Hello, World.  I was recently asked where I’ve been lately (thanks, Jason!), so I thought I should stop by with an update.

Let’s see.  Just over four months ago, I gave birth to my second little girl.  Before that, I was pregnant, believe it or not.  Tired a lot, sick a lot, and at the very end, hospitalized for a week due to pre-eclampsia.  Not the most fun thing ever, but I got a decent prize at the end (really, she’s awesome – I thought the first one was easy, but Girl 2 makes Girl 1 look like a lot of work).

While I was on maternity leave, my husband and I reached a decision: After this school year is over, I will be doing the stay-at-home mom thing.  I still love mathematics and mathematics education, and I plan to tutor if I can; a couple of people have already expressed interest in that.  I also still hope to earn a Ph.D (still waiting on the university to approve the program I’m hoping to do).  And I’m working with my master’s advisor on a book on using history in the teaching of mathematics.  But I will not be in the classroom any longer.  I’ll be at home with my girls.

I am really excited about being able to stay home with them.  I’m a little terrified, but very excited.  I look forward to spending time teaching them academic things – Girl 1 is three years old and eager to learn EVERYTHING.  It’s so much fun, and I can’t wait to do more of that.  (I’ve taught her the word “sinusoidal,” and she can point out curves that are sinusoidal.  Don’t you just feel sorry for my poor children?  And they’re going to be stuck with me all the time.)  I look forward to teaching them to be generous and to give of themselves as we work together with ministries that are important to our family.  I look forward to seeing Girl 2 do lots of firsts over the coming year or so.  I look forward to being able to go and visit out-of-town family without having to worry about sub plans.

Anyway, so I fell behind on blogging, and I usually find Twitter to be overwhelming to catch up on.  But I’m doing well, intent on finishing this year strongly.  I’ve done some good things with my students and some things that had much room for improvement. ;)  I’ve continued to use SBG, even through maternity leave subs (two different people filled in for me…well, actually three, but that’s a long story).  That was interesting, and hearing from the students upon my return, I think one of the subs didn’t quite get it after all.  But it’s hard to step into someone else’s classroom and system in general, and I do think she did a good job teaching the students, so it’s okay.

I feel like I’m rambling, so I’m going to wrap this up.  I don’t know if I’ll be posting here again, maybe if I return to teaching or have other contributions to mathematics education to share.  But I do get email notifications when someone replies to a post here, so feel free to do that if you’d like to get in touch with me. :)