Happy Spring!

First off, happy spring break! Ah, the luxury of a week off from those damn kids. Sorry if I sound a little less than "teacher of the year" worthy (which I actually was nominated for, BTW), but it's that time of the year when *love* is in the middle school air. There's just something about spring that kicks those adolescent hormones into gear and makes the kids louder and crazier than normal. They also smell worse and it won't be long before I'll have to have the "taking a shower and wearing deodorant everyday" talk with my 7th graders. So, needless to say I am enjoying my week off.

Anyhoo, since I have been home this week, Jack and I have been out and about finding new and fun things to do each day. Neither one of us appreciates a full day stuck at home, so our quests for adventure have led us to various places in the past few days. On Monday and Tuesday we hit up all the local parks (our favorite by far is the Skinner's Butte park, which has soft everything). Now one unfortunate thing I have noticed about our local neighborhood park (Acorn Park) is that it is frequented by loud, foul-smelling, potty-mouth teenagers! And you might think that since I work with teens, I must actually like them. Let me clarify, I like the teenagers that I know by name who are stuck in a room under my jurisdiction. Those kids at the park? Can't stand 'em. What I want to know is why they can't just go find someone's basement to smoke and swear and make out in, like we did back in my day.

Jack and I also hit up the mall for its indoor play structure on Wednesday when it was raining and snowing (!?). Of course having to go all the way to the stupid mall made me feel justified to shop and our "free" play time at the mall was actually pretty darn expensive.

All this time at the park and the mall and the library and other places with high concentrations of moms/dads and kids, has given me pause to reflect on some of the ideas that I had about parenting before Jack came along. I am embarrassed to admit that I once viewed a kid with a snotty nose as the unfortunate victim of child neglect. Ha. Now that my pockets are overflowing with used Kleenex and my dryer lint trap is a fire hazard, I realize that having a snot nose is just part of being a kid. I just wish I didn't have booger smear marks on all the knees of my pants, but oh well. Secondly, this whole "sharing" thing is overrated. I'm so tired of having to intervene between Jack and another kid who are trying to gouge each other's eyes out over the same toy/slide/swing/rock etc. I say we just let them fight it out, survival of the fittest style. But instead I rush to the scene to "explain" to Jack (in a voice loud enough for the other parent to hear) how toys/slides/swings/rocks are "for shar-ing". Like he gets it. Most middle schoolers haven't mastered that concept yet, either. But, the old, before-kid me thought that kids who didn't share were spoiled brats with bad parents, so there you go.

In other news, Jack is finally sleeping through the night (as I type this I realize I have probably just damned myself to another 13 months of sleep deprivation). Not every night, mind you, but enough so that I feel there really is actually a light at the end of this tunnel and that maybe (just maybe) all those other parents weren't lying about their kids sleeping through the night. He's also finally going to bed on his own (no rocking, nursing) for the first time in his little life and we didn't even have to do the dreaded cry "it" out method (what is "it" anyway?). Whew! All this sleep stuff is exhausting. Oh, and Jack is finally on a real nap schedule for the first time in his life (talk about bad parenting).

Four more days of spring break to go. I'm sure we'll do something photo-worthy and I'll post again soon with some actual pictures to accompany my rambling.