I GRADUATED!

Well, I am FINALLY finished. After 13 months of work I am now officially a "Specialist." I graduated and have my Specialist's in Education Administration and Supervision. Basically if I ever want to be a principal or assistant principal or have a "high up" county job I at least have the credentials to go for the job. Right now I am 100% content where I am at the level I am at and excited about job that is approaching in only 1 week- can you believe it- where did time go? What's great is I always knew after my Master's I would probably go on to further school. But now, I truly feel finished and don't feel like anymore school is looming. Clint has only not been dating/married to me not in school for 3 semester of our life. He is SO ready for me to be out of school.

Not too much new in the world of the girls. Natalie is PACI FREE. I have to give her credit. It was relatively uneventful. I decided to take it away one Tuesday morning after Clint and I had been discussing/dreading it for a couple of weeks. We took Melanie's away at 17 months and I wanted to have Natalie's gone by the time she started school. So, I just one morning didn't offer it again. From that point on, no biggie. She cried at nap, "paaaa" "paaaa" over and over- I played dumb. Then, at night she has been staying up about 1 1/2 hours later playing to wear her out but all in all no issue. She has a tiny bit self-soothing issue right now. She woke up one night around 2:30 crying, but not for anything. She didn't know how to get herself back to sleep without the paci. I rocked her for about 3 minutes and she was out. But, she has only woken up the one time. I think it was a great plan to get rid of the paci with both girls so early on b/c they can't argue or try to barter with me. They just understand oh well, it's gone.

Melanie is loving her new haircut and says she likes me to fix it in "a lean over." This means she just likes me to pull back one side out of her eyes. Clint didn't know and yesterday he told her he doesn't do lean overs. He caught her playing yesterday and she had all of the blocks around a cow and he asked what she was doing and she said building a "corral around the cow." I swear she picks up so much from TV as bad as that sounds. She told him she learned about corrals from Mickey. So, she's busted out "corral" "improvise" "hypothesis" and "produce stand" just to name a few.