(Leaving my classroom in May, 2020)
Never Say Never!
When I entered this Art classroom in the Fall of 2005, I thought I'd never last for the long-haul in the same room for the majority of my career! I had been married for just two years and we thought we might never have kids of our own (I couldn't imagine being responsible for kids all day at work and then coming home to my own)! When we finally decided to start a family 10 years later, I KNEW I could NEVER be a stay-at-home-mom (I am terrible at self-discipline and maintaining a schedule)! And on the day pictured above in May of 2020, it never occurred to me that I might be embarking on a leave of absence from teaching to stay home with my kids for a year.
As we all know by now, everything is normal until it's not. On March 14, 2020, the world stopped. No more racing to get out the door, lucky if we had everyone's hair brushed and bags packed, kissing goodbye until nearly 12 hours later when we'd be together for a late dinner. No more daily commutes while taking first meetings on the phone and passing barf bags to the carsick kids in the back. No more juggling 3 school bags, a lunch bag, a thermos of coffee and a bottle of water while unlocking my classroom door. No more mapping out the week to see when the next day we'd be able to cook dinner would be.
Over the past five months, we have learned how to live without the noise, the excess, the multiple schedules and the 'being busy' as a badge of honor. I have learned how to both follow the kids' lead on what they need/ want to do and create some structure in our day so that we have a framework to lean on when we need it. I have learned how to make time to take care of myself. The past five months of necessitated self-reliance have made me realize that I am capable of much more than I ever allowed myself (because there was no need?) to explore. So when we began to imagine all the possible scenarios of our daily lives this school year in the midst of a global pandemic, my staying home with the kids was a viable, not-so-scary, and eventually ideal scenario.
I have relinquished my Art classroom and my 500+ dear students to someone else for the year and have agreed to stay home with our own two kids; Kate (5.5) and Maggie (3.5) for an entire year. Kate is enrolled in "Remote Learning" for her Kindergarten year in (public) Princeton City Schools, which I will be helping her navigate and manage. Maggie and I are on our own for a "homeschool" Pre-school education. We have cancelled our "meal kit" subscription and weekly produce orders that made eating healthy possible when we had little time to grocery shop, let alone meal plan and prep. I will now be taking over meal planning, grocery ordering, and cooking each week (something I haven't done since the summer after my first year of teaching, 15 years ago).
So this blog will serve as a place to chronicle our adventures and my discoveries as a Surprise Homemaker. Here we go!
