Graduation

Everything has been so busy that I haven't blogged for a while so I thought I would catch up on recent events. First, It's official! I graduated. While actual graduation is not super exciting or eventful it felt great to walk across the stage in my goofy cap and gown and know that I had finally done it. My graduation was fairly small because I just went the specific school graduation and the School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences at BYU is a small group. I was the only person graduating in physics teaching. Tyler and Jack came of course and so did my parents and Robin and Chelsey was there for some of the time. One of the people that spoke was funny and the other... wasn't. Anyway, all in all it was a great day. The only thing I was bummed about was that my advisor, Duane Merrell, wasn't there. For those of you who don't know he pretty much bent over backwards to get me through school and make sure I had everything I needed for graduation. He got me into a situation for student teaching that would work with having a new baby. He did lots of other things to help me out, and I may not have graduated without his support.

I promised a bunch of people that I was going to send out graduation announcements. It didn't happen. Sorry, so consider it announced. I, Abigail Anne Treasure Bolton, am happy to announce that I have graduated from Brigham Young University with a Bachelors of Science in Physics Teaching and a minor in Psychology.

Tyler took this picture of me while I was waiting with all the other graduates for graduation to begin. Any good pictures that were taken were on my dad's camera or Robin's camera.

First Day

Today was my first day of "school." No students were there, it was just a day of meetings and teacher preparation time. I have a few more days of meetings and teacher preparation before the students come on August 25!

Syracuse Jr High is organized into teaching teams with several sets of 3 core teachers (English, Social Studies, and science) and I got to meet my team today. Turns out I already knew the English teacher. Her name is Melanie Jones now, but I knew her in high school when she was Melanie Lund. I was already excited about working in a teacher team, but now I'm even more excited. She has a 4 month old baby boy, so she knows what I'm going through leaving Jack all day. It will be so great to have a familiar person to talk to about the woes of being a working mom.

I am still pretty apprehensive about the classes I'm teaching, but I am looking forward to this new challenge. This may sound dumb, but in some ways I haven't felt like I've had enough on my plate lately. Ever since I finished student teaching I've spent way too much time being unproductive. Of course being a full time mom is a hard and very time consuming job, but I feel like I wasn't spending my down time (when he's napping or playing happily on his own) very well. Now I won't really have any down time, so it will be hard to waist time. It always feels good to be busy (have you noticed my overly positive outlook on the subject, yes it is sort of my way of convincing myself that things are going to be ok).
Anyway, that's the scoop on my first day.

Tyler is finishing up working for JC this week, and then he will be stay at home dad and take classes in the evening, at least for this semester. We're still trying to work out at least a part time child care situation that I feel good about. It's hard to find someone that you really feel good about leaving your child with for most of the day.

Isaac's Birthday Party

As you may have noticed this blog is lacking pictures of the older of our boys. Hayden stays at our house every other weekend, and we do lots of fun things together. He loves his little brother and he also is still a bit dinosaur obsessed. He is about to start first grade.
This last weekend we got to go to Isaac's (Hayden's cousin) 6th birthday party. It was a big water party in the back yard and Tyler got some fun pictures of Hayden and Isaac. 

  Chillin out 
   Lovin the slip'n'slide      
                          Isaac    
                          

Sleep Troubles

Jack hates sleep. I know everything you read says you need to make sleep time a happy time and TRUST ME we have tried. We sing, rock, snuggle and everything else we hear to try, but to no avail. He takes a couple decent naps during the day, but come nightfall the disaster begins. About 8:30 I take him to our room, change his diaper, put on his jammies and nurse him. Then I snuggle him, sing songs, and lay him in his bed, sometimes it takes other times it does not. This is a picture from one night that I thought I had it just right but an hour later I found him like this in his crib. Am I a mean mom to take a picture of him crying because I think it's cute? By the way, this blanket is in his crib to snuggle, he put it like this on his own.

So Little Time

Well just a personal blog here, today is August first and I now have only ten days before I begin work. I'll be honest, I am not looking forward to it. Yes I think it will be fun to teach and yes I am excited for this new opportunity, but I am not excited about leaving Jack all day long. I don't think he will be excited either. He has become quite the mama's boy. For those of you wondering, the current plan is that Tyler is staying home with Jack and taking classes from 4pm on. I know that means we will pretty much never see each other, but it was sort of my stipulation to being a working mom. It is possible that we will try to arrange care for Jack for a few hours a couple times a week so that Tyler could take some of his classes during the day and have a little study time without a baby.
I am very nervous about the classes I am teaching and feel EXTREMELY unprepared. It's very overwhelming. I guess I'll just take it a day at a time and enjoy every last minute I have with Jack before I enter the world of work. 

This is an old picture of Jack, but it makes me smile