your questions, answered

I had some of the best questions on my ask me anything post last week. I think it will be easiest to answer what I can in this posts and give you separate posts for some of the ones that require more details. If your question isn’t here today, look for it over the next few days. I’ll end up covering them all.

I teach kindergarten, the grade I never thought I wanted to teach. Now that I’m here, I love it and it’s hard to see myself teaching any other grade. I have always wanted to be a teacher, my mom has work from elementary school as proof. I teach about 20 minutes from my house, so it’s not the school Braylen is zoned to attend. However, she can attend the elementary school that I teach at, if I choose that route. 

1. I haven’t been to New Orleans, we need to fix that.
2. This is tough, you know I’m incredibly indecisive. I’d probably miss the window of opportunity while trying to decide. More than likely, pasta with fresh bread.
3. A great pair of flats, Seven Dojo jeans, my favorite little black dress, DVF wrap dress, and a colorful tunic. Maybe? That would be tough!
4. Stay tuned… this is coming tomorrow.

We let her CIO very early on, but let me say that she was such a good sleeper that she would only cry when we put her down for bed. We didn’t have any problems with her working up multiple times during the night. Then, she started teething and we broke the routine and never really established a great routine again after that. It’s one thing I would do differently. Now, I (or Allen) read her a story before bed, and she usually falls asleep shortly after. She definitely wants us to be right there with her. We’ve recently talked about transitioning away from this and I think she would be just fine, I might miss that sweet time though.

Sometimes I think I have to be careful to not expect her to do the same things my kindergartners do. Seriously, she’s smart and independent and I have to remind myself that she’s only three. She has simple tasks like putting her dishes in the sink, picking up her shoes, putting her toys away. We worked really hard on not having a complete meltdown when she couldn’t get things to work or open something, she’s really good about that now. I think most of the rules are simple things that we embed daily, saying please and thank you, waiting her turn to talk, playing nice with others (sharing), television and iPad time boundaries.

Oh Jillian, you would be so disappointed. It’s hit or miss. I try to exercise every day but I don’t always use Insanity. I do need to share a picture update because there has definitely been progress.

I’m going to answer the working out and eating question later this week. There’s a list of my favorite books from 2011 here and 2012 here. Recently, I’ve read Unglued, Start, Heaven is For Real, Kisses for Katie, and Safe Haven.  All of the books were great reads.

It is definitely in our plan to have more children. I never really put any pressure on myself to have a certain age gap between children, I just always thought I would know when the timing was right. This time as a family of three has been precious to me, I wouldn’t trade my time with her for anything. I know that we when bring a second baby into the mix, the dynamic will shift and that’s a little scary to me. It’s hard for me to think about leaving this season behind, but at the same time, I know there is an even sweeter season to come. Braylen is currently obsessed with having a baby brother or sister, she has told her teachers at MDO that I’m expecting and recently told a waiter, “I’m getting twins, one baby brother and one baby sister.” She has a big imagination. We’ll see what the next year holds.

I’ll continue to answer the questions throughout this week and into the next.