Here, I was looking through a Pottery Barn catalog on the floor beside Claire. The sound of turning pages intrigued her so much that she scooted off her blanket up to the magazine, where she promptly devoured it. Like mother, like daughter!






This might seem a little weird that I'm tickling Claire with my foot, but you'll see in the video that she didn't laugh as much when I did it with my hand!

A couple more fun facts about Claire right now: The song "Little Bunny Foo Foo" has some sort of magical hypnotic power over her. When she's fussy, 7 times out of 10, if I sing this ditty, she'll calm down. That's only for carseat or bored fussy, not hungry or tired fussy. I can now sing this song and put on make-up, do mental lesson plans, eat a snack, etc. It's officially on the soundtrack of my life, along with "Hey, Hey We're the Monkeys!" (for my students) and "Sleep When I'm Dead" (except for those involuntary naps I take when I get home from school three days out of the week).

Claire is also teething now, we just officially realized last night. She's been drooling a lot for a couple weeks, but the last couple days, she's been having some fussy-for-no-reason spells, and last night she actually had a little fever, so she's gotten regular doses of Baby Tylenol since then, and she's been fine. Last night was a little rough, as I wasn't cognizant enough to give her the medicine until 4 a.m., when she'd already woken up twice before that.

What's Claire doing?

She is:

• Slapping the pages of hymn books during church.
• Gumming on everything in sight, especially her fists. Sometimes she likes to stick both in her mouth at once.
• Looking at board books.
• Grabbing onto her feet when she's laying on her back.
• Rubbing her face when she's tired.
• Riding the four-wheeler with Maw-Maw and Paw-Paw.
• Giggling when I toss her in the air.
• Rolling all over the place.
• Lifting her little bottom up in the air when she's on her tummy.
• Scooting short distances by using the maneuver above .

I love my weekends with her, and I think she does, too. Whenever I pick her up after school, she always squints at me for a second, breaks into her big, open-mouthed grin, and starts kicking her legs in excitement. She makes every day sweet.

Barely hanging on..

Claire is becoming quite helpful! Here she is holding my Sonic Blast in the back seat of my mom's car when we went to Norman last weekend.



She's getting to where she laughs out loud quite often, but whenever I try to catch it, she becomes mesmerized by the orange light on my camera, and the smile melts away. Instead, I get this cross-eyed, slack-mouthed look.


I have no idea how I'm hanging on, but it's by a thread. Some days, my students get the short shrift, some days, my daughter does, but I can't seem to be my best for both at once. Working moms everywhere, I salute you!



I have some exciting news, though. I met with the editor and publisher of Oklahoma Today in Moore last weekend, and I might have a work-from-home position with the magazine next year. I don't feel like I should publish many more details online just yet, but I'm praying it works out. Teaching next year would probably be a lot easier than this year, just because I won't be doing as much lesson planning every night, but it won't get any easier to leave my daughter everyday.


Jay is still working long hours at the restaurant, especially this weekend, as it's the Kingston Striper Festival.