They’ve been home from school all week – I will post later about that, but Cassie had to do her homework and school work and was in her room screaming at the top of her lungs. I got her on video and that really ticked her off…
Watch out, Linda Blair! You have competition!
(Hey, I already lost the Mom Of The Year award, may as well have some fun with it.)
Today started off pretty well…
Well, let’s back up… last week on Monday night Jamie ran a 99.8 fever. Low, but high enough that I kept him home on Tuesday to make sure we were complying with the districts 24-hour rule (oh, how I wish other parents would follow this rule but that’s a rant for another day). He didn’t run a fever all of Tuesday and was fine and hasn’t since, so I sent him to school the rest of the week with no problems. He’s had a cough for 3 weeks, but we all do, since the rain came and brought the mold or whatever with it, our allergies are crazy.
In the meantime, we talked the weekend before about his behavior in class, about how he’s not focusing and how he’s not paying attention and how to handle it when the class gets too loud for him to handle, etc. I also told him he should be striving to stay on green more often in class (they use a color system, green, purple, blue, red) and he needed to focus more, make sure he’s always paying attention to the teacher, not wandering off mentally, and we talked about ways that we could make that happen.
I was VERY proud when he got ALL GREEN last week. Honestly, I was hoping for one green day. To get 4 (he was home on Tuesday remember) was simply outstanding.
So, going to the conference (just me and him – Tom was home with Cassie and a friend), I knew it was going to be about him and how he’s progressed over the past 2 weeks. I went in there and looked at his desk and nearly cried. It was ORGANIZED. Jamie’s desk usually has papers shoved in there and you can’t find anything. But it was organized. I high-fived him and noticed he was acting off kilter. I thought maybe he was nervous or maybe being at school on Monday with no other kids was too weird or his schedule getting off (which wigs him out)… so we went on.
As we suspected, our son is super smart. He’s doing amazing in Math and can do word problems very easily, he’s above level in reading (duh), etc etc. Academically, he’s doing fine. Whew. His behavior in class has been outstanding recently, he was able to tell her when he needed to go to a different corner of the room to get away from the noisy classmates. His only problem is that he’s not very good at descriptive writing. He writes “I went to the park. We had fun. The end.” instead of “I went to the park with my sister and best friend. We dug in the sandbox with my yellow pail and went down the slide. My sister had fun jumping off of the swings.” etc. Okay, hey, we’ll take it.
Afterwards, he still looked out of it and said he wanted to talk to me, so I took him out for breakfast tacos. He seemed fine and was happy to get such a good report from his teacher (who I absolutely adore, I had reservations at first, but the woman has done amazing things with Jamie this year!). He was still kind of “out of it” but I am screwing with his schedule here and that makes him kinda nuts.
Let me pause here… those of you who are good mommies are already cringing thinking of all the people he’s come into contact with… the neighbor girl that spent the night, his sister, the friend that slept over (thankfully Jamie slept with me and had limited contact with the girls), everyone at the school, his teacher, the people at the restaurant.
Yeah, so at lunch, he didn’t eat but a few bites. Tom and I, being the rock star parents we are, were talking about how he just seemed to be off his “norm” today, must be the schedule thing, having a sleepover on Sunday and no school on Monday, right? All of a sudden, I look at Jamie and say, “oh, shit”. Yes, the lightbulb finally went off. He has 102.2 fever, has been dosed with Motrin and Robitussin and is quarantined in his room.
So, I think my mommy-of-the-year award won’t be coming any time soon. Darn it, after the great conference I was patting myself on the back. It would help if I don’t expose my sick kid to half of Austin though, eh? I wish he had said he felt bad, but he still says he just feels “tired”. ARGH!
This morning was not a good morning. I got up 10 minutes late. I’m annoyed. It’s raining. Tom tries to feed the kids pepper ham for lunch and I point out they don’t like pepper stuff and won’t eat it, so I’m annoyed I have to mix up the tuna fish and notice the stove and table were never wiped down after dinner, all that little stuff. So I’m double annoyed.
He leaves for school (substitute teacher) and the kids are IMPOSSIBLE. Not getting dressed, not brushing their hair. At one point I told them they could just walk to school in the rain and the next I told them “fine, we’re not going to school” (Jamie, of course, was down with that). Just a bad morning.
So, I come back and a friend is on Skype and I’m venting to her that while Tom is this great husband, he’s also a pain in the butt and I’m tired of being the one that always thinks of things ahead of time…
And then I get a text from Tom. “Look under ur keyboard”.
Where I find this letter – and $20. (click to see it cuz I’m not retyping it)
Bastard. He makes it so hard to stay mad at him! Dagnabit! *laugh*
Sigh. I think I’ll save the $20 and get us all Blizzards after the kids get their flu shots today. We all deserve them.
I guess at the end of the day, really the table and stove and all that stuff that annoys me when we forget is so minor…
I do want that maid though! 
Our friends and housemates last week offered to watch the kids so we could have a date night. I told Cassie that I was going to go on a date with “her Daddy” and she got a little offended. To make matters worse, I informed here that yes, I would kiss her Daddy. She didn’t believe that I would commit such a heinous act, so I took a picture to show her. She got all flustered and a little angry with me. Apparently I’m not allowed to kiss “her Daddy”. Possessive little thing, isn’t she?
We went to this amazing little Italian place called Bellino’s (and I will be writing a review for my review blog soon). But the food was fantastic. If you are ever in Rockport TX, you must check this place out. I had the Pollo Piccata and it was one of the best chicken dishes I’ve ever had. And the pasta was done to perfection. So so so good. Plus we had a great time. It was nice that the restaurant was so fabulous, but even if it was horrible, we almost always manage to have a good time. After we went looking for a Starbucks and I looked it up on my phone. It said there was one, but once we got lost trying to find it and ran into it, it was closed down. I think we laughed so hard we got a tummy ache 
Anyway, check this place out… and don’t kiss “Cassie’s Daddy”… she might get all huffy!
I have no idea how I ran across this information, but I figure I should post about it and get it out of my system and then send you back to your regularly scheduled (sometimes) cute family blog…
Tom and I both feel pretty strongly about this… it is YOUR responsibility, as the parent, to monitor what your kids watch/read/do. If there is some book you don’t want them to read because it has witches in it, then you get to step up and be the parent. Amazing how that works, right? I am constantly amazed that some parents think they have the right to pull a book of a school’s public library because they are too lazy to talk to their kids and monitor what their kids are doing.
As a parent myself, I think my children should have the freedom and opportunity to read any book that we choose. There may be some books I don’t want them to read and if there is, I will tell them and they won’t check it out. Yes, this actually works. It’s called communicating and trusting your kids. Where did that disappear to? When did we decide we have to micromanage every single thing our children do? Can they not read a book and then ask you questions about it?
Anyway… I was happy to read this about Round Rock ISD (which is our school district), “Round Rock ISD took second in this dubious competition with nine challenges, none of which resulted in a single ban or restriction.” (From page six of the Free People Read Freely 2008-2009 report.
I realize not everyone will agree with me. That’s the beauty of having freedoms. Some could say that if I want my kid to read Harry Potter, I could buy the books. And I do just that. But there are kids out there that can’t afford to buy any book they want. That’s what libraries are for. Some could say that you can’t control everything your children do, and that is partially my point. If your biggest problem is that your kid wants to read Harry Potter and sneaks off to do it… I’d say you are pretty lucky
For more information on banned books and other ACLU projects, visit their website.
I love Saturdays. I get to sleep in a little. The kids find a nutritious breakfast on their own and practice their reading together and learning from each other…
What?
Okay, they grab pop-tarts and their DSes. They are trained well. I get my extra hour
