A few of you have asked whatever happened in the Xtina saga, and the inconvenient truth is that there just isn't much to tell. I'd love to tell you that she and Chickadee have become the best of friends or that my daughter is somehow helping her out and making her life easier, but the reality is that Chickadee is pretty much avoiding her and Xtina continues to get into trouble on a regular basis. None of the kids like her very much, from what I hear, and although I do remind Chickie that I expect her to be kind (or at the very least, not mean), the avoidance routine is working out pretty...
The children are BOTH having friends over after school today, and this is VERY! EXCITING! and despite my grumpiness in the wee hours I'll confess that waking up Monkey and having him spring upright and declare "Today's the day!" and then going into Chickadee's room and watching her yawn, stretch, and then pop up and exclaim "Today's the day!" as well (she hadn't heard her brother) was pretty funny. As for me, I am pleased that my babies have friends. Moreover, Monkey was kind enough to become infatuated with a boy whose mom I really like, so he may have done me a big favor, there. I knew I...
I used to think of myself as clumsy and disorganized, but I have since decided that I simply lack an enzyme or something required for proper remembering. I think it's genetic. And I'm pretty sure I've passed this along to my children. Poor things. Some of their antics I just can't understand, no matter how hard they try to convince me that they "just forgot" to put this or that away. I mean, Chickadee's Tae Kwon Do bag holds all of her sparring gear as well as her uniforms and perhaps a small farm animal or two (based on both the smell and the size of it); my point is, it is a VERY LARGE...
Oh. Um, hi. How are you? I'm, uh, perfectly fine and ready to point to the nearest shiny object to distract you from yesterday's post. Yes. (Not that I didn't appreciate both the space to get that out and the really kind emails I received, but now I'd like to go back to to sublimating my "issues"---please use heavy air quotes when reading that---and doing really meaningful things like pondering whether I really need avocados when they cost $1.50 each.) During a conversation with a friend yesterday I mentioned falling asleep at the kitchen table one night and she interrupted me to ask if...
Even if the principal is just humoring me in getting the children lined up for gifted testing, the school is doing a bang-up job of making us feel special about it. Letters came home yesterday indicating that my signature was needed to proceed with the testing. That was fine. There was then a very impressive chart of what the requirements are for children to qualify for the program (99th percentile on several indices, 96th percentile on a couple of others), and a fill-in line to indicate the source of the referral. Remember how the principal told me that the kids had already been referred by...
The first day of school was---if not a success---acceptable. Our school has what is supposed to be an orderly procedure for distributing children at the end of the day; there's a web of driveway and parking lot areas that IN THEORY make for an optimal traffic pattern. The buses go in HERE and the people who are parking (why are you parking, people??) go in HERE and if you're picking up, you pull in over THERE and someone comes to ask you which child you'd like to kidnap and eat for dinner and then they radio back to the holding pen and someone brings your victim out. It's a great system. Or,...
For the first time in about seven weeks, I am sitting at my desk in broad daylight with nothing but the droning of the fan behind me as background noise. I have a million things to do, of course, but I have a solid six hours before I have to talk to anyone else, get anyone something to eat, settle a squabble, or decide whether or not we can go swimming now. First day of school, baby. How do I love the public school system? Let me count the ways. No; scratch that. That would take up precious minutes that I could spend eating cookies because there's no one here to see me. Make no mistake---I'm...
Today we went to Open House at the school where Chickadee and Monkey will be resuming their education next week. This is the school I fought tooth and nail to get them into, so believe me, I am THRILLED they're going there. We met Monkey's teacher first. She's a sweet, calm woman who is in her 40th year of teaching. She told me she's seen it all and can take whatever the kids dish out. I believed her. I sort of wanted to be in her class, myself. We met Chickadee's teacher next. I don't think she's 30 yet. She's young and pretty and nothing she did or said was a problem and yet I found myself...
Good news! Today was not nearly so hot as yesterday. I mean, yes, OKAY, it was 101 today just like yesterday, and the heat index was around 108, but it was PARTLY CLOUDY. So. Ever so much better. Today would've been a good day to stay inside and do work, and I managed to do that, for most of the morning, but eventually I had to give in to my children's demands that we goooooo swiiiiiimiiiiiiing. And because I can only spend so long in the pool with them before I start wondering important things like "would it be child abuse to pick up this dead cricket and place it atop my child's head?" or...
