Today at work, a sweet little 6 year old noticed that another staff member had the same water bottle as I did. She decided that mine needed to be different and pretty. Naturally she put ribbons, stars, a sheriff badge and glued one pink googley eye on. Now my water bottle is pretty and unique! Needless to say, she made my day! It is children like this that help me get through my day and boy are they saving me!
Work has been one of the most challenging things I have attempted in my life. I am not used to being talked back to or ignored when I am talking and now it is an everyday occurrence. It takes everything in my power to not to lose my cool when I tell a 7 year old to do something and they turn around and say "no" and continue on with what they are doing. Granted, they do not get away with it for long because Ms. Hannah does not tolerate that but some of these children test my patience everyday. I have made improvements dealing with them but some days I feel like all I have done is yelled at kids. After spending the day saying "don't do that" "don't hit him" "don't put that in your mouth" I have come to the conclusion after talking with other childcare workers that children are like tiny, drunk humans. They run into things, they fall down a lot, they have violent mood swings that often do not make sense, say whatever is on their minds and you have to tell them the same things a million times. My job is to wrangle these tiny drunk people and keep them from hurting themselves or others. There are times when these children are adorable, then there is the other 90% of the time. I realize that, although I can handle children of this age, I much prefer to work with the older ones. God bless anyone who can work with these tiny terrors!
As the new fall semester is approaching, I am very hopeful that soon I will be able to apply for substitute teaching jobs. I am faced with the dilemma of continuing to work at the youth center and limiting my hours I can sub or telling my boss that I will be seasonal and hoping that I will get enough sub jobs to supplement our income. The problem with Anthony being in the military is that no matter how many jobs he works, how awesome he is or how much extra he does, he will not get any form of raise until he is scheduled to get one in about a year. So if we want any extra money coming in, only I can make that happen. I will be submitting my sub application and hope for the best but I am very nervous about what is to come. I guess only time will tell! For now, I am happy to have any sort of job.
We are very sad that the summer is quickly coming to a close. In a few short days my family will be heading up to Ely and for the first time in 22 years, I will not be going with them. Being out here in Montana has made us miss several important moments in our family's life and that has been very hard. Ely marked the last hurrah of the summer and the McDonald family would spend the entire year counting down. I know that we are lucky that we are not stationed somewhere farther away and I am very lucky that Anthony is not deployed but there are days when it does make me sad that I cannot be there for the important moments in my family's life. On the bright side, this August marks the first time since first grade that I will not be dreading going back to school and the first time in 5 years that I do not have to say goodbye to Anthony for a long period of time. Those 5 years were very difficult and I cannot say how happy I am that we are together now and we finally have a life together.
Well, I think that is all I have to say for now! I hope to write again soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment