Incidents and accidents

Things you may know:
I work at a pre-school. All of my ’students’ are two years old. I have 10 of them daily.
Things you may not know:
Two year olds still eat with their fingers unless you remind them not to. Rice is the worst thing for a two year old to imagine getting on his or her spoon.

Thus, it ends up everywhere. On the child, on the table, on the wall behind the child, under the table, in the child’s clothes, in the child’s diaper.. etc. Couple that with extra dry cornbread (it’s tasty, just crumbles easily) and it was a disaster on my floor on Thursday. The menu was pinto beans, rice, cornbread, peaches and ’slaw’. Any of the above is a disater by itself, but combining them made some sort of diabolical food explosion in which I had rice and cornbread in a 15 foot radius surrounding the table. I began cleaning up before snapping the picture, but I did get the mess under the table. Should have gotten the whole thing though. You don’t want to know what the slaw and pinto beans did to the diapers later.

This is an ACTUAL conversation that happens between at least two different children (often more than three) every day:

Child 1: I want my Mommy.
Child 2: (to CH1) I want my Mommy.
CH1: (to CH2) My Mommy!
CH2: (to CH1) MY Mommy!
CH1: (to CH2) MY MommY!
CH2: (to CH1) MY MOMMY!
CH1: (begining to cry) My Mommy…
CH2: (to CH1) My Mommy!
CH1: (to Me) My Mommy?
Me: ENOUGH!

This happens daily, and I still haven’t figured out what’s actually going on in their heads.

I had one of my kids (He’s two) come up to me the other day and say “Miss Heather… I I I I .. I like your breasts.” I was like “You what?” He replies “I like your breasts!” Yikes! I’m all for teaching kids the true words of body parts, but when a two year old tells you that he likes your breasts, it’s a bit freaky. His mom thought it was funny though.
Today the same kid walks up to me and says “Miss Heather, I I I I… I sure do love you.” Awww… His mom came to pick him up and she was talking about how he talks about me at home and she says “We sure do like you.” Now I know where he gets it from!

The poo pixies visited my classroom today. I promise, they were there. They are responsible for explosive diapers. Well, maybe it’s the 24 hour tummy bug that’s going around, but the poo pixies were still there.
This morning, I had one stinky diaper to dispose of. This is pretty normal.
This afternoon, I had NINE. I only had SIX kids in class today!
I had one child who apparently craps anti-grvity poo, because that shit crawled up to her neck. I swear, I didn’t even bother with wipes. I just took her to the bathroom and threw her in the sink. Her mom forgot to bring extra clothes for her, so I had to raid the lost and found.
I had another child who crapped so much that her diaper leaked out the bottom and dripped onto the floor. Her mother forgot to bring extra clothes as well, so she got to wear her twin brother’s clothes.
Everyone else had multiple runny craps, but none of the anti-gravity or exploding kind. This ALL happened within 30 minutes. Damn you Poo Pixies!

I teach a room full of two-year olds. Eight of them, all day long. (John told his sensei what I do for a living and he says “Teach two year olds? You don’t teach two year olds. You spray for them.” LOL) We’re working on potty training, because it’s fewer times a day I have to fold them in half and wipe poop off of everything. Most of my eight are getting it. I have three that pee in the potty every time, three that are a bit spotty but are getting it, and two that are scared of the potty (this is quite common). Unfortunatly, none of them actually poo in the potty yet, so most of the diapers I look at everyday have shit in them. Fun. They mostly poop solid-ish poo, but I have one whose crap is squishy-wet every time. We had corn yesterday, so that makes them crap everywhere the day after. So, I walk in this morning and the squishy one greets me with “Miss Heather! I pooped!”

Some of you may have heard that Georgia had a gas shortage scare yesterday. I was unaware that it was ONLY Georgia. I expected to read about nothing but gas prices on the web and news, so I didn’t even bother. Imagine my surprise when I check this morning and discovered it was only us idiot Southerners who fear everything but the President… I personally had ringside seats to the 2005 Georgia Gas Panic. There’s a station right outside my window at work. At 10am, there was no one there and the prices were $2.60/Gallon. At 2pm, gas was $2.99 and there was a line down the road. We had parents coming in to get the kids early thinking something bad was happening to the teachers.. etc. One said that where she had just come from gas was $3.69 and there were people out in the middle of the main road. I saw on NBC that prices in Atlanta proper reached $6.00, with people lined up around the block for it. Luckily, the governer has put an end to the price gouge and prices are back down to the $3.50 mark. Though, I can’t say I feel sorry for the dumbasses that paid $6 for it. I didn’t go get gas yesterday because I didn’t need any, but you can bet that if I’d had ‘net access, I would have sure checked the news first. I have photos, but my camera is out of batteries, so they will come later.
Edit: Photo here.

At my new job, I have my own room. This means I get to decorate as I see fit. This moneht, I chose a fish theme. I just thought I’d share a few pictures.
My Large Board (7ft wide): Clickey
My Small Board (4ft wide): Here
My Door: See it
The Whole Room: Poit!

I got paid today, for my first week on the job. Let me tell you, having an income again is wonderful. I felt like I was just sponging off of everyone I knew. I still don’t have a bank account of my own right now though. I deposited my check in John’s account. He’s now managing my money for me/us. It sounds terrible, but I seriously feel much better handing him the financial reigns and walking away. He may get all of my income right now, but he also got all of my debt. I have to work out how to pay a few bills in my name that cannot be transferred, but I should be okay for now. Still saving for that camera! Heh, fat chance I’ll get it though.
Work has been great so far. It’s been almost two weeks, but I’m already quite settled in. A few things to work out and many parents’ names to learn, and I’ll be set! I’ve been decorating my room this week. That’s right. MY room. I have my own room. To dress as I please. I’m doing a fish theme right now. I have foam kelp hanging from the ceiling and fish stuck everywhere. I even have a big pink and purple octopus on one of my bulletin boards. It’s quite festive in there! The only things I don’t really enjoy is the communication gap and the diapers. These kids are two, so most of the day consists of “Take that out of your mouth. Take that out of your mouth. Keep your lips to yourself. Take that out of your mouth.” I’d really prefer to be in with the 4 year olds, where conversations are actually two-sided and make sense. It’s quite fun though. I come home tired, but I can’t wait to go back the next day. I never even consider calling in sick, even when I feel like poo. I can’t ever picture myself doing anything else.

Well, today was my first day at Cornerstone Preschool. It’s a full-time job working in a two-year-old classroom. Beginning August first, the room will be mine to do with what I please. This pretty much kills any plans I might have had for taking off on my birthday. The current teacher in that room is moving up to the four and five year-old room, and I’m taking her place. I’ll be my job to see that the kids get changed and taught the correct stuff during the day. I went in today from 7:45AM to 4:45PM, and now I have a monster migraine. The heat and too much information all at once is what got me. I have eleven children’s names to remember, a curriculum to plan for, a room to decorate, supplies to purchase and organize.. etc. All in two weeks!
I’ll be teaching the A Beka Curriculum, which is a religious teachings curriculum. In the actual schedule, I am required to teach Bible stories and songs.. etc. I don’t really have a problem with this, but it will be ALL new to me. I spent today’s nap time listening to Christian Public Radio (”Where was the Church when prayer was taken out of schools?” and “We now have a program for homosexuals who want to live a straight lifestyle.”). I think I’ll be tuning the radio to something less God when I’m lead in that room. It’s quite enough for me to teach something I’m not really a believer in. Anyway, I wasn’t overwhelmed with the religion in there, which is what I had worried about. I don’t shove my beliefs (or lack of) up people’s noses, and I expect that they don’t do it to me.
The people there are stunningly nice though. People took time out of their classes to come and introduce themselves, even that Pastor came in and shook my hand. He’s a very friendly man. He even looks like a pastor. Very very warm eyes. The school director is wonderful too. She answered all of my questions and took time out to makes sure that I knew what was going on at the school and how to do things that were outside of my room. I’m even allowed to bring food and drinks into the classroom, which is great for someone with too high of a metabolism like me.
Overall, I think I’ll be a bit overwhelmed for a while longer, but I’ll get the hang of it soon. I’m sure I’ll love it within a few days though.

Well, yesterday was the biggest shipping day of the year. I work at what is now called The UPS Store. UPS purchased MBE (mail boxes etc) corporate and told us all to change our names to The UPS Store and we could have lower rates and higher volume. That was about 7 months ago. Since then, customer volume has skyrocketed about 80%, there have been 500 new UPS Stores added to the ‘family’, and each store is running an average of about 4 shipping stations (up from last year’s 2). These shipping stations run online off of servers in Seattle. Too bad no one thought to add more servers. All morning there was a noticeable lag as all of the United States rushed to a post office or UPS Store to ship Christmas presents. At about 1pm across America, there was a great “Aurgh!” from 4500 UPS Stores as all of the servers in Seattle went down and stayed down for about 45 minutes. This means about 30-40 customers that never got a tracking number on the packages they shipped out then, and an extra 45 minutes at the end of the work day spent re-shipping them so they WILL have a tracking number. Wheee.. I get to do it all again today.