Is it Friday Yet?

Nope, it's only Monday, but I sure wish it were Friday! I get Friday off work on account of the 4th of July (even though Friday is the 3rd...but they still decided to close the center on Friday, and I'm not complaining!)

Today was nuts! We took the kids to an alpaca farm. It was a bit of a pain, because it took about 40 minutes to drive there and I heard lots of "are we almost there?" and "what time is it?" on the way, and then we only stayed about an hour (because really, what more can you do at an alpaca farm besides look at them, acknowledge their cuteness, and try to pet them, all of which can really be done in about 20 minutes? After that all the kids start wandering around and freaking out about the poop that's all over the ground.) But it was pretty fun all in all. I even got to pet a baby alpaca that had just been born yesterday! I was amazed at how soft they were. After the alpaca farm, we had lunch at a park, only the bathrooms were closed to we didn't get to wash our hands (I know, GROSS, but we did have hand sanitizer) and I had a few kids looking like they were going to wet their pants by the end of the trip. Luckily, none of them did and we made it back to the center early!

Besides that, I felt like I was constantly having to tell some of the kids to stop arguing with me. It was kind of an all-day thing, where by the end of the day I ended up saying, "I am NOT going to argue with you. Just do what I said!" It's difficult dealing with these kinds of things with kids who aren't my own, and who (I'm sure) are allowed to argue and disobey their parents at home. It wears me out.

There were good parts of the day too. One thing is that I think I finally made a connection today with this one 1st grade boy, who is new, seems to lag behind a little developmentally, and is kind of a trouble-maker. He gets in trouble mostly because he just doesn't listen. A lot of times he doesn't respond when you call his name or ask him to do something, and I noticed that he rarely would make eye contact with me when I talked with him. Today he was my "buddy" at the alpaca farm, because one of the teachers decided to pair up some of the more difficult kids with teachers so we could keep an eye on them. By the end of the day, he actually came up to me and asked me questions, and I noticed that he looked me right in the eyes the whole time. I hope that he continues to be willing to communicate with me.