Today was good. We got up early, got ourselves to Mother Goose, and Ingrid loved it (as always) and I saw someone from my prenatal aqua class, and another mom took my number and email address. From there, we went to LaLeche League. Now, I debated it LONG and HARD, especially while waiting for a modular home to pass so I could cross over to High Street to get there, because I was really bummed by my first meeting. I swear to god, did someone like, tip off LLL and pass my comments on to the regional director, or what? It was weirdly totally different. For one, no goddamn word find. For two, NO mention of "Artificial feeding," just "bottle feeding," and for three, the leader brought SLINGS to show, when last time, everyone seemed amazed by my KKAFP. Seriously, it was totally different, and enough to make me feel like LLL Henchmen had been contacted.
So, that was good, and the leader started showing off her various slings — all of them ring slings, and all of them hideous. Well, one was a Maya, so that wasn’t so bad, but the HEAVILY PADDED, FLEECE LINED, AMERICAN FLAG ring sling was awful. Just awful. And it so happened that I had Ingrid all wrapped up in the Storchenwiege, because I knew she’d be tired after storytime, and wrap-naps are easy on her. I wrapped her when we arrived, and one of the women said "wow, that’s a lot of fabric!" and i just smiled and said "yeah, but it gets eaten up really quickly" and wrapped her up. Then she started saying that she couldn’t use a sling with her baby anymore, because he was so big (at 7months) and I was biting my tongue. Finally, I said "have you tried a two-shouldered carrier? it helps spread the weight…and, actually, let me go to my car."
I brought in my sling-bag, and took over the LLL leader’s display of Crimes Against RingSlings, and pulled out the KKAFP, and the meitai, and my other pouch… and then Ingrid woke up, so I handed her off to the leader, unwrapped, and showed the mom with the ‘too-big’ baby how to wrap up her guy, and she was absolutely STUNNED at how comfortable it was. STUNNED. She left with links to TBW and my website and mamatoto, and damn if it didn’t feel GOOD to have that babywearing advocacy moment. Yeah, it’s a lot of fabric. But it is SO. COMFORTABLE.
ANyway. After that we came home, had lunch with dave, etc etc and I went to class. My weekly class that meets, that isn’t practicum, is a middle level course. The prof is really well-known guy in the field of middle level, which means nothing to most of you, but he’s probably in the top 10 of the Middle Level Elite. Super nice guy, too.
Class is going well, he really loves my responses, and I keep joking about how jaded I am (which, technically, aint a joke…) but with every class, I sort of…. miss middle school. For instance, today we were talking about wellness education, and one guy showed his kids Supersize Me, which reminded me of my fat/sugar lesson, so I described it quickly "… and we measured out grams of crisco and grams of sugar for the kids’ favorite snack foods, and then stapled it to the wall…" which made everyone crack up, because 2/3 of the way into the semester, apparently, I am the only one who would staple baggies of fat to the wall.
After class, the prof stopped me and said "we really need to talk… to find out what happens at the end of the semester." I laughed and said, "I told you! I’m going to be the best ed tech ever!" "well, that’s fine, but really — you need to be out there, working with middle schoolers. You really do."
That? was cool. The more I hear other people talk about their experiences and stuff, the more i realize that dammit, I AM a good teacher. I WAS a good teacher. I really was. Even now — a student in the class now teaches in MY old classroom, and she was talking about teaching a particular unit, and I told her what worked for me, and she loved it. ("Don’t tell Principal! He’d die if he knew I was still influencing that wing.") I’m feeling like, maybe, maybe, I could do… something… in a school again.
And on top of that, our friends are back from their honeymoon, saw the pics online, and the wife cried and said "I don’t care what the real pictures look like, I LOVE these ones." Dave dropped off their real gift after work, and they came by an hour later with a silk elephant from Thailand for Ingrid (with the comment "this isn’t really a toy, but more something you… have") and $100 for us, that Dave tried to refuse, but they insisted he keep because of all we’d done for them.
So, to recap: storytime rocked, I spread the wrap love, major props from important ML guy, made a bride cry with my pics, OH and?
Dreamhost had backups and my website is totally fixed now.
KICKASS DAY.