Bring on the pink! May 4, 2006

We had our “big” ultrasound yesterday, and it was so very cool. This little person is definitely a GIRL, so bring on the pink booties! It was so amazing to see all the little parts and see her moving around like crazy. I haven’t actually felt the baby move for sure yet, so it was very reassuring to me (and a bit surreal) to see how much she’s really flopping around. I’ll get some pictures posted soon, and we were also able to get some video (with audio of the heartbeat, no less–I love this technology!). Of course, as soon as we popped the tape into the machine, she curled into a ball and went to sleep. This is after about 45 minutes of crazy movements while the tech was trying to get measurements and check everything out. We saw her yawning, touching her face, playing with the umbilical cord, and touching her legs.

I still can’t get used to “her,” so I’m typing it a lot. I was thinking it was a boy–so much for my motherly instincts! Now if I can just get over this paralyzing fear I have of the whole mother-daughter dynamic…I have read way too many psychological texts on family relationships and mothers/daughters. Oh well–at least I will get to buy frilly little dresses until she grows into a teenager and hates me.

Thanks for all the sweet congratulations! I am still feeling great, with no “real” pregnancy symptoms other than the fact that my pants don’t fit. I also keep locking myself out of my office at work and leaving files all over the place, and I will continue to pretend that this is a new phenomenon that developed since I became pregnant. I can’t wait until all locks have those cool retina-reading sensors on them–keys are the bane of my existence. You know those kids who constantly lose lunch boxes and jackets? We don’t outgrow that–we just lose more expensive and important stuff.

Ah, the senior prank May 4, 2006

A funny thing was happening at my school as I arrived for work this morning. 

The high school where I work just graduated its first class last year, so this is only the second senior class to come through. They are big on creating their own traditions, which (of course) includes the famous senior pranks. Last night, the seniors somehow got into the building (probably not hard) and used plastic zip-ties to seal each individual locker door shut. Keep in mind, this is a school of 1400 kids and more than 1400 lockers. This meant the ties had to be cut off individually, or the locker had to be opened with considerable care and force at the same time. Personally, I found this hilarious and think it was pretty harmless as pranks go. It was actually pretty intelligent, because it was noticeable to the whole school at once but caused no real property damage (which I always thought was the point of senior pranks). However, our principal was furious and rounded up the nearest seniors, armed them with wire cutters (from where?), and put them to work cutting off the ties.

Here’s the sweet part, which was quickly noticed by all of us on the special ed staff. There are 8 lockers right outside my office used by several of our highest-need special needs kiddos. Some have their initials pasted on the outside to help them identify the right locker, and another has a special “lazer lock” instead of the regular lock because the student is visually impaired. None of these kids open their lockers with the combinations and use a master key instead. Every locker in the school was zip-tied except those eight. Now whether they knew those kids would have NO IDEA how to handle something so outside their normal locker routine and would probably be upset can’t be known, but they wisely decided to skip those lockers. Maybe I’m just so used to our kiddos being difficult that I’ll take what we can get, but I thought it was very thoughtful. This could also be a sign that the school year is almost done and my brain is not functioning at full capacity.