses, pjs, and bed head.

We took this picture today. If I look tired, it's because I am! School is wonderful, but it's exhausting. And today I went to WalMart and Kroger after school. Ugh.

It's baby Jo's 5th month birthday. I am having such a great time with her. She's becoming so much more fun to be around. She loves day care and is still adjusting somewhat, but she's doing so well. This is the beginning of her 4th week in day care. They do art projects with them and schedule activities. Some days her activities are Bible stories, others are music-based, and sometimes their activities are "bubbles." Here's my first art project from my daughter. I'm laminating it tomorrow at school and putting it up by my desk. Definitely a future artist... I can tell! (Just kidding...)

She's started to eat baby food now. We started her on bananas and she gags when she eats them. I moved her to peaches when she finished her round of bananas and she gagged on those too. I'm with her. Baby food is nasty. I think the only thing that is excited is Stella. She gets to clean up!

I took a short video the other day of Jo laughing. Chip can really get her going, but if I take a really long video, I'm sitting here for hours trying to get it to upload. Anyway... here's the baby...

Lovely Baby

Jo with Mommy... she's so sweet!

I still say that Jo looks like her daddy... and this is why! Aren't they so cute together???

Ahhhh ha ha ha ha!!!!!!!!!!! She's recently started squealing with delight. It's hilarious. This isn't the best example, but I'm quickly learning that as soon as a child does something worth capturing on video, they'll stop doing is as soon as you get the camera. :)

Pictures!

I love this. I put Jo down on the floor this morning and Stella laid down next to her... at first I was upset that she was in the picture, but when she rolled onto her back and turned towards Jo - it was just too cute!

She's rolling over all the time now and I was trying to get a good picture of her on her tummy (see below) but I only got one before she was on her back. She does NOT like to be on her tummy!!

You can kind of see her leaning to roll over in this picture. Oh well... it's still cute!

I love this picture of her. Her smiles are so frequent now and she'll smile for almost anything.

A cute picture with Nana. I took this picture a few weeks ago when we went up to Tupelo so Chip could play in a golf tourney with Dad. Jo got to spend a lot of time with Nana!

Picture of us at the dinner at TCC. Can you tell Chip forgot sunscreen?

Dad and Winnie. She does not like her picture to be taken, but I like this photo. I think it's cute!

I love my dad and this night it was his 55th birthday! I think he looks much younger than 55... We had a wonderful time that night. There was dinner and dancing... and it was really nice to have an adult night out with my husband and to hang out with my dad.

School!

All three of us started school this week. Josephine is still adjusting, but her reports have gotten consistently better and she got all smiley faces Friday!

We're still in transition about starting school and the numbers of students that we have are changing daily (as they do the first days of school). On Wednesday (before students arrived) I taught 7 classes of Viva Drama. When I got to school on Thursday (1st day back for students) I was teaching a class of Viva Art, 5 classes of Viva Drama, and one class of Peak (intellectually gifted). Quite different. I think that the Peak class is going to be the most challenging class to plan for, but the most rewarding class to have. I really am enjoying all my kids. They're such neat kids and I'm trying to adjust to being the teacher where the kids don't want to leave. Teaching history - they're not to enthused about the subject matter, but in Viva they LOVE having the freedom they're given.

Chip is having a pretty good year too. He says he likes his kids more this year, but it's taking its toll on him because the first two days of school he missed his planning period (meetings). Teaching/being on your feet all day straight is exhausting.

We're still trying to get on our own schedule here at home. Seeing what works best for us to get ourselves ready and Josephine ready to go to daycare. I have to drop off Jo at 7:30 and get to school at 7:30 also. Impossible. I'm just a few minutes late to my classroom, but class doesn't start until 7:45. Luckily, my next door neighbor in my building teaches Viva Art (my 1st period class) so we teach it together (well, I facilitate). All my students report to her room. It helps a whole lot with my schedule and dropping the baby off.

My first project for my Peak class is for them to get to know themselves. We're doing a lot of assessments of self (brain dominance, multiple intelligences, sensory perception, etc.) and they're going to create a presentation of themselves. Our first unit is going to be a psychology unit and discuss their development. I think they'll really find this interesting. Still thinking about what our next three units will be, but they all want to do something where we build something. I'll have to research that. In Viva Drama, we're going to do a presentation on the history of Theatre (they can take any direction they want) and we're going to begin this nine weeks with monologues/character development. The one thing I've heard a lot of from these kids is that they want to do a lot more acting. We played Charades on Friday. Where in a regular classroom can you play Charades as part of your curriculum?? I LOVE my new job. Challenging, but incredibly rewarding!! :)