Week 19 - Happy birthday to me

Well, happy late birthday here. It was actually on the 20th but I had to work. What's the point of having a summer birthday if you have to work? And I don't know how, but my birthday always seems to fall on the staff development days before school starts. So I usually spend my birthday-day listening to my principal read a 42 page meeting agenda. Ugh.

This year we had a party. Normally the family gets together and gets food from somewhere. We've found it's easier than going out to eat. This year we invited friends too, which is a big deal for us. We've never had a party this big, but we felt we were finally settled into the new house well enough to finally have people over. It was great. We had Olive Garden, they do party size trays of most of their dishes. And cake from Costco, which isn't as great as I remembered it. It was good, don't get me wrong. But it was a bit on the sweet side. And we played Cards Against Humanity. If you've never played, I highly suggest you find someone with a set. They're kind of hard to find though, but there is an online version too. It has the same rules as Apples to Apples, but the cards are random, offensive and just hilarious. It was a little weird because one of my friends brought her son and he's 12. It's an age where you know he knows what the cards mean, but it's weird to admit that you know. It made me think, would I let my son play in 12 years? Probably and he would probably get the "dem titties" card.

We've both gone back to work now. My year has started off well. I was scheduled for 25 kids. 20 showed up and one told me on the first day they were moving out of zone the next week. Then on Friday another told me it was her last day. My school is in a highly transient area and so around the end of any given month when people's leases are up, we see a lot of movement. So I'm down to 18, which is unheard of for a fifth grade class here. Of course, we always expect a lot of new ones after Labor day so I doubt it will stay that low. But if it does, it's possible we could lose a position at count day. It wouldn't be me as I have the most seniority, but it's not something anyone wants to deal with. She has had a good first week too, though it has been tiring. But fortunately she only has classes Monday through Thursday so she gets to just rest on Fridays.

We both found out about our maternity leave options. I asked our office manager and she said FML will send me a packet 30 days before the birth. I fill it out, send it back and they verify my eligibility. I'm not worried about it as I have over 150 sick days accumulated so I should be able to take the full 12 weeks. I think I have a sub lined up too. She only has about 8 weeks accumulated and they said she could take unpaid time too, but we just can't afford that. They don't exactly have substitutes in college so they just cancel her classes for the semester. Then when her sick days are up, they give her administrative work to do for the rest of the semester. Hopefully it's something she can mostly do from home. After both of our time is up, I don't know. Day care is really expensive for little ones that young and you don't get a discount for having more than one.

18 Weeks

We've seen the doctor, I think three times since I last posted. Twice with the perinatologist and once with the regular O/B. Everything is fine. The babies are growing and moving around a lot now. At the next visit with the perinatologist they'll do the cardiology scan to make sure all the chambers of their heart are developing correctly. The O/B said we need to be up to date on our vaccinations, which is something I hadn't considered. I had shots for school, of course. And I had to be up to date for college, but that was like 15 years ago and vaccines do expire. And I have to get a flu shot, which I usually don't do. You would think I would, being around kids and gross people all the time. But this year was the first time I ever got the flu as an adult so I think I have a decent tolerance against it. But if the doctor says I need it, I'll get it.

Lastly, we've made a pretty big baby related purchase. My girlfriend has driven a Toyota Yaris for the past 7 or so years. When we found out about the pregnancy she considered keeping it, though it is really small. But since it's twins, we knew it would have to go. There was no way two car seats would fit in the back of a two-door hatchback and the jogging stroller we picked was way too big for the trunk space it had, unless we put the back seats down. It's actually too big to fit easily in my car too. She's been looking at safety ratings and stuff and had her mind made up on a Mazda 3. We went down today to see what they had as far as Labor Day sales and ended up with the CX5. So now we have a pretty cool mom car.

Crazy how life changes. We were just talking about that, about what we would say to ourselves in 2002 if we had a way-back machine. Well, lottery numbers excluded anyway. Every year I've been writing a birthday letter to myself on Future Me. Maybe I'll write to myself in 10 years this time. If the next 10 years changes as much as the last, I have no idea what our lives will look like.