Job Share

I don't have any updated photos this week, but thought this photo showed how excited and thankful Lauren and I are for my job share.

This school year another teacher and myself are piloting the first job share in our district. What a fantastic way to keep working, but have more time at home with the little ones. I work every Tuesday and Wednesday, she works every Thursday and Friday, and we rotate Mondays. We are only one week into this new arrangement, but I just can't say enough wonderful things. We work so well together and the communication model we put into place seems to be working very well also. Our 8th grade students and parents have adjusted nicely to this arrangement as well.

Today was my first day at home, as I worked Mon-Wed this week, and what a great day it has been so far. I got up early and was able to get my workout in before Geoff and Lauren were even awake. It's only 2pm and I almost have all of the laundry and ironing done for the day. I signed Lauren up for another music class at Sprouts so we went to our first class at 11:30 today. We met some new friends and had a blast singing with Ziliah again. It's amazing how much Lauren has changed since our classes in the spring. She now claps along with the music, shakes all the musical instruments, crawls around, and interacts with the other babies. In the spring I was excited if she gave me a smile during class. After class we walked around Highland Park, ran some errands, and stopped at the library. What a beautiful day! So many people were sitting outside at the sidewalk cafes enjoying lunch. For the first time Lauren started saying hello to each person as we walked by. If you have ever heard her say hello, you know she uses a really cute voice when saying it. It's almost as if she has an accent. She has been saying hello for a while, but only to people she knows. It was pretty amazing today to see that she realizes when the appropriate time to say hello is and then says it. Anyway, hearing her say hello to random people was really cute.

Lauren is also fascinated by this book called Toes, Ears and Nose by Karen Katz. It is one of those books that has pull-down flaps. Great Gram and Papa Bruce gave this book to her for Christmas. She just loves it so much that she will go to her bookshelf, find this book, and then sit down and look at it. We stopped at the library this afternoon and picked up another similar book for our trip to Michigan tomorrow. I am sure she will enjoy this book during tomorrow's car ride.