So yeah, I know it has been a LONG time without an update....SO much has been going on in our household, it's crazy. I promise I'm going to get up Carol's 12 month picture (taken at 14 months....... ;) ) but here's a lowdown of what's been going on since my last post:
- Carol did turn ONE!!! On the evening of her birthday, though, she started to run fever again so her one-year well visit the next day turned into a sick visit. She was diagnosed with her fourth case of strep (babies are not supposed to get strep....) and another ear infection. So I called her ENT and the next week, she got ear tubes put in on the 14th. She did AWESOME. When they are ready for you, you take your child back to a room where they give a mild sedative through a nose spray to calm them down before they take them away from you. Several of the kids in the room at the same time where hyper or crying. Carol? She was completely mellowed out, just sitting in my lap with her pacifier, and her arms just dangling to her side. The nurses came by and said "That's how it is SUPPOSED to work!" She did great- a few minutes later we were with her in recovery and then on our way home!
And as an interesting comparison, here's Emma before her second heart cath when she was about 9 months old, versus Carol at a year above:
Yeah, we've been in that hospital a lot!
So then, when we tried to get to her well visit a month later on May 10th, guess what? Yep, sick again. She had coughed a little bit in the night the week before, but then on Mother's Day she threw up all over me (what a great present, huh?) and then ran fever the next day. So her well visit was again a sick visit. So yep, fifth case of strep (babies aren't supposed to get strep!!!!!!!) and on a whim, Dr. Yee did a test for Whooping Cough/Pertussis. Yep. It came back positive. So the highly contagious disease that she has had vaccinations for? At her age, the vaccines are about 85-90% effective. But if there's one thing we have learned, we defy ALL percentages and good bets when it comes to health in our family! So Carol was in quarantine for about 10 days, got a nice call from the Health Department (tell me, why are you scolding me for having her out in public BEFORE she was diagnosed?? How were we supposed to know!), had to notify anyone we had been around the last two weeks, and all of us had to get on preventative meds. But, can I tell you how awesome it was to finally get our sweet Carol Joy back a few days later??? We are praying that this was maybe an underlying cause to her sickness- she is back to being the sweetest baby girl that we have one seen in spurts for the past few months! She is living back up to her middle name! We finally, finally got her well visit in last week at 14 months! I'll post again with all of her stats, etc.
- We did celebrate Easter with all the traditional events- Easter egg hunt at church, Moody family get-together, big Easter services at church, and this year, our friends Cheri and Mark Ryan were visiting us that weekend too! Cheri was one of my closest friends at Vanderbilt and was a bridesmaid in our wedding. Church was huge this year since not only did Daniel have to be at 3 services as the worship leader at our church, but this year, since I am playing piano for the traditional service, I had a lot of responsibilities too with our Easter music Cantata. Easter will also be another additional blog!
- In the midst of all of this, I also started teaching up at LCCS again! I had committed to teach for a high school teacher who was going on maternity leave, and I got called in on April 21st. So for about 6 weeks I taught Physics, Algebra and Statistics....well really I just monitored Statistics (it has been about 13 years since I took it in college!). It was a lot of fun being around the students again as well as all of my teacher friends! I had really missed the constant relationship!
- Emma also had her first dance recital in May! She did AWESOME! We were a little concerned she would have too much stage fright, but she was SO excited she was jumping up and down on stage, waiting for the lights to come on! Again, another blog to come soon! Here's a sneak peek!
-Emma also had her end-of-the year Pre-K Celebration on May 19th. She and her friends did such a good job!! Again, another blog coming! I can't believe my little girl is starting Kindergarten next year!!!
-One of the biggest developments of the past month or so has been my plans for the upcoming school year. About March, we decided that I would go back to teach. I have been blessed by this time at home with Carol, but I was feeling the itch to do something again. I miss teaching, miss students, miss being around people! I'm also ready to get out of debt, so the extra income would definitely help. So I started looking around. Although I would be open to going back to LCCS, I didn't feel led that I was supposed to go back there, and really there wasn't a position open that I was interested in or qualified for. I really felt like the Lord was leading me elsewhere, to a new adventure. I started looking around, but didn't really see anything open at any of the major private schools in Fort Worth. So I just blindly sent my resume to HR departments in case something opened. Well, I got an email a day later from one school, who was about to close the 8th grade science (Integrated Physics and Chemistry- basically a semester of Chemistry and a semester of Physics) position and offer it to someone when my resume came through. In the period of a week, I had two phone interviews and a day long interview at the campus where i met with I think everyone under the sun as well as taught a class. I felt at home at the school and felt like the opportunities and stability that it would offer would be a wonderful opportunity. So when they called to offer me the position, I accepted! So I'm going to be teaching at Trinity Valley School in Fort Worth next year. They have amazing benefits (especially medical, something that is SO important in our family - I don't think we have ever had this good of insurance!), pay on a public school scale, they will reimburse any cost if I want to work on my doctorate and one thing that is really important for us-- I'm only teaching ONE prep. Those of you who aren't teachers might not realize how awesome that is. I've always taught 4-5 different classes... only have one (that I teach 5 times a day) will help give me free time at night to be with my family. Eighth grade will be a new challenge, but I'm excited for it! I start new teacher inservice on August 2. Emma will still be at LCCS- we love Lake Country too much! We have a couple of ideas for Carol that we will be pursuing! One thing that I think was a confirmation in my heart is that after I accepted the position, I was praying that I could easily find another Believer on staff. I've worked in the secular world before and that doesn't worry or bother me at all, but it would be nice to easily connect with someone with a similar background. Well, I was looking at the TVS website at the other 8th grade teachers, and the math teacher (who I was only able to meet for a short period) said on her little info paragraph that she leads college Bible studies at her church. So I looked her up on Facebook, and saw that she was a mutual friend of one my closest friends. Turns out, she and her husband are some of the College Pastors at my friend's church and she said that this woman is one of the biggest Prayer Warriors she knows! And she'll be down the hall from me! Yay!
So that's what's been going on here-- like I said, I will update more posts later!
