Crazy Days

I do not function well when even slightly sick. Several of us teachers have sinus infections this week -weird, huh? So I self prescribed a bottle of Cipro I had on hand. I am feeling a little better a day and a half later.

"The lights are on but nobody's home" applies especially to me when I'm not feeling well. Yesterday at preschool was one flub after another. I even left a kid in the potty as I took the rest out to the playground....oops! That'll teach 'em to sit in there for 3 minutes. My attention span is apparently 1.5 minutes because I forgot all about that kid needing to go when we were lining up. As we reach the door I hear this frantic "Ms. Chrissie! Ms. Chrissie! I'm going potty!!!" And yep, the ONE time I didn't count heads...and it makes me soooo mad because I count them twice coming and going every time we go somewhere!

We're doing a unit on the Solar System. So we made astronaut pudding in ziploc bags and little bottles of tang too. Only I forgot I changed my mind on the quantity of pudding and didn't double the milk like I needed to. So we're squishing and mixing and I'm thinking this is not working at all. Then the lights came on for a brief moment and I realized everyone needed 1/4 cup more milk. Argh! So we all opened our bags, added more milk, and shook and squished some more. I was certain a bag would explode, but Murphy's Law somehow was looking the other way that time! We made a huge mess nonetheless with pudding, tang, and milk drips all over the table. At snack time we cut the corners off the baggies and slurped the pudding "astronaut style". One kid told her mom as they were leaving that we had "Rocket Ship Pudding!".

We tried and failed to have a rocket launch. Don't ask me what went wrong. Why couldn't Taryn have been there yesterday instead of last week?! I added the proper amount of vinegar. I added the scoop of soda. I put the two parts together and pushed the liftoff button. It fizzled and buzzed but the rocket was a dud. Over and over again. One kid pronounced, "this is LAME!" and I had to agree :) So we went inside to the tune of my pithy lecture that I was sure the scientists didn't succeed on their first rocket either and we would try again another day (with another teacher!).

Today is Parent-Teacher Conferences at preschool. It is much more involved standing from this side of the process than when I got my kids' preschool progress reports prior to Kindergarten. I KNOW the amount of time we have put into the reports and assessments took forever and we went the extra mile - about a marathon worth actually.