Poking the Bear

My wife was in the shower and I said "Hey, wait, we made it through terrible Tuesday!  Way to go, us!"
She replied with "Why was Tuesday so terrible?"
I said "Because you and I both had gigs at night, the kids started back to school, we had all that other... well just because.  Congrats us!"
Her reply "Sure"
Her next reply "Oh, that makes today hump day" ;)

Not 3 seconds later came the wails from the kitchen- the children, after having woken up and showered and gotten dressed, decided that play nice time was over.

There were shouts of "He slammed the refrigerator door on me" "Well she slammed it open on ME!"

"OH MY GOD, BRADY!" "Well there are 2 other seats at the table, you don't have to sit at that one" "DAAAAAAAAAAAAAD! BRADY WON'T MOVE HIS LUNCH!"

Here were a couple of my brilliant solutions:
A) You will both sit on the tile floor and eat your breakfast, if you can't sit at the table together.  And I already gave you enough chances.
B) You will use the most sickeningly sweet voice with each other for the rest of the day. If I hear one bit less than SUPER nice, including not only words but also inflection, you will be grounded. Both of you. Together.  And I will make you watch the movie of MY choice, sitting next to each other on HALF of the couch.

I think it's pretty freakin smart.  The eat breakfast while sitting on the floor was simply genius.

The wife says "See what happens when you congratulate yourself for getting through terrible Tuesday?"

These, are the Holidays, of our lives

Yes, I grew up watching Days of our Lives.  Grandma watched it, my mom watched it.  And now, I pay it homage in the title of a blog.

Full circle, people. Full  Circle.

The holidays are a time of stress and disappointment.  Don't kid yourselves.

Let's talk about what happened with the Boy child.

Everyone knows about his obsession with his pants.  My solution was- overwhelm him with options, and he won't be so OCD.  IF he has 8 pairs of pants, he won't be so prone to always wanting to wear the 1 out of 4.  Does this make any sense?  I thought it did, but now it absolutely doesn't.  Sad news.

ANYways- I bought him 5 new pairs of pants.

All the wrong size.

So he opened the pants on Christmas morning and of course wanted to wear them immediately. This became a "I'll return them and get the right size" battle.  He didn't care if they didn't fit, he wanted to wear them THIS MINUTE! 

I succumbed and told him he could pick out one pair and wear those.  Then I would return the others and get the right size.

All has worked out- the last 2 pair were from Target and I returned them then gave him the gift card.  We went and picked out 2 new pairs last night.  MAROON (not burgundy.  Don't call them burgundy.  It says MAROON) and dirty blue CORDUROY pants.

Man, back in the Days of our Lives times, I hated corduroys. Man I really avoided them as much as possible.  But if that's what I had, that's what I wore.  Now the boy CHOOSES cords. 

Full Circle people, full circle.

Good Stuff Meynard!

The boy child wanted to get up and take his showers in the morning.  So I said "You already have a hard time getting up and ready fr school.  If you can get up at 6:45 for 2 weeks straight, you can take your shower in the morning AFTER the 2 weeks."

Well my gosh, if he didn't do it!

Now we are faced with the prospect of 4 people trying to take showers in 2 bathrooms, using all the hot water.

I mean that's not HIS fault, but- he did accomplish his goal!  Way to go Boy Child!

Oh boy. I say Why Why Why

DJ TURN IT UP!

Ke$ha radio is on pandora- it just seemed like the right thing to say.

Would you like to hear more about the saga of the missing homework? Fantastic.  Settle in with a cup of cocoa and curl up under a blanket by the fire- I've got a doozie for ya.

The missing assignments were completed in relatively good fashion, in good time, with little push-back from the child.

(Now- if this was the story, that would be a nice little Sunday morning upifting tale, wouldn't it?)

Except for 2

2 Science sheets

It took about a week from the time we got the assignment sheet until teacher got the extra copies of the assignments for the Boy.

Every day, we said "did you bring the science sheets home?"  Every day the boy said "I forgot"

Every day this week, we'd remind him to bring it home before he left to school.

Every day, he'd forget.

Friday the straw broke the camels' back.

Also on Friday was the school shooting in Connecticut.

Mommy was both pissed about the missing assignments and thinking "LOVE YOUR BABIES!"  at the same time.  It was a difficult afternoon.

This explains why the boy got to go to a  sleepover, even though he was supposed to be grounded.

Saturday morning, mommy and daddy had a debate.  Mostly it was daddy saying that the boy child needed to be super ultra grounded and mommy trying to talk him off the cliff.

Today is the boy's birthday.  Obviously we'll shower him with gifts.

He is a sweet, kind boy who has absolutely no regard for responsibilities. This is a thing, right?

Trash Can Update: Took the trash can to the curb after being asked and ignoring the chore list to do the wastebaskets on Wednesday night.  As mom drove away, she called me and asked me to remove the recycle bin from the neighbor's front yard and CLOSE THE GATE so the dog wouldn't run all over the park while everyone was at work. Good times

Chore chart update: Moderate success.  I notice that a few of the items haven't been done at all. 

End of Days

Last week I was thinking how great the boy has been doing in school since fall break.  He has had very little homework, leading me to believe that he has been finishing his work in class.

WRONG, SUCKER!

I had been struggling as a parent with patience and trying to get through to him this weekend, so I listened to a couple of parenting podcasts (you already read that...) and I decided "You know, Teacher has been really doing a great job.  I should send her a thank you email."

Which was replied to with "Coincidentally, I just gave Boy Child a list of the 14 assignments he has not completed since fall break.  He needs to complete them by the 19th or he will get zeroes on them and will most certainly fail the subject.  Have a  nice day! OH, wait- one more thing.  He got a Reflection Paper yesterday, so please be sure he returns it."

Siiiiiighhhhhhhh....

Yes.  The entire time when we had been asking "Did you finish your homework?" he was saying "YES!" :D when indeed the answer was "No" :(

Why hadn't we seen the reflection paper or the list of missing assignments she had sent home? "I forgot them in my desk"

OF

Course

Since I was working, PU2 (Parental Unit 2) had the unenviable task of discussing this with the boy when he got off the bus.  Oh, I'm sure it was a sight to see.

Though she was angelic and drippingly sweet in her tone while discussing this, there were instant tears and denial and of course excuses.

Then came the heartstrings "I'm afraid I might fail 5th grade and you guys won't love me"

It's tough to hear, of course.  It's also tough to decode.  On the one hand, he's a sensitive little guy.  On the other, he is manipulative and knows exactly what to say to drive that knife.

I tend to err on the side of forgiveness, so anyways we will be working with him for the next 11 days to get all the assignments done.  And reinforcing that no matter what he does, we will love him.  We may be disappointed, we may not like what he does, and he may be in trouble.  But we still love him.

(AND we'll still start sentences with prepositions.  But no matter what you do, you can't stop me.)

Sunday pretty crappy Sunday

The boy.  Oh the boy.

Today was a doozy.  We woke up LATE- 10AM.  Blame it on the midnight Guitar Hero with the kids if you'd like.  That's MY story anyways.

The girl had cleaned the entire house.  She had a 102 fever all day on Saturday, but she felt better nad cleaned the ENTIRE. HOUSE.

The boy had a friend spend the night last night.  We woke up to them arguing over what to play.  Within 5 minutes of waking up, we had the Boy Child telling his friend "You came over here to interact with other people, not just play with one toy!"

He has a pogo stick. He cherishes the pogo stick.  It's like... the blue skinny jeans that he wants to wear every day.  He is obsessed.  And he doesn't want anyone else to use it.  Even if he had 2 broken legs and couldn't pogo, he'd refuse to let anyone else use it.

So- it got worked out, then yada yada... The girl's friend came over and asked to use the Boy Child's bike.  He said, of course, "No", even though he and his friend were inside playing Legos.

I kinda lost it. I was really really pissed after struggling with him for about 3 hours and I went too far.

So Momma Bear stepped in and helped by talking to him rationally, etc.

What I need to do is recognize when he's in this --head-- he gets into, and prepare myself better to deal with him. Rationally.

SO- I had to go to work.  Of course as I left, I was a mix of pissed off at him and myself.  However, as I drove the calm overtook me and I was able to think more carefully about the entire situation.  I also was listening to In The Rabbit Hole podcast's episode about homeschooling, so it helped me think about how to give more to the children than I do now.

It was uplifting.  When I got home (it was only like 3 hours) I was better able to  deal with the boy child who was still in his funk.

Tomorrow is another day, and I know that I can do better for him.

Chore Chart update: The girl has finished her first Punch Card for cash.  The boy despises the chore chart.

Trash Can update: Still have to remind him to bring the can IN after school, and take the trash out every day. This week, he proposed that because there was only one bag in the recycle bin, he didn't need to take it to the curb.  Sounded rational to me.

Chore Chart Experiment- Day 1

OK, the chore chart has been through its first morning and we're on track.  As a matter of fact, Maggie cleaned out the entire kitchen cart, wiped it out, ad re-organized it so she could get her first "punch" on her card.

Brady gave the fish tank 3x as much food as it needed, but otherwise everything went well.  This is even with his bus schedule moving 10 minutes earlier.  AMAZING!

So- the expectations are there, they are simple to track, and everyone knows what they are ahead of time.

"Hope springs eternal in the human breast..."

The chore chart spreadsheet is here:
Click for AWESOMENESS

OH!  The Punch Card "bonus list" is at THIS link