A long week.

So, on the morning of the 19th I left for Cheerleadership Camp. It was going to be 7 long days and a lot of work. I'd spent the previous months coming up with a lesson plan for the class I would teach on Tuesday (4 times.) I'd packed for the hot weather and lack of air conditioning I would endure while staying at the dorms at Central and I had prepared myself as much as I could to be bombarded by 250+ cheerleaders.

Saturday and Sunday was more arts and crafts than any one person needs to cram in a day. We made door signs so the squads would know which rooms were theirs to stay in, we made signs to welcome the kids to camp, we made schedules and rules to paste anywhere and everywhere the girls would be to try and give them some sense of direction. Scissors, glue, glitter and tape invaded my dreams.

Monday, they arrived. I had two squads, 28 girls in total that I would be "dorm mom" too. I must say I was lucky, I had two great squads. These were girls that wanted to get as much as they could out of camp both from leadership staff (me) and NCA staff. These girls were kind hearted and genuine. I had it easy and although I tried to learn all thier names in the 4.5 days I was with them I only learned about 23 out of the 28.

My Grandview Girls

My Todd Beamer Girls

It was a good week. I think I did ok being away from Christopher and Adam, there were a couple of moments where I was really down and even cried but the girls I had were quick to cheer me up and keep me busy so I didn't have much time to think of missing home. I must say I grew quite attatched and hope that I made camp fun for them. There were tears when we said goodbye so I'm pretty sure I was a good "dorm mommy." I'm looking forward to next year.

I must say that while I was gone, Adam did a great job. He was teaching Christopher the whole time I was gone and I came home to lots of new voacbulary spewing from his little mouth. Adam also managed to clean the house and keep it that way. Although in the few days I've been home I've managed to make a complete mess of it again. Partly because I have a bad habit of not cleaning up right away and trying to do to many things at once, never actually finishing any chore I start, and also because once I got home.... Adam stopped cleaning too. Soooooo, needless to say I've got chores to do.

Beep Beep, Beep

Rachel is off leading and teaching at a cheerleader camp so I'm a single parent for the week. After one day so far so good, as expected.

This morning I woke up, did the morning routine and then the beeping started. It sounded random and was REALLY quite. I immediately thought it was one an Annoy-a-tron due to the sadistic nature of my wife and friends! Took about 15 minutes to locate the culprit. Turns out I was being driven mad by a digital thermometer that got wet when I was washing dishes.

Good job Buddy!!

Christopher is a regular electronic expert. He can make my computer do things I didn't know it could, rate my Tivo shows, eject dvd's from my computer... and take the remote apart. Yup, you read it right. Here he was being all cute and quiet this morning and when I took a look to see what he was up to he had disassembled the TV remote.

From Christopher M...

Christopher has been busy. He's been working on his 4th tooth for a couple of weeks now. It just doesn't want to pop through and most days he's been a little bit whiny about it. Some more than others. One pitfall of new teeth is the fact that he's not used to them being in his mouth and so when he toppled from his box the other day he gave himself a big fat bloody lip. I must say, lips bleed a lot! A mesh feeder and some ice was our savior, keeping the swelling down and helping with the pain.

The little guy is gaining vocabulary like crazy, he's repeating everything and signing well. Most days he'll use his signs instead of crying for what he wants, sometimes though he just feels like letting me know he's there. Like right now, as he's woken up from his nap and is screaming at me to come get him.