Mezuzah

No, I didn't make that word up.

As we prepare to get the keys to the house in a little over two weeks (oh, did I mention we moved the closing date up a week?), I find myself thinking about how crazy and amazing this all is. I know it's just a house, and a small one at that, but we do feel like the whole situation - the fact that we have somewhere we know we want to be for 5+ years, our ability to make a down payment having worked all of 4 weeks with post-college salaries, the potential this investment has to alleviate college loan burdens - is entirely a blessing from God.

I met a very wonderful woman for about 2 hours of my life - she is a dear friend's aunt - and during that meeting she told me about the Jewish mitzvah (commandment/tradition) of the Mezuzah and I think that it is just beautiful. A mezuzah is a parchment scroll on which passages from Deuteronomy are written in Hebrew. The scroll is then rolled up and put into a case - usually somewhat decorative - and that case is nailed to the doorframes of houses. Traditionally it is affixed immediately upon moving into a new home. The passage starts like this:

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates." (Deut. 6:4-9)

For all my bible college friends, here's the Hebrew:
As a family is nailing on their mezuzah, they say a blessing acknowledging God as sovereign over the house and it's occupants. The case is nailed at an angle pointing into the door, signifying that God and His Word dwell there as well.

I could not think of a better way to start off with a new house. Today we ordered our very own kosher mezuzah (www.alljudaica.com) to remind ourselves who this house came from and for what purpose we are working on it. In a very literal way we are writing His commandments upon the doorframe of our house - His house - as a symbol of our desire to use this house the way God would have us use it as we seek to love Him with all our hearts, souls, and strength.

There's Got to Be More to Life

Besides a cheesy overplayed song by a Christian artist that made it (temporarily) mainstream - that phrase is also how I feel now-a-days. Yes I'm thrilled about the house and having our own (massive) project to take on, but I also find myself struck dumb by the apparent reality that: work sucks. No, seriously. Is this all there is?

When I had jobs before, even if they were less than ideal, I always had my "it's just temporary while I'm in college" security statement to fall back on. Now I just feel like... this is it. This is my job. I don't go to classes in the evenings and this isn't just my student teaching. And although I know that my identity is in the God who loves and formed me, I still just have this overwhelming feeling that my job is what defines me. Does it have to be this way?

It's hard to think of it being any other way when this is what I do for 40 hours a week. Plus when I get home I usually don't feel like doing anything else, I just want to sit and not think, move, or talk. So then work really does become all I do in the sense that - weekends aside - I am a vegetable when not at work. Is that normal?

I'm not saying all that to be Debby Downer. Those questions aren't rhetorical. I know that a lot of people reading this are going through or have recently gone through the 'full-time student to full-time worker' transition. Is this what yours was like? Will it last? (it has only been 3 weeks... but they've been 3 very hard weeks.) Did you find anything that helped?

I promise I'll post more wonderful toddler tales when I get viable feedback as to how to survive the 9-5 (in my case it's 8-5:30). ;)

Drum Roll Please...

We got the house!!^10 (yea, raise those exclamation marks to the 10th power to get a better idea of how I feel).

The house was foreclosed and owned by a bank, so we pretty much signed our lives away this evening on contracts the bank made us sign (see: David v. Goliath (1045BC) ) to save their own butts in case anything goes wrong. We set the closing date for July 17th so that we have enough time to save for a) a car and b) house project money.

Meanwhile I may or may not be going crazy in our current living situation. Thus, I have turned to planning, lists, and dreaming about updates we want to make to the house. Like I said, it's a fixer upper, so I've got my daydreaming work cut out for me. Here are a few of my *ahem* 'plans':

Kitchen Before:

Kitchen After:

Bathroom Before:

Bathroom After:
Backyard Before:

Backyard After:

Yup. That's exactly what our home is going to look like, in case anyone was wondering.

Toddler Tales Part 2

Because there's just so much material, here are more true life stories from my toddlers:

Lunch was served a half an hour late on Friday because the cafeteria was running behind. Please note that 30 minutes is an eternity when you are 3 years old. Also, immediately after lunch is nap time, so as they waited for their food, my kids were both hungry and exhausted. Finally, the meal came: mashed potatoes and gravy (with vegetables, fruit and bread of course - to make it balanced). You would think that this story would involve throwing or projectile food of some sort, but stay tuned. One sweet girl, Alisha, who had been particularly crabby and inconsolable while we waited for the food, finally began to suck her thumb at the table and quited down once the food came. I gave each student a plate of food and began pouring the sippy cups of milk (and soy for all the crazy food allergies that kids have now-a-days. Don't even get me started). When I returned to the table with the first two sippy-cups, Alisha had gone cheek first into her potatoes, thumb still in her mouth. I picked her up quickly, carried her to the diaper table, wiped off her face, and laid her on her cot all without her waking up.

I was playing catch with Brad with one of those ball pit plastic balls. To be funny one time, I caught the ball and hid it behind my back. Brad looked around, confused and said "ball?", so I made a silly excited/I don't know! face. He pointed in one direction and again asked "ball?". I shook my head. He walked toward me and pointed under the chair I was sitting on (he knew I had it somewhere) - "ball?" he asked. I shook my head. He reached toward me, and pointed at my *ahem* chest with one final plea "ball?". 'No that's not the ball Brad' I thought, good logic though, I'll give him that. I couldn't stop laughing.

I found a 'Kidz Dance" CD in a cupboard in my room so the other toddler classroom teacher and I taught our kids the first few moves of the macarena (to the extent that toddlers actually do motions - a few beats too late and in no particular order). First of all, yes, we are in fact the coolest teachers to grace the toddler educational world, and yes, it is adorable to see their little chubby arms extended one after the other.

Moving On Up

I have been accused of bloggatory neglect, and to this charge I plead not guilty on account of temporary insanity. You see, this is what my living situation looked like:
Notably, this also holds a striking resemblance to how my brain felt. Honestly, what category DO you pack umbrellas under?! Now however, we have safely arrived in the land 'o lakes and are quickly making progress on our check list:

- Get Allison a teaching job at an elementary school for the fall
- Buy a house
- Buy a (cheap) second car

So far, I interviewed at a private school in the area with both kindergarten and first grade openings, and I'm waiting to hear if I get a second interview. The only problem is that I only bought one interview suit. Suits, by the way, are expensive.

The biggest most important-est news so far:
Dan and I made an offer on a house last night! If you want more details, go a head and ask - I won't bore people with talk of foundation size and roof age - but I will say that it's in St. Paul and it's adorable. We hope to close in early July. For good measure, here's a picture of it:

Isn't it the cutest darn little house that you ever did see?

No progress on another car yet; thankfully the daycare where I work is on the 3M campus where Dan's dad works, so we've been able to carpool every day.

Speaking of my job, I think I'm going to begin daily installments of "toddler tales" - you know, now that I'm blogging again - from my classroom. Here are a couple of fantastic examples of what I do from 8-5 every day. The following are all true stories of the words and deeds of 2 and 3 year olds. However, the names have been changed.

Toddler Tales, Part I

About a week ago, the mother of one of our toddlers came in and asked that we not change his diaper right away when he soiled it because she was trying to motivate him to start potty training, and she thought that the increased discomfort of dirty diapers might do the trick. The teachers said sure, they'd give it a shot, and the next day they noticed that he was "poopy" (that's preschool teacher for "has poop in his diaper") so they waited a few minutes before they did anything about it. Well, little Connor had enough of this discomfort, so he reached right in his diaper and took 'the thing that was making him uncomfortable' out, put it on the floor and went back to the ball pit. We told Mom that she needed to find a new means of motivation.

Today while I was changing Jacob's diaper, he began singing Queen's "We will rock you".

Yesterday, while I was looking right at him, Derek the classroom bully yanked off sweet little Adam's shoe and began smacking him over the head with it. After I removed Derek and calmed Adam down, I asked Derek to "go make it right". He then proceeded to waddle over to Adam, pat his head where he had clubbed him with the shoe and kiss him on the cheek (no joke, it was the cutest thing). As I stood there watching this seemingly new person Derek was becoming, I thought 'wow, as a teacher I may have just made a difference in the life of a child right there'. Before my moment of significance had time to pass on it's own, Derek was pulling with all his might on Kayla's braided hair.