I thought it would be a great idea to volunteer as a Wednesday night teacher at church in the four year old classroom. After one night - given my current challenges, with Kate, I wondered why in the world I would volunteer to be in a room of 18 four years olds, 16 of which are girls, for two hours each week. Is it even possible to "teach" that many at one time? The funnest activities of the evening were not the craft or the snack or listening to the story, complete with puppets, it seemed to be sneaking over to turn off all three sets of lights to put everyone else in the dark and throwing the building blocks AND climbing up on top of the heat registers to jump down.
Actually the most fun was probably walking down to the gym to see a presentation by a magician, a 13 year old boy who had an impressive array of tricks and illusions!
I digress though - after hearing Kate scream in our home, you can just imagine what it sounds like to be in a room full of 16 girls and two boys. Wow. The other teacher Tom is a saint!
Literally, I took four girls and two boys down to the bathroom - remember they are four! Not all four year olds wipe themselves. I saw the youth coordinator in the hallway and said, "She wants me to go in and wipe her." The response, "It's okay, you are an adult, line them up." Okay!
Okay - that's all of the bad stuff - I found myself seriously wondering what in the world I had signed up for, I grabbed Kate's hand and hightailed it out of there faster than you could have imagined.
After thinking about it overnight, I decided God does work in mysterious ways, I have a new appreciation for my four year old daughter - in just one night, I developed an even deeper respect and appreciation for teachers, especially those who wiped Sam and Kate's bottoms while I wasn't there! I started to think about the good things that did happen - I was capable of playing a game with six four year olds at one time. I remembered how Erika said, you spell your name funny. I remembered how three of the girls fought over who could hold my hand. I remembered the pleases and thank yous I heard. I remembered the little things in the big picture. I remembered it was the first night and maybe they were a little scared and nervous too. After a bit of remembering, I started to think and plan for next week and how I would be a bit more prepared and I found myself looking forward to it. Ah, next week!
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