Blooming

My amaryllis flower # 2. My roommate took this picture for me yesterday. Today some of the buds are opening, but they are not quite open yet. Plant # 1 I took home to see bloom and had to leave it there until my brother brings it with him here in a week or so.

It's amazing how much a simple flower can bring so much beauty into a small apartment bedroom. At first this flower wasn't growing as well as the other one I planted just like it at the same time, but after some tender care by a friend over Christmas, it budded and now is more beautiful than the first one. I am excited to see all the flowers bloom.

In some ways, I am like this flower. I have struggled long and hard to grow, but through the nurture of amazing family and friends, I am blooming and I am beautiful.  That sounds really cliche, but it's one way to express how I am feeling right now. It's the first time in my life that I really feel like a grown up. With the new year I feel like I am finally blooming into the kind of person I've always wanted to be and more. I'm excited to feel more like an adult, but it's also scary. Being independent and having to provide for myself isn't easy, especially when it involves trying to figure out how to pay all the bills. I know I don't have a mortgage to pay like many adults, but I do have a car payment, car insurance, rent, credit card (which I only use for gas), food, saving for the Nauvoo Pageant, and all those unexpected expenses to try to balance out with the salary I'm given. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would be given a full-time position half way through the school year, so that is a huge blessing. But with the full time position comes a lot more responsibility. Yes, I do get paid more, but I still have to budget and make sure I have all that I need to pay for everything and that is very overwhelming sometimes.

I am grateful that things are falling into place. I really feel like the Lord is preparing me for great things to come this year. I've been thinking about some things that I might do this year that would mean a lot of changes in my life, but I feel peace that it will be for my good and it will all work out.

My new full-time position is still at Head Start preschool, but it's different than anything I've ever experienced while working there for the past year and a half. My first year I taught a full-day class where the kids come in the morning and leave in the late afternoon. Because I was part-time, I left at the beginning of nap time. Putting kids down for a nap when some have already grown out of naps is a nightmare, let me tell you! The beginning of this year, I taught in a part-day afternoon class. Part-day has a morning and afternoon class of different kids. Even though I only taught the afternoon class, I came in time to get to know the kids in the morning class, too, and I loved that.

What I am doing now is called Homebase. It's a special program for 3-year-olds, although recently they enrolled some 4 and 5 year olds. There are about 34 kids total. The kids are divided into 4 classes and each kid only comes to class once a week. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays we have two class sessions a day where we teach the same exact things to the different kids. The class size is 8-10 rather than 12-16 like the regular preschool classes. I really like that! Those days are mostly like the normal preschool days that I know. On Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays I do Home Visits to the 10-12 kids that I am assigned. There are two other teachers who do Home Visits as well. Starting at 8 AM, I go to 3 to 4 homes per day and stay for an hour and a half. While I am there, I direct one activity for all of us to do together and then the parent picks one activity to do. Three year olds have a very short attention span so I am learning fast that I have to have more than just two activities planned or I need to bring games or puzzles or books to use. This program has a parent-child focus, so the activities we do are quite a bit more flexible than what we are allowed to do in class, which I also like. We do what the parent wants to do even if that means we bake sugar cookies, which would be a big NO at school because of the sugar. While I am there, I am also helping the parents with whatever they might need to help them with their kids. I make observations at the visits and in the classroom and have to do a lot of paperwork on each of the kids. It's not too difficult, but there is a lot to remember to do.

Surprisingly, I wasn't very overwhelmed this week at work. The hardest part was (and still is) getting used to working for 8 or more hours a day and having a lot less time to do other things, including socialize with my roommates. Tuesday and Wednesday double classes was really exhausting! I don't know how part-day teachers do two classes everyday! So, doing Home Visits was a welcome break. The only down side to Home Visits is that I have to do a lot of driving. Fortunately, I now have a reliable car... and a very cool car at that. I was VERY grateful for my heated seats and the defrost on my side mirrors this week. I was also VERY grateful for the GPS I got for Christmas. I didn't stress at all about finding the houses and it made for a very relaxing time between appointments. The other thing I have to get used to is having the self-discipline to go to bed between 10 and 10:30 PM. I wake up at 6 AM and because I don't do well on lack of sleep, I have to go to bed earlier. I did great this week, but that is with nothing going on and isolating myself from my roommates, which can't last long.

I'm still deciding if I like Homebase better than the normal preschool classroom. It has it's perks, but I think I will actually miss teaching more often than I was. I will only teach once every three weeks now rather than every four days. My co-workers are great and they are willing to give my new ideas of how to do somethings on our teaching days a try, so that is really nice.

I'm grateful to sleep in and then to go to the temple tomorrow! I am also excited for Sunday! I feel like it's been forever since I had a Sunday to rest and meditate. It also will be great to see friends from the ward that I haven't seen in weeks.

Here is a link to an invitation to the Nauvoo Pageant that I will be performing in this upcoming summer. It is a life changing experience and I believe everyone should go there to see it at least once.

http://www.invite.nauvoopageant.net/2011/Invitations/2011_Blue/Kelly.htm