Se Hace Camino Al Andar

I knew that when I left my school back in January, I would miss my teachers the most. We had great comradeship and got along houses afire. Yesterday evening, the lovely ladies I taught with threw me a baby shower… a tea party, to be exact! I met the ladies at Alice’s Tea Cup, Chapter III (there are three locations), where we drank tea, stuffed ourselves on tea sandwiches and sweets, and caught up on the old gossip (for my benefit!). I cannot see these ladies enough… we’re having lunch today, along with some other teachers that weren’t at the shower, and I’ll see them again on Thursday, at the school’s graduation. I’m really looking forward to seeing my kids, especially my AP students from last year who are graduating this year.
I worked at this school for 7 years, and in many ways, those were my formative years. I had just graduated from college when I began teaching, I started and finished my Master’s degree while there, I learned a lot about myself, what I’m made of, what my values are. I was humbled and uplifted, learning just as much from my kids and colleagues as I hoped they learned from me.
In any case, enjoy a few pictures from the party!

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Technorati Tags: alice's teacup, baby shower, fete, slice of life story challenge, tea party

On Thursday, we had our 36 week check-up. All is well with the babe but she is currently presenting breech. The hospital where I am giving birth has a policy of doing C-Sections with breech babies, so I am on a clock. The babe has three weeks to turn around before the section, which was scheduled rather swiftly, too swiftly for our comfort.
Since then, I’ve been feeling an enormous onslaught of emotion. My fears towards the C-Section stem from anxiety about having surgery (which I’ve never had before, ever! I’ve never even broken a bone!), feelings of inadequacy, concerns about how this affects our insurance (stupid, I know!), and so on. I’ve been doing research online not just about C-Sections but about turning around a breech baby, in an attempt to gain some control and ownership over this. I’ve had a relatively easy pregnancy, no complications, no stress, not even any swelling in my ankles (heh).
And now… it’s all catching up to me. One of the things I read online was that barring any other condition, a breech presentation can be caused by the baby feeling the need to comfort the mother by getting close to her heart, picking up on the mother’s anxiety and fear. This makes sense to me. While I haven’t felt stressed out these 9 months, I do tend to internalize my stress and pretend it isn’t there, or manifest the stress in other ways. In this case, I’ve had plenty of external, non-baby things to stress out about, like our kitchen renovation and our financial security (I quit my job in January).
Taking a cue from Birthing From Within, I decided to do some journaling and visualization exercises to try and purge these feelings from my system– not just my feelings about having a C-Section but my feelings about being a mother. After journaling, I copied all the negative words onto pieces of paper, and Henry and I burned them in the bathroom sink, an exorcism, if you will. Now, I can begin to focus on using positive imagery to try and get the baby to turn, and barring that, take back control over the situation by having as much input as possible into the C-Section.
I’ve had well-meaning people in my life tell me, “oh, it’s not a big deal,” or “everyone does it,” or “what matters is the health of the baby.” (That last one, in particular, irks me as it implies that I’m ignoring that aspect of it.) These are not comforting words to me, as they imply that my feelings are not valid, and I find such comments to be dismissive and disrespectful, however well-meaning they are intended to be. My response to those comments is that I’m not “everyone,” that this is about me and my experience and that my fears and anxiety are perfectly valid. I’m not putting myself over the health of my baby, as some people have implied. Rather, I am working through my emotions to come to terms with a different image of giving birth than what I’ve had for the past 8 months. It’s not an easy thing for me to switch gears all of a sudden. After this little exorcism, I’m finding that I resent the fact that I feel defensive about being nervous and scared, and this is not helping. I’m just really thankful that my husband has been supportive and has helped me work through this. I’ve never ruled out a C-Section but it’s always been on my last resort list, as it should be. C-Sections are not natural and normal, as our society has come to view it; it should be a medically necessary procedure, not something done out of convenience or out of fear. Most people I know have had C-Sections because it was safer for both mother and baby, and that’s the way it should be. I’m done preaching now and tucking my soapbox back under the bed.
I welcome all your positive vibes and thoughts.

Technorati Tags: birthing from within, visualization

First CSA Share of the Season, originally uploaded by NCavillones.

Click on the photo to get the full story!

Technorati Tags: Add new tag, Photo Fridays

A company called Delicious Monster released a software that allows you to catalog your library by scanning the ISBN numbers with your iSight camera to create a digital record. The latest version allows you to publish your library to your .Mac account. Between my husband and I, we got most of the books scanned before I packed them up. You can see our library here. Enjoy!

In a school where Macs are used, I could see teachers using this to inventory their classroom libraries, or in a particularly small school with limited resources, the librarian could use this to maintain the school’s library. It has functions for keeping tracking of book borrowers, complete with assigned due dates!

Technorati Tags: delicious monster, library, Mac, software

Things are shaping up slowly but surely around here. We’ve thrown out two bookcases, packed up 10 boxes of books, moved our beautiful but large coffee table out of the living room, had the place painted and hung or re-hung our photos and artwork back on the walls. (I still have a ketubah and a cool cyclogram being framed at the shop.)

The kitchen is nearly done, with just a few cosmetic things to be fixed. I’m slowly but surely figuring out where I want things to go and getting the kitchen organized. The next project is carpet in the bedroom and window treatments. I said to my mother the other day, “I almost feel ready to bring a baby home.” We’ve got just under a month to go and I’m feeling less overwhelmed now that I can see that the apartment is ever closer to baby-ready.

The question is: Am I baby-ready? Maybe. As we get closer to the date, I feel more twinges of nervousness and anxiety. My tendency is squash them right away and go look at the many gifts I’ve already gotten, ahead of my shower. Two events will bring out a girl’s previously-hidden shallow nature: weddings and baby showers. This past weekend, I received two big things from my parents that have helped to quell the anxiety a bit: a stroller and a crib. The stroller issue was fraught with anxiety, believe it or not. There are so many choices out there and so many factors to take into consideration. For us, a big factor was mobility–is this a stroller we can travel with? Does it weigh 5000 pounds? Does it fold and unfold easily? So far, the answers seem to be yes, no and yes. As for the crib, most of the anxiety came from wondering whether I’d get one as a gift or if we’d have to buy it.

So, the stroller:

and the crib:

The crib won’t be set up for awhile, as we need to put those ten boxes of books in storage, which we can’t do until after the baby is born. (They are going into my dad’s basement, three hours away, which is too far for us to travel this late in the game.) The baby will be in the co-sleeper for the first few months anyway, so I’m not feeling anxious about this and I’ve already resigned myself to the fact that she won’t have a proper nursery while we live in this apartment. Instead, she’ll have a corner, delineated by lots of pink stuff, probably. (Yes, I know… I could go with a different color but honestly, folks, I happen to like pink. I really do.)

So, that’s a slice of a life that is currently consumed by the imminent arrival of a new family member. Boring to you, dear readers but an endless source of excitement for me.

Technorati Tags: slice of life story challenge

Bonnie has started a group on Flickr called Photo Fridays and she invites you to participate! Choose an image and compose some text to go with it. Some participants have written short tales while others have added just a description and one poster composed an epic poem. 

Here’s my contribution for the week: 

Click on the photo to read the text that goes with it.
 

Technorati Tags: Photo Fridays

You can take the teacher out of English class but you’d be hard-pressed to take the English class out of the teacher! This week, your Days in Sentences will have a literary bent, so start scanning your library shelves and digging deep down into your literary memories to come up with a novel that best represents the kind of week you’ve had. Are you relating to a certain character? A certain plot? A certain conflict? Stretch the limits of your imagination and make those analogies work!

Paul seems to sum up the bureaucracy of schools with this simple but apt quote from Tom Saywer: “Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.”

Ilya recalls Julius Ceasar when she asks “I came, I powerpointed but did I conquer?” She’ll find out in October if her coursebook does indeed conquer the prize.

Jeff is channelling the spirit of Pete Bancini in a week in which One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. ‘Nuf said!

Kate makes a text-to-text connection this week, inspired to read The Eyre Affair after seeing her son take on the role of Mr. Rochester in a stage adaption of Jane Eyre.

Lynne sends us a mini-essay this week on Henry James’ Portrait of Lady:

Along with my birthday this week, (a youthful 62, thank you)…comes a rich memory of a favorite character ever youthful, Isabelle Archer. In Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady, Isabelle defines what it means to be alive to the world. She is one of James’s most endearing heroines as she makes her progress through the “old world,”(Europe) attempting to take everything in without losing her integrity or independence (American). In her openness, of course, she defines vulnerability and ultimately falls prey to the cold, unyielding villain, Gilbert Osmond.

I am trying to remain open to the world while staying alert to the possibility of any Gilbert Osmonds—real or metaphoric— who enter the portals of my world.

Kevin expresses that wish of wishes: to travel in time, a la Einstein’s Dreams, so he can leap ahead to the end of the school year and still go back to polish up the loose ends of his writing curriculum.

Ken celebrates World Environment Day (June 5th) with this literary gem:

This was not just an ordinary day,
one when the half-moon and sun together
peeped into limpid pools cracks and hollows
on boulders dozing like pitted gargoyles
along the far beach-line, and fixed their gaze
through soft-puffed light cloud so that what one missed
the other glimpsed: a painted paradise.

Bonnie discovers a kinship with Lillian Hellman in her memoir, An Unfinished Woman, in a week where she feels crazy but enjoys being unfinished.

Matthew hits a literary hat trick with this contribution:

I have felt pride with prejudice and punishment without crime in a week full of fury and not so much sound that signified nearly everything.

Stacey’s kids are in a race to the finish as they attempt to read 100 read-aloud books before the year is out (they’re at 76 books!).

Anne professes to be less than familiar with the sci-fi genre but we can all relate to that Twilight Zone feeling, as she felt during a presentation when she discovered a conference participant without an e-mail address and an audience that seemed scared of their computers!

Technorati Tags: days in sentences

As a sleep-deprived pregnant woman, I hereby exercise my right to phone it in. So, here’s a photo slice instead of a text slice. My mom was in town yesterday, so she, my sister and I took the kids to the Bronx Zoo.

Technorati Tags: bronx zoo, slice of life challenge

Technorati Tags: bronx zoo