The Happy Ones See Only Beautiful Things.

During my two and a half hour long lunch break today, I had Joel meet me somewhere between Loveland and Longmont to take full advantage of my time and enjoy some Starbucks and a community garage sale together. The neon pink sign screamed at me as I passed it this morning. Along with two camping chairs, a garden hose, two lamps, a couple nick nacks, Battleship... yes, Battleship (50 wonderful cents spent) and a book about happiness, I felt it was a pretty wise $10 spent. Now, you know me, being the sucker that I am for quote books, I could not walk away from the gem I found today; a book called, "I Wish You Happiness" and it's a book written entirely by children. Umm, does it get any better? As I sit here on this lovely Friday, refusing to go to Joel's show at a little country bar that is entirely not my scene, I am reading this amazingness, smiling and even laughing to myself. Now, upon opening the book, I figured it was full of happiness quotes and then amongst all the goodies, occassional quotes by children. Oh no, entirely by children. At first I couldn't figure out why the publishing company would allow so many spelling and grammar errors. And then I realized that children wrote their thoughts and it was put in the book completely, 100% their own. How awesome. Let me show you how great this is: 

The things that make me happy are

flowers and dimonds and butterflys and

ladybirds all things that are coloured

and clowns make me laughe and the sun

and summer and the snow makes me

happy and toys makes me and sweets and 

the hedgehogs are nice althow they are

prickly and I think everything makes

St. Valantine very happy and sheep and cow's and 

goates and I like the birds and it makes

me laughe when I see peple with arrows

through there ears and I like the rainbow

and the lightness and I like the stars and

the moon and I like the fields and I like 

neklises and braselits. 

-Elizabeth Wright

Unfortunately, this is one of the few without an age written by the name but, holy moly is that awesome. I just smiled as I read and laughed out loud at parts, especially the last line and it's most likely because of the spelling. Oh, seeing the world through the eyes of children. It's times like this that I again think how lucky I am to have the job that I do and have been able to stay in it, happily for almost six years. The fact that I get to teach, and play with, and talk to two year olds 40 hours a week is something special. Being silly with them, and teaching them manners and how to love their friends and give hugs and all that emotional, good stuff, ugh, it just makes me happy thinking about how I spend my days. The other day as I sat outside in the grass with a couple of my girls, I was fixing one of their pony tails when one came up to me, nicely stroked a solid strand of hair of mine and said, "Ms. Kelsey hair pretty." It's moments like this that make my job. Reminding my two year olds that it's important to tell their friends "thank you" and that they "willy like the dinoswar" shirt that they're wearing today is important to me. KinderCare ladies back home, you can imagine how big I am on having my two year olds give each other hugs. Ah, I just love my kids. 

The other week, I was asked by my director and owner if I would like to step up to a lead teacher position, because their was an opening. As you may already know, I am qualified but stepped down to "Assistant Teacher" when I took the job, because that was what was available at the time. Now 4 months later, my director has informed me that I have instilled so much trust and confidence in her and have shown so many lead teachers tendencies and qualities that she no longer wants me to assist, she wants me to be able to have my own room. The two and half year old room was available and the more I thought about it, the more stressed and nervous I became, simply because two is my comfort zone age limit, believe it or not. Given I work well with all children but I do so much better with the younger ages. It simply comes more natural to me. So luckily, my co-teacher who was, at the time, the lead teacher, who is so flexible and great, stepped down from the lead teacher position in our room, so I could have it and went to the room next door, so I didn't have to leave my comfort zone and all of our awesome children. Needless to say, I bought her a card and a coffee and told her how much I appreciate her doing so, just so we could both have our own rooms. It's been a change this week, having a new assistant teacher, but any change is challenging with two year olds. I am aware that after a few weeks, everyone will be comfortable again. The summer months are pretty easy to coast through and all my lesson plans are done through July. Thank you awesome co-teacher! So starting August I will be fully in charge of daily lessons and all that good stuff. From what I hear, it's work... that I'm not used to (KinderCare curriculum was all laid out for you, all you had to do was implement) so it will be a change. But it's definitely something I can do, especially with the slight raise I demanded.

Cheers!