Guest Post: Mrs. Larwrence

At 2:55 this afternoon (Friday, Feb. 20), I looked at the clock in my rockin’ mini-van and thought, the kids have eleven minutes left of school until I am in the classroom again. I think it is funny how my day is dictated by a bell. A lot of times when I look at the clock I think, what would I be doing if I were at work? With three kids, there isn’t a lot of down time to look at the clock, so nap time was the time I found myself thinking about time the most.

Six weeks at home has flown in terms of the time I’ve spent with my kids. In one week, Stella went from weighing 7 lbs. 4 oz. to 8 lbs. By the next week she was 9 lbs. There is nothing like being around kids to remind one how fast time flies.

Stella is a good baby. Her brother and sister are crazy about her. I think they were expecting someone else to play with immediately. Instead they got someone who, they will be glad to tell anyone who asks, “just eats, sleeps and poops.” To them she’s just little and can’t do anything; it doesn’t make them love her any less. They don’t understand that within a year she will learn to roll over, sit-up, maybe stand, maybe crawl, maybe start talking. That she’ll get her first tooth, she'll go from eating milk to baby food, to “real” food. She’ll grow so much they won’t even remember these days when she does so little.

I can’t believe how fast six weeks has gone speeding by. For that matter, I can’t believe how fast the two and a half years it’s been since I had Carter, or the four years that Maggie’s been here have gone. It’s almost March. Where the heck did February go? In just a little over three months, my other kids won’t be “mine” any more.

One of my favorite things about teaching ninth grade is that I get to watch these young men and women grow, not just in one year’s time, but over the course of four years (if I’m lucky). Being away for six weeks from this group of kids is just as hard as it is easy to be at home for six weeks with my own kids.

I’m ready to get back to work. There is comfort in a routine, and while I’m a little nervous about day one. (For a million reasons that would be way too personal to share.) But one thing moms know is the sacredness of routine: the ringing of the bell that moves us from one class to another, the two hour feedings and four hour sleep stretches. Routines take a bit of time to adjust to. I’ve adjusted to one in the past six weeks, and I’m ready to get back to the “normal routine.” (I am sure come May that I will be ready for a pause in the “normal,” and I will be completely ready for the “summer routine.”)

It will be hard to leave Stella, Carter and Maggie behind, but they are the reasons I go to work. There are a lot of things I’m looking forward to about being at work. I get to teach writing and reading (To Kill a Mockingbird is coming! Yes! Yes! Yes!), I have a great support group of co-workers, and most of all, the group of young people I get to hang out with. They, too are the reasons I go to work. (And May will be here before we know it.)