Sick Days

This week has been another challenging child care week for us. Nancy (our baby sitter) called Monday evening to let us know she put her back out and was probably not available to watch Ryan all week. Phil took the day off Tuesday to watch him. Tuesday evening, Nancy called to say she also had the flu and she definitely would not be able to watch Ryan all week. Phil's mom volunteered to come down and watch Ryan for the day on Wednesday. Wednesday morning, Phil and I got up and were getting ready for week when we heard Ryan wake up. He was calling for us and we went into his room, we were greeted with the disgusting smell of vomit. As is was too late for me to call a sub, Phil took another day off work and told his mom not to come. I took the afternoon off and came home to watch Ryan since we had a teacher inservice day. Phil was able to work a little. Thursday came and Ryan seemed to be doing fine, so Phil's dad came down and hung out for the morning and LeAnn watched Ryan in the afternoon. When I went to pick Ryan up from LeAnn's I discovered that he still was not feeling well. Now it's Friday and here I am at home, using my 5th sick day from work. The year is not halfway over and I have already used half of my sick days. I need to keep this poor kid well for more than a month at a time.

Something good did happen this week. My principal has known for a while that I am interested in doing a job-share for next year. Every school site in my district is eligible to have two job-shares per campus. There has been an unwritten rule (at least my principal and I think it is unwritten) that there can be a job-share in primary and a j0b-share in intermediate. Our campus has one job-share in kindergarten. I didn't think that my friend and I would be able to job-share in 1st or 2nd grade next year because of this and I'm not willing to teach intermediate again at this point.

I approached my principal about this over a month ago and he said he thought it might be a possibility after all for us next year, but I didn't want to get my hopes up yet again. I've wanted to be able to spend more time with Ryan so badly, but not lose my position and tenure at work and every time that this job-share possibility has come up, I get excited and then let down again. Well, my principal came to me yesterday and asked if I was still interested in a job-share for next year, and I said yes. He said he hadn't found anything in our contract that was against me job-sharing and staying in a primary position. He said that it would be the answer to both of our problems because we have 4 kindergarten classes feeding into 5 first grade classes. He asked if I would be willing to move to second grade in a job share position (which is the grade my possible job-share teammate is currently teaching) and I said yes. He is going to start the first step of in many of the process, next week, to see if this can happen for next year.

I have such mixed feelings about all this. I am so excited about the idea of being home with Ryan more and that Ryan will be spending more of his time with me than in daycare. I'm excited about team-teaching with my friend and moving up with my current class. I'm extremely sad about the possibility of leaving my first grade colleagues as they have become an extended family. I'm also sad about not teaching first graders to read next year and to teach the curriculum that I've worked so hard to develop over the last 4 years. I'll be leaving my classroom and my next door neighbor too, which I'll really miss. Here I am feeling this way and not even knowing what will happen.

Our Sunday school class has been on God's sovereignty over the last 3 weeks and I just have to wonder what He has up his sleeve. I know I've prayed about this for a long time and have gotten the "no" or "not now" answer so many times and have wanted to scream like a child, "But why?!?" I had decided to give up on this topic of being home more often, 3 weeks ago, and had really accepted that I was going to work full time. Period. Now the door to this question is open again, when I thought I had closed it for good.