As I was reviewing my patriarchal blessing, I read over the part talking about how I would be guided in the area of my profession. I contemplated my chosen major, Early Childhood Education. I've told people over and over how I was planning on being able to teach preschool in our home if we needed the extra income so I could still be a stay at home mom while helping out. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I just couldn't see myself doing it. I love children, and I'm not bad at teaching, but overall it just seemed off.
I began writing, thoughtlessly, on my notebook. After a while, I actually realized what I had written. "Foster Parent" my doodled words spelled out. It was something Andrew and I had talked about before very briefly: being foster parents and maybe even adopting some of the kids. I would be lying if I said that I had spent a lot of time thinking about it since then, though. Staring at the words, I finally ripped a paper out of my notebook and passed a note to Andrew.
I think I'm going to change my major.
Andrew gave me a look then wrote down on the paper and passed it back.
Why? and to what?
I began writing as quickly as the thoughts came to me.
Because while I could do an in home preschool and be happy with that, it just doesn't feel quite like what I need to be doing. I can't actually super see myself doing it. In all of my designs of our dream house, was there ever a place where I could teach?
I think I should just switch to and start the Family Studies major.
I'm still considering the Foster Parent thing, I think I'd be more likely to do that than teach preschool.
I might still take some early childhood education classes, but not to teach preschool. So I can be a better mom.
Andrew nodded as he read it knowingly, then looked up from reading and leaned over to me. "We'll talk about it at home," he told me.
Sunbeams, like always, was full of kids wanting to sit on my lap, sit next to me and cuddle, and kids that wanted to run all over the room pretending to be a wolf/cat/dog. Then there's the one Sunbeam that reminds me of Grumpy Cat. No matter what I ask him, the answer is always NO! He reminds me of the famous Grumpy Cat:
He even has the face down perfectly.
Mostly it's because he's having a SUPER hard time adjusting to Sunbeams after Nursery. He'll get there eventually :) It'll be hard for him all over when we move out of the ward... We did make progress today: he sat on my lap and even participated in a few things! By the end he was having a BLAST playing dinosaur with one of the other sunbeams.
Anyway. Sunbeams ended and slowly all of the kids were picked up by their parents. They even all helped clean up! It was great. Sunbeams is crazy, but I'm going to miss the kids. I hope they can find someone new soon; apparently they've had several people actually turn down the calling! Poor Sunbeams... My heart goes out to them. The adjustment, all over again, will be so hard for them if no one will accept it before we move to help with transitioning.
After we got home, I brought up the subject of the major change again. And what Andrew had to say kind of surprised me.
"Honestly, I've been thinking you needed to change majors for a while, I just didn't want to say anything and make you feel like I was wanting you to quit school. When you had to drop the Health for Elementary Ed class, I caught myself thinking, 'Good. She doesn't need that class anyway,' which made no sense. But I've been thinking you should switch to the Family Studies major for a while."
We talked about foster parenting, and he dumped another surprise on me: when we got the prompting to start our family last year, he was also prompted that we were going to be foster parents someday. That prompting was that it wasn't a big deal because it wasn't immediately soon and he was prompted to not worry about it, but he never even thought twice about it. It just was going to happen.
It feels right. I don't want to teach or ANYTHING as much as I desperately want to be a mother. So, fittingly, my profession will be as a foster mother :) It will be a challenge, a joy, and SO worth it. I'm really excited to go in and change my major.
