I just wanted to give a quick update about our family and what's going on (in case anyone is still reading this). Below are some pictures of our garden today. we just picked about 10 lbs of tomatoes and are making sauce today. we are also putting in our fall crops today including kale, collards, beets, broccoli, spinach and a few others.
I am started teaching 8th grade science full time last week. i will be teaching through Christmas, then the woman whose maternity leave I'm taking comes back.
Its hard knowing that my kids are in daycare all day, but we found a wonderful person who is watching only 4 children to take care of them, and they are adjusting well to be being gone during the day.
Most of our environmental stuff continues, and has become habit at this point. Other things just kind of fell by the wayside and we've stopped. In general, we continue to reduce our waste and don't use disposable products, although not buying anything with non-recyclable packaging has proved impossible for us for the time being. Driving to work has become a necessity with dropping off and picking up the kids. Making stuff from scratch is pretty much out the window. We are saving water as much as possible and conserving energy by not using the dryer and things like that.
When December rolls around, we will re-evaluate how things are going...if we aren't enjoying this arrangement, i'll stop working at that point or just sub a few days a week possibly. Its nice that i can get my feet wet teaching, but know that its only 3.5 months and then i can stop if i want. Its kind of overwhelming teaching and being mom to 2 young kids, but i have a lot of lessons planned out for me already by the woman whose leave i'm taking, so that is much easier. I have a lot of support at the school also because I student taught there, and I have a lot of mentor teachers to draw from.
I am enjoying my students and looking forward to doing fun stuff with them this year. I do have a lot of mother-guilt about leaving my kids, but in many ways i'm feeling really happy to have my own thing separate from them. Elsie still has her school 2 days a week, so she can see her old friends. Emmett is eating a lot of food, and not relying very heavily on nursing right now (in fact, i struggle to get him to nurse most days because he's so interested in crawling around, exploring and trying to walk) so that takes a lot of pressure off of me. He is a very happy, easy going guy who takes well to people, and doesn't seem at all upset that I leave him during the day. I think it helps that his big sister is there to help with him. They really love each other.
So that's about it. Life is going to be very crazy for the next few months.
