Noah’s school held a “school meeting” today, and we were very happy to learn that they hired a new lead teacher for his classroom.
Ms K was at the meeting, and we liked the vibe we got in meeting her. She seems like an aging hippie artist educator — all things that are ok in my book. And I get the feeling she’s looking for an area of life where she can really take leadership. Which is clearly needed here, so that’s good too.
I’m a civics geek. I love things like voting and the idea of jury duty. Today I got called for the 4th time, but I’ve never been picked.
I even made it into a specific pool today, as in 39 of my fellow citizens and I were escorted up to the elevator foyer outside of a courtroom where 12 of us would eventually be jurors in a real trial.
That’s where I blew it. Yup. In the elevator foyer.
When I first checked in downstairs, I told the nice woman at the window that I was a nursing mom and I would have to pump every 2.5-3 hours. She said, “no problem, come knock on the door here, we have a room you can use.”
90 minutes later, in the elevator foyer, I quietly said to the judge’s clerk, “I’m a nursing mom, and some time in the next 45 minutes, I’m going to need to pump, and then again every 2.5-3 hours after that.”
She identified my name on her clipboard and disappeared for 10 minutes, leaving all 40 of us standing in the elevator foyer, blocking traffic.
When she returned, she told me that I was dismissed from this panel and I should return to the jury management office and check in with them.
I did, then sat in their large storage closet and pumped. Then I hung around in the waiting area and read my book until 11:40, when they told us to go on a 15 minute break and get lunch. Then more reading. And more. And more. We were finally dismissed, thanks for doing your civic duty. I don’t know exactly when, because I couldn’t find my car in the parking lot, and wandered it for some horribly long and indefinite period of time. I got home and pumped again around 2.
I have to say, there’s something that sits funny with me that I was dismissed for needing to pump.
Of course, I almost certainly would have been dismissed for another reason anyway. (Conventional wisdom says that lawyers never get picked.) But still!
Today, Noah had his first successful experience in crawling forward. He’s been doing backwards for a little while now, mostly to his intense frustration. He gets up on his hands and feet, stares at the toy he wants, and slides his feet back, moving a few inches further away from the toy.
But today, he made it forward.
And it was an exceptionally difficult terrain. None of this flat on the floor business. No, Noah crawled over Jill’s lap, starting on the sofa on one side of her, struggling for almost 10 minutes, to get to her other side.
And what amazing toy motivated this herculean effort?
Well, not that we at Casa Booski condone gender role stereotyping, but this was too funny for us to overlook the stereotype. Noah’s goal was the television remote.
And after all that work, we let him play with it.
For your cuteness pleasure, here’s a picture of Noah from the part of the DC trip that Bad Mommy Blogger Liza has not yet described. That is Levi’s “lips with eyes and body” toy he’s playing with — I tried to find it online, but couldn’t.
Thanks for finding your way to my blog’s new home, LizaWasHere.com!
Right now, there are still a few kinks being worked out, I’m still working on the blogrolls, and of course I plan to add more pictures etc over time. Possibly an entirely new look, we shall see.
Your feedback is — as always — welcome.
Nearly every new parent book we read says that you shouldn’t microwave expressed breastmilk. Why not gets wrapped in talk about uneven heating and blah blah blah scientific damage to the milk.
I happily dicated to all sitters and to Jill that no one giving Noah a bottle was allowed to microwave it. And since I generally feed him straight from the tap, and no one is going to put me in the microwave, this caused me no inconvenience whatsoever.
On Thursday, at day care, for the second time, they exploded one of Noah’s bottles of expressed breastmilk, by putting it in the microwave. Apparently, the explosion took place after approximately 4 seconds of heating.
So they really mean those warnings. And all those scientific reasons are no doubt valid. But I recommend not putting breastmilk in the microwave BECAUSE IT WILL EXPLODE.
And yes, every day for the next month or more, I will be writing, "Do not put milk in the microwave" on Noah’s "Parent’s Daily Report."
I am a zombie.
Noah, meanwhile, is positively chipper. Right now, he’s downstairs chirping "Bah-bah-bah-bah-bah!" at Jill.
We spent a chipper hour awake, playing with the beads-on-stiff-wires toy, and watching Just Shoot Me reruns between 1-2 am. Then he remembered that he hadn’t eaten in a whole hour so we ow ow ow drained momma again until almost 2:30 am.
How is it possible that he woke up as usual at 5:30 am?
I took Noah in late this morning, and after I dropped him off, I went to the office to talk to the director.
Last night, I also emailed the 3 parents whose emails I had, asking if they could shed any light on what’s going on and any ideas for helping the kids with all the changes.
After talking to the director, I feel better about the short term plans. This week and next week are handled. And I trust that she’s working on a longer term plan, although I don’t know one way or another how well it will work. The two things that still leave me uncomfortable are the lack of a "goodbye" for this teacher when tomorrow there’s one for the other teacher, and more so, the director’s view that all this staff turnover is "out of her hands."
Yes, she has no control over any individual’s career decision. But when you see a pattern of long-term teachers leaving in a short span of time, IMO, management needs to look for how they are responsible, to help retain the next people.
I don’t feel better or worse about the situation after talking to the teacher.
A few of the moms on email feel like there are management problems at the school, as several long-term teachers have left rather abruptly in the last year. All of us are nervous, but open to this having a really good outcome.
Noah was super-fussy and clingy tonight, which is probably a little bit from changes to his school routine, and a little bit from the vaccines on Wednesday. He nursed non-stop from 8:30 – 10:30pm and again from 12:30-1 and 2-2:20 am. (I mostly wrote this from 12:10-12:30, and am finishing at 2:27 am.) Ow. Owwwww. Owwwwwwwwww.
Oh yeah, that reminds me. On top of everything else, another pump died on me at work. K very kindly lent us hers, which we haven’t tried yet and she isn’t sure still works. I wound up going the Avent Isis Iq Uno route, and if you are pregnant or almost pregnant and reading this, the Isis Iq is amazing. It is the gentlest pump I’ve tried, short of the hospital ones. AND you can use it as an electric, battery-operated, or manual pump. So if the motor dies, I can still use it. 
Have a picture of Noah.
