moving on up

I have been accused of bloggatory neglect, and to this charge I plead not guilty on account of temporary insanity. You see, this is what my living situation looked like:Notably, this also holds a striking resemblance to how my brain felt. Honestly, what category DO you pack umbrellas under?! Now however, we have safely arrived in the land ‘o lakes and are quickly making progress on our check list:- Get Allison a teaching job at an elementary school for the fall- Buy a house- Buy a (cheap) second carSo far, I interviewed at a private school in the area with both kindergarten and first grade openings, and I’m waiting to hear if I get a second interview. The only problem is that I only bought one interview suit. Suits, by the way, are expensive.The biggest most important-est news so far:Dan and I made an offer on a house last night! If you want more details, go a head and ask – I won’t bore people with talk of foundation size and roof age – but I will say that it’s in St. Paul and it’s adorable. We hope to close in early July.No progress on another car yet; thankfully the daycare where I work is on the 3M campus where Dan’s dad works, so we’ve been able to carpool every day.Speaking of my job, I think I’m going to begin daily installments of “toddler tales” – you know, now that I’m blogging again – from my classroom. Here are a couple of fantastic examples of what I do from 8-5 every day. The following are all true stories of the words and deeds of 2 and 3 year olds. However, the names have been changed.Toddler Tales, Part IAbout a week ago, the mother of one of our toddlers came in and asked that we not change his diaper right away when he soiled it because she was trying to motivate him to start potty training, and she thought that the increased discomfort of dirty diapers might do the trick. The teachers said sure, they’d give it a shot, and the next day they noticed that he was “poopy” (that’s preschool teacher for “has poop in his diaper”) so they waited a few minutes before they did anything about it. Well, little Connor had enough of this discomfort, so he reached right in his diaper and took ‘the thing that was making him uncomfortable‘ out, put it on the floor and went back to the ball pit. We told Mom that she needed to find a new means of motivation.Today while I was changing Jacob’s diaper, he began singing Queen’s “We will rock you”.Yesterday, while I was looking right at him, Derek the classroom bully yanked off sweet little Adam’s shoe and began smacking him over the head with it. After I removed Derek and calmed Adam down, I asked Derek to “go make it right”. He then proceeded to waddle over to Adam, pat his head where he had clubbed him with the shoe and kiss him on the cheek (no joke, it was the cutest thing). As I stood there watching this seemingly new person Derek was becoming, I thought ‘wow, as a teacher I may have just made a difference in the life of a child right there’. Before my moment of significance had time to pass on it’s own, Derek was pulling with all his might on Kayla’s braided hair.