The job gets in the way

While the last weeks of high school—prom, awards, graduation, yearbook signing, etc.—are a delight for students, the people who work in a school don’t enjoy the same carefree spring days. It has been a marathon of a couple of weeks, and as soon as the teachers who are still lingering on campus get the heck out of here, the real work of summer can begin for me. Of course the work won’t last long for me because I am cutting out early to prep my classes for next year. I am so happy to be going back to teaching, and it’s not just for summers off.

I have so many funny stories about my chatty little Clementine I don’t even know where or how to start. She is well into her copycat phase, which has eliminated phrases such as “Shut up” and “I’ll kick your ass” from the daily dialogue between Nate and me. Babies don’t understand sarcasm, and as much fun as it is that first or second time to hear the young lass say she’ll kick my ass, it’s clear we have to put an end to that.

What’s amazing me lately is her recall and the way she is able to contextualize things. She is understanding family relationships (especially baby mama and baby dada, two phrases she threw around like confetti at the Detroit Festival of the Arts last weekend), and now can’t mention her beloved Joey without also talking about brother Cammy, mama Yora and dada David.

The last time we traveled to Chicago (mother’s Day weekend, I think), we stopped very briefly in Ann Arbor to swing by the Zingerman’s Airstream, a convenient stop to fill up on there decadent coffee cakes, brownies, cookies, you name it: nothing’s bad. We bought darling C a cookie and let her play in the grass for a while, where she marched, admired motorcycles and chowed the cookie like you’d never believe. Last weekend we went to visit my friends and their new baby and happened to pass by the same Airstream. When Clementine saw it she threw up her hands and cried “Yay! Yay!” Surely that’s not because she remembers it, I thought, and sped by as if nothing were unusual. The next thing from the back of the car was “Guys? I like cookies,” in the most pleading and sweet voice she can muster these days. Just like her mother she has some sort of internal map to the world’s best junk food. Oh, and she now almost exclusively refers to us as “guys.” Guys, I want to go the fountain. Guys I want mac-y cheese. Guys I want to pee in the potty. It’s pretty fun.

And while I’ve been too busy to breathe, I have gotten some great pictures of my growing child. Of course I’ve been too busy to pull them off my camera. I’ll get to it sooner or later, but for now I have to clean my desk off at work. I’ll be prepping The Odyssey for my 9^th graders first, and one must have a clean desk to even begin to think about that. It’s not just blogging that goes out the window when time gets tight—my house and office are in shambles and I’ve spent the only free time I had this week watching the end of The Sopranos, which I loved, and gorging myself on cable before it leaves us forever on Saturday. I think we’re about to get serious!