Woah!

Hello again! Sorry that I am such a terrible blogger. But I guess this is just the way I am doing the blog. Huge gaps in between each post. Yeah, very professional I know. I just don't get to touch a computer very often because life just gets so enormously busy!

I thought I would start off with a picture of our bedroom. We did a ton of work trying to paint it up and get it all looking nice earlier this past year. And now our efforts are really paying off! For Christmas Tyler made me this vinyl decoration we put above our bed. I have always wanted something with our name and the date we got married, so here we have it! A cute wall decal for above our bed!

This year has been a year of change for us as well. Well, mainly me, actually. It always surprises me how busy things can get! Currently I am doing my student teaching. I am in a first grade class in a school out here in Farmington, and it is so much fun! I have a wonderful cooperating teacher, and 17 of the brightest and cutest kids here in Connecticut. Of course I have a few funny stories so far. The first one was one of the first days when I was just observing the class. The teacher was talking about geography and how not ever state is the same size. Some states are huge! While others are really small. Her example was to show a picture of Connecticut and a picture of Alaska. She then asked the students which one was bigger. Half the class said Alaska while the other half said Connecticut. The teacher then said, half of you got it, the bigger one is Connecticut. I sat in awe for a second, what should I do? Just sit here and let her teach false geography or do I say something? It is my first day of course, so the teacher doesn't know me that well. Should I stop the class to correct her? Luckily for all of us, she realized her mistake and laughingly said "Did I say Connecticut was bigger? That is silly, Alaska is!" She restated the fact several other times throughout the lesson to let the children really know that Connecticut is in fact pretty small. It was really funny.

My other favorite teaching moment in class was during writing time. We are teaching the children about personal narratives. Just as a quick review, a personal narrative is a story about you, a story that actually happened. One thing that makes writing time really fun is spelling. We only worry about correct spelling on sight words and spelling words. All other words the students sound out and write them how they sound. One little girl (who is an absolute doll) had a particularly funny spelling experience. She let me read her story and for the first few pages I was bewildered by her story. Once I finally figured out what she was talking about I almost cried from holding in my laughter. Her story went something like this: (spelling has been kept the same just for your amusement)

"Yastrday my dad tuk my bruthr and me askding. My bruthr and me stupt in the ass. The ass was very slipy. My bruthr slipt and hert his hin. I am the bttr askder."

Do you understand her story? She was talking about ice skating! Somehow when she was sounding out the word 'ice' it ended up sounding like it started with an 'a'! Normally we don't correct the spelling in their books, but I decided that this time it would be ok if we talked about it.

Anyway, funny things happen all of the time in class. I love the first grade! They are the best! I have been slowly taking more and more time in the class. And the kids really are great. I am still working on getting all of their attention at the same time, but the children are really helpful to get the attention of others by talking about respecting the speaker. They are wonderful. With just a little more practice I am sure that things will go great with the upcoming weeks!

Other than school, I have been called as the primary chorister. I am really excited about this calling, I love working with kids, and this is going to be a lot of fun. Last week I also gave my first relief society lesson. Which I am pretty sure I bombed, so it is a good thing I am now in primary so that they can't expect me to give any more relief society lessons in the near future. Teaching older people compared to a bunch of six and seven year olds is very different. I must say I prefer the children.

Jazz has been a little angel of course. He is so much fun! I hate leaving him for 8 to 9 hours a day, so luckily Tyler's Grandma and Grandpa have come out to watch him for us. They have been so wonderful and (to Tyler's relief) they have been amazing house keepers! They are much better than I am, so I am sure Tyler will never want them to leave! I for one, don't understand how they can get so much done! Jazz, though great, doesn't let me put him down enough to get that much done. I can keep things generally really neat and tidy, but they go the extra mile. In my defense there are two of them so one can work while the other tends the baby, but I really don't know how they do it!

One of our favorite things Jazz does now is he smiles! And he does it whenever he sees me! It warms my heart. I am so glad that when I come home from teaching school that he screams and smiles to see me! Being his mom is probably the best thing in the whole entire world! When he wakes up at night I feed him and hold him much longer than I ever used to because I don't want to miss a moment of this fun age. He also wakes up every morning at about 5:30. Which makes me a little tired in school, but he is so cute and happy when he wakes up that I can't resist taking him out of his crib to play with him. He is amazing. I could go on and on about how much I love him, but I am sure you don't want to read it in every post. So instead I will flood you with pictures. This picture here is funny because he sucks on as much of his hands as he can put in his mouth. The more the better. Even when he has a pacifier in he tries to stuff his hands in there too. So instead of a thumb sucker we have a two-fist sucker. He is great. And he is smiling with his eyes too so he is extra cute!
Jazz and I spend a lot of evenings together while Ty is finishing up his studies or whatever he does. And we get way tired at the end of the day. This has unfortunately happened more than once. I will be feeding him and I will fall asleep. But he will be eating when he falls asleep so lucky for us no one has drowned yet. I am working on staying awake through each before bed feeding so I can better keep watch. Tyler thinks it is funny when he comes in and finds us both asleep with a bottle in hand or mouth. So for some reason Ty thinks it is a good picture opportunity.
And curse my luck! I am the worst picture taker in all the world! I have tried to capture his smiles on camera so often and they always turn out blurry! So here are a few of the least blurry ones. His smile though is so cute, I just don't have the best timing on all of them. But he is a little doll!


Yup, that is our cute little baby! Someday I will capture that cute open mouth gummy smile we see so often! He is such a great little boy and I love him to pieces!