"Boppee Boppee" = "Bouncy Bouncy"!!

It’s almost April, which means Spring Break is coming soon. This also means that teachers all around are getting that much-needed boost to finish the school year strong. After Spring Break, summer is in sight, so teachers are more motivated and they actually start looking forward the changes they are going to make for the next school year. It’s the same every year. The slump begins in February and continues through March. I start looking at the job openings on Craigslist and Monster and make grand plans to change careers and make a difference in the world. Of course I am qualified to lead the ACLU! Yes I am prepared to work 80 hours a week counseling teen mothers! I can definitely become a foster parent to Haitian orphans while sewing reusable shopping bags out of recycled Deer Park water bottles and still maintain my weight loss and FEED MY FAMILY! YES I CAN.

This year has been no different. For the past few months I’ve been checking ads, considering how to beef up my resume so I actually sound qualified for something other than teaching music, house hunting for more space for my kids and my business and my dogs and my 15 foster children, and trying to decide which masters degree to get next!

Then I wake up one day (yesterday) and have one of my favorite phrases running through my head: You get what you get and you don’t pitch a fit. And that’s my life. And that’s not bad. My life is great. My kids are wonderful and I want to be with them all the time. I never want them to leave me. (I might be the Mom that goes to college with them.) But every once in a while it’s OK to feel a little sad about it, right? Last night I was feeling so sad because I will never have another baby. I mean, I CAN have another baby, but we are done with the three lovelies we have. And I will never get to snuggle a fresh, warm newborn and smell her skin and stare into her eyes and breastfeed her and buy sweet clothes and carry her around in that carseat carrier thing. Ever again! It is the end of something and that is very sad. With Charlotte almost 2 years I feel a little empty about not having any more babies.

(Is this a normal feeling? Do other women feel this way?)

So, while I weather my annual end-of-winter-teaching-funk and my end-of-birthing-babies-depression, I leave you with this video of Charlotte at the park. I call it “Gaga and Papa Should Totally Buy Me this Toy.”