Rough going

It's been quite a while since I had a ST as rough as this morning's 9:30 1 year old group. It wasn't that the kids were loud and psychotic, or that the parents were loud and inattentive. The kids were kinda squirrely and rather unresponsive, but I've certainly seen much worse. No, the trouble was that I was lacking any kind of spark. I was not having fun, and kept thinking, is this thing over yet? Ouch. I know I've talked to most of you before about putting on my "game face" when I'm not really feeling it, but I felt like this was the first time that the face/mask kept slipping. At this point I thoroughly agree with Heather about 8 weeks being the longest period of time a ST session should run, with 6 weeks being preferable - this current 10 week session is really burning me out.
Thankfully, I drank some more coffee, made a couple of changes (including the insertion of more jokes directed at the parents), and the 10:30 ST went much better: much more fun for kids, caregivers, and me.