baby news!

Mrs. Logan, the teacher that I have been working with all year had her new baby yesterday. A 7 pound baby boy that they named Noah Nicholas. She had a feeling that she was having a boy because of how she was carrying, but they waited until the birth to find out. I think it's funny that they named him Noah because their daughter, who will be less than a year apart in age from him, is named Nia. I was commenting that people will probably mistake them for twins when they get a little older -- Noah and Nia.

I was greeted with a surprise this morning -- Rachel, our long-term substitute was out sick with a migraine. Since it was so last minute there was no sub for her, so they had to use staff members to fill in. Tyrone, our principal, watched the class in the morning and then Deirdre, the music teacher, took over in the afternoon. It was sort of a crazy day. I wanted to go to my car during lunch and take a nap! Then tonight was the 2nd and 3rd grade exhibit night, so I stayed after school to help set up and then serve pizza to the families. We had about a ninety minute break between set-up and when families began to arrive so Kat (one of the other AmeriCorps members at my site) and I went and cleaned up some in the kindergarten room. The room is kind of messy -- the tables haven't had a good cleaning all year. I was never able to stay after school to clean, which I would have been willing to do, because Mrs. Logan always left right away and for some reason the administration felt that us AmeriCorps members aren't trustworthy enough to have our own keys. Those weren't the words used of course, but that's what it feels like. I'm still really bitter about that, because I am pretty much a full-time staff member in that classroom. Why shouldn't I get a key to the room? Especially because I always got there in the morning at least twenty minutes before Mrs. Logan, so I'd have to go down to the office and borrow the key from Judi, our secretary. Anyway, back to the cleaning ... we spent about an hour vacuuming and cleaning tables. Yet I only got three tables finished. I had to scrub at least four times per table to get all the glue and everything off. We even used a paint scraper. I wish we had been able to get all of them cleaned, but we ran out of time.

Tomorrow we have a day-long AmeriCorps conference at Augsburg College in Minneapolis. It was for National Service Week. I'm not sure what to expect, but at least it will be a nice break from the ordinary routine.