Our first week back to school is under our belt and we did great! I got to see all my adorable preschoolers this week and I can tell you already it's going to be so stinking adorable teaching them Spanish! The older kids were good and I'm really looking forward to seeing how my new curriculum works out. I think it's going to be awesome.
Layla has taken all the new changes so well! She is my big talker. She says a lot of words now and says a lot more than Brooklyn did at this age. So in that way she is more "advanced" than Brooklyn, but in other areas, she's behind, like her running. She's still a wobbly walker and doesn't really run. She walks fast and swings her arms all over the place - that's how she "runs". It's adorable and I could just pick her up and squeeze her and kiss her all over her cute chubby face!
The first week of school my parents were out of town so a friend from church came to our house each day and stayed with Layla. I was a little worried since this was the first time a non-family member was going to keep her and I didn't know how she would do. I was so happy to get a text with a picture from my friend of a happy little Layla, playing up a storm and later, a picture of her sleeping in her crib, butt in the air, after having let my friend know that she wanted her "baba" and wanted to go to bed for her nap! I was so relieved! So that took away a huge stress factor for my first week of school.
Brooklyn is also growing, changing and maturing. She basically talks in complete sentences all the time and only occasionally says things I can't quite understand. She is the smartest 3 year old I know (not biased of course, haha) and she absolutely loves school! Her new teacher is awesome and she already talks about her at home. We were a bit worried about her switching classes because she talked about her previous teacher all summer and would get upset when I would tell her she was going to have a new teacher. After her scheduled "meet the teacher" appointment the Monday before school started, I knew that fear would be laid to rest. She loved her new teacher and her new classroom and has since been coming home a very happy little girl. She still asks to go visit her previous teacher but it's a happy visit and not a sad one. It seems so mature to me that she is taking all this so well.
Another little fun change in things this year is that my mom will be a classroom aide for the 2 year olds (Brooklyn's class last year). She really needed a new job that wasn't so physically demanding and we just happened to need a classroom aide. It's really going to be perfect for her. Next school year, she'll get to have Layla in her room and she's really excited about that. I'm pretty sure Layla will be happy about that too! Tomorrow will be my mom's first day and I'm excited to go down to teach the 2 year olds and see how she's enjoying herself.
I really have to say how blessed I am to have the job that I do. I always wanted to teach at a private, Christian school and didn't think I was ever going to get the chance. I wouldn't take back my 4 years teaching high school Spanish in the public schools, but I'm so thankful to have moved on from that time. I learned so much and I know now that God was preparing me for the job I have now. It couldn't have come at a more perfect time and I know, that I know, that I know that it was all God!
Waylon has also started a new job and we're both really excited about it. It's his first regular day job with weekends off. Ever since we've been married, Waylon has had jobs that had him working evenings or weekends or both. Our schedules were always crazy and stressful and I know he wasn't happy in most of those jobs. He now works for a Christian company that seems like a really great company. It's not all perfect though; he does have to drive to Dallas every day from Fort Worth which is a lot of gas and mileage (and a toll every day) and it's his first job in a long time sitting at a desk and being on the phone all day as opposed to being on his feet and moving all day. It's been an adjustment for him but I really am praying that this job sticks for a long time. We literally get home within 30-40 minutes of each other on days that I work which is SO much better than me getting home from working all day, getting the kids, coming home and getting them all situated and then putting them to bed alone every night and him coming home after 9 or 10pm. I'm SO done with those days and so thankful for evenings and Saturdays home together. Thank you Lord.
My exercising and eating better has really been going well. I've tweaked some things and am actually eating more and losing weight faster. It sounded crazy when I first started reading about it but then it made a lot of sense. I was working out 6 days a week but eating the calories for a person who sat around all day and did nothing. My body wasn't getting enough to fuel everything I was doing and was hanging on to every calorie I took in. Once I started eating more, I felt better, my workouts were better and I started dropping pounds again. I'm now down 14 pounds since April (keep in mind that I had about a month or more of time since then that I "fell off the wagon" and stopped watching what I ate and didn't really exercise so I gained some back) and have lost about 11 inches, maybe more since I haven't measured in a couple of weeks. I'm starting week 6 of Couch 2 5K and have started running on the track instead of on the treadmill to prepare for an actual 5k I plan on running next month (in just 3 weeks...EEK!). I didn't realize how much harder it is to run when you're not on a treadmill...talk about a wake up call! So no more treadmill running for me. I've also been lifting and doing some other stuff for workouts. What I'm most excited about right now is that Waylon and I bought the Insanity workout DVDs and are going to start doing those together. It looks insanely hard but doable. We are also going to borrow P90X from my cousin and his wife and do that after we finish Insanity. I probably won't start Insanity until after I run my 5K so I can continue training for it. All in all, I'm really happy with where I am in my health changes and I am so glad they are changes that I can keep doing in the long run.
Those are the big highlights of what has been going on around here. I do plan on doing a post for each of the girls with pictures and specific information on each of them as well as a before and during post of my weight loss. That one will have to wait until I've lost another 4 pounds though because that will be when I hit my first big milestone.
Praying for all my public school friends who go back to school tomorrow! I know there are lots of my mommy friends who are sad to have to leave their babies again. I remember that feeling so well and just pray that God will comfort them as they start another new school year!
