What a Day

Holy socks, Maria, today was one huge trainwreck. The nightmare began last night when my two-year-old woke up at 1AM and proceeded to vomit every thirty minutes until 5:30. I had this great, beautiful plan, and it was all shot to hell by circumstances beyond my control. So frustrating. I could see it all unravel, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. At first I thought I'd be able to keep it together, you know, run on adrenaline, until the early afternoon, but it was not to be; I crashed around 10AM. I saw myself, heard myself, take on a terse and impatient tone and soon enough the twinkle, which I tried to recapture, was all but gone. Even when we were in the middle of what should have been an awesome afternoon, I could tell my twinkle was forced and fake. Even so, I kept it up as best I could.
Here's what we had on the agenda: I started off with a mechanics lesson - the capitalization key experience. It's not a super entertaining lesson, and for most of my students it's 100% review. I was off my game already, and it kind of fell flat. I spent the rest of the morning teaching individual lessons - I got ID, BP and AC started on geometry nomenclatures, and I helped CB do the problems on the board among other things - and I did individual interviews and spelling tests with three students. LH has been planning and completing the same works every day so far: metal insets and creative writing for language and the binomial cube for math. We had a talk about challenging herself, and we decided on a goal of one language skyscraper and one math box each day. I know she can do it if she just puts her mind to it. KL is new and still figuring out tracking, and I know it will help immensely to get her more lessons. We're working on that.
The afternoon was supposed to be the high point of the day. I would teach them about harnessing the energy of the sun by creating a solar cooker, and we would talk about the scientific method (without calling it such). While our experiement processed, we would play games for movement time, and then we'd enjoy marshmallows dipped in chocolate. A short work time would follow, and we'd finish the day with a lesson by Miss Kati on the relative sizes of stars. That was how it was supposed to go, and on paper we got through it all. It was, however, not my most shining moment. I snapped at NL twice - once during the creation of the solar cookers because he kept sneaking his fingers out to snatch chocolate chips and later as we were enjoying our chocolate dipped marshmallows because he decided to stick his fingers into the chocolate bowl not 15 seconds after I had asked students to keep their fingers out of the bowls. Maybe he didn't hear me? Entirely possible, but did I consider that at the time? No way. Sleep deprivation got the better of me, and I lost my composure. I'll have to be sure to apologize tomorrow.
Speaking of tomorrow, I'm anticipating a much better day. My boy has been feeling fine all day, and I'm hoping he'll go to sleep soon so that I can join him in sweet slumber. We have a field trip planned tomorrow. First one of the year. I'm looking forward to it, and I know the students are too.
If I can just get some sleep.