Hmm, I had hoped that I'd get better at posting once comps were over and done with, but the work level still remains. Alas. But I'll do my best!
We're dealing with our first illness of the season here. It turned cold about a week ago, weather-wise, and Saturday night, Ronan came down with a fever. Thankfully, Tom was home, so he stayed up all night with him. Sunday morning he seemed better, but I decided to stay home from church just in case. That ended up being the right move. We were watching TV and Ronan fell asleep on my lap. He slept for nearly two hours, and when he woke up, he was burning. His temp was just under 104, so I quickly got him some medicine and pretty soon, he was back to his normal self. But once that wore off, his fever spiked again. I felt so bad for him - he was burning up again (104 this time) but he was also shaking and shivering. At that point, I woke Tom up - he does so well with taking care of people; it's like he should be a nurse or something. But pretty soon, we got the fever back down and Ronan ate a ton for dinner, which I took as a good sign. He slept pretty well last night, though he woke up a couple times. I'm hoping we're in the clear, but we're taking it pretty easy today. I really hope this isn't a sign of things to come - I keep hoping each winter that his immune system has finally developed, but he still gets sick a lot. Although there does seem to be some improvement - our trips to the ER seem to get less and less, though I'd really prefer to have that number be zero. Maybe this is the year.
In addition to Ronan being sick, we've been dealing with Loki's injured foot. We're still not sure what exactly happened, but something got the bottom of his paw, causing him to limp (and often forcing him to hop around on three legs). We took him to the vet and they gave us some meds to help him out. Thankfully those seem to be working and he's almost back to normal. Still, it's been a bit tricky to explain to Ronan that he has to be much more gentle and careful with Loki - no chasing, for example. Ronan loves his dogs!
Other than that, things have been going fairly well. The other day, I took Ronan to the lake and he chased ducks and seagulls. As we were heading back to the car, he spotted a bee on the path and before I could stop him, he reached down and grabbed it. Well, the bee didn't like that and Ronan got stung. It wasn't too bad - I knocked it out of his hand almost immediately. The stinger was still attached to the bee, so I didn't have to worry about that. Ronan was a bit surprised by the whole thing and his finger hurt for a bit, but it appears he's not allergic to bee stings, which is a relief. (Although that really was the perfect place to test it out - we were right across the street from the police/fire/emt station, so help would've been close by.) Hopefully, it cemented my constant warnings that bees are for looking, not touching, but who knows.
School has been going fairly well for me. I'm teaching my first class and I'm really enjoying it. It's the U.S. Formative Period history class (so from colonialism to the Civil War), which isn't exactly my specialty, but I appreciate the chance to try a bit of everything. I have a pretty good class - the students are willing to talk, they ask questions, and I've even had a few visit me during my office hours (which is pretty darn rare). It's still a bit weird, in that it's hard to determine just how effective I am or what they're getting out of it. The first exam is next week, so that should give me some idea. In some ways, I think I'm more nervous about this than they are! Logically, I know that no matter how great a teacher, there will always be students who don't do well on the exam. But knowing me, I think I'll be taking poor performance a bit more personally. Oh well, we'll see how it goes!
But on that note, I should work on my lecture for tomorrow. We're talking about the Revolutionary War. Fun times!
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