visitors, sickness, and PTA meetings

The morning started off "exciting."  There have been suspicions of a mouse in our house, but it was confirmed this morning as it left presents in my cabinet. Later on, it showed it's presence to us, thankfully while I was still at school.  We've thought it's been around for a week, but we weren't sure until Chelsea saw the little guy earlier today.  I had been hoping it was just another one of Chelsea's exaggerations, but it's true. There is a mouse in our house.  As if that wasn't enough, I saw a rat today at the T just wandering around. These little creatures are everywhere and they need to leave. ASAP.
Once I got to school, things seemed to calm down.  It was Ms. Moulton's birthday.  I felt bad because I didn't find out until yesterday, so there wasn't a lot of time to do much for her, but we sang happy birthday and she had made cupcakes. I made two girls sit on the fence at recess for a minute because they ran on the way to the playground.  It doesn't sound like a big deal, but a minute at recess is like an eternity. It was also the first time I had enforced discipline, so now I think the kids are a little more scared of me. Ms. Moulton usually deals with discipline in the classroom, so recess and lunch are the only time that I am alone with them to discipline them. Needless to say, they all walked back from recess. It felt good to have them listen to me because they knew the consequences of not listening.
After recess and lunch, we came back to do math and finish up the day.  In first grade, each subject starts at the carpet and then you go to your desk to do an activity related to that subject.  When they're on the carpet, I usually sit off to the side and just do busy work because Ms. Moulton is up front teaching.  If they have questions, comments, concerns, they are to ask her, so when I heard my name, I was confused. All of sudden, TD goes "Ms. Russo, I just throwed up!" and sure enough, he had.  Ms. Moulton and I looked at each other and then I grabbed TD and headed to the nurse. I think he had just been running around at recess and worked himself up because he seemed fine afterwards, but it was still a shock.
After school, I had my course coaching kids again and it was nothing too exciting.  The only exciting part was that they seemed interested in "High, Low, and Funny," which is where you tell the high, low and funny of your day. It was nice because they actually seemed interested in me for a few seconds. Between course coaching and the PTA meeting, we had team time where we got pizza and just played games.  We were basically killing time before the PTA meeting, but it was fun because we have been so busy that we haven't really hung out that much. The PTA meeting was also nice because I got to meet like four of the parents in my class, plus one of my kids was there. The president of the PTA has a son in my class, which is awesome, plus two of the moms came and introduced themselves to me and were so nice and understand that their sons are a handful sometimes.  The kids that are the troublemakers, though, are also the most fun because they have the most energy.  I just love them all.
It was a long day, but so much fun and never a dull moment.  Also, as I was coming home, I'm pretty sure Robert Deniro was on my bus.   If not, he has an identical twin roaming the streets of Boston!

Quote of the day:

“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”

                            -Jimi Hendrix