Exhaustion Finalized

You've heard it before, you'll hear it again, but nothing else expresses this past week as well as the following:

What a long strange trip it's been!

In an effort to explain what I've been going through, I have rewritten this post several times. In writing, my week sounds very boring and I can hear the chorus of "What's so difficult about that?" echoing throughout the blog comments.

All I can say is that this week was emotionally draining on me. And a simple call to my Mother made everything OK.

I am required to spend 3-hours (approximately) a week in The Princess' school class. I figured that this wouldn't be so difficult to do because The Dragon will be in preschool for 3-hours a day, 4 days a week. HA! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

The first attempt of scheduling resulted in the teacher wanting me to teach Science in the afternoon. This doesn't work for two reasons. One, I don't want to "teach" anything that requires me to come up with a lesson plan on my own. I want to simply "show up" and "do" whatever the teacher needs me to do. Sometimes this does require "teaching" but I NEVER have to come up with the lesson plan. Two, the afternoon won't work for me because The Dragon will not be in preschool at this time.

The second attempt of scheduling was better because they moved Science to the morning hours. This got rid of my second excuse, but I held strong to my first excuse in that I did not want to PLAN anything. They finally caught on, and now there are two parents who are willing to "teach" science, and I am their assistant. I will be there every week to help maintain order in the classroom and keep things running smoothly, and I will also assist in the "shopping" for supplies as needed. This I can do.

You might think that this solved the problem, but it wasn't that simple. I still wasn't meeting the 3-hour a week requirement. So I offered to come in earlier during the day and spend the morning in the classroom every other week. The teacher was thrilled! I'd be helping out with math. I explained to the co-op coordinator that I wouldn't be able to be there at 8:30 due to dropping my child off at preschool at some unknown time, but I was assured that whenever I got there would be just fine.

Last night was "Back To School Night." Turns out that there is a new math program being implemented this year, and that 2 parents plus the teacher are essential to making this work. My coming in late is not ideal to the situation, though the teacher was very kind to me about my concerns.

At this point, I am stressing. Stressing is something I do very well - just ask The King.

So I broke down. And this morning I called my Mom. And I asked her if she would be willing to take The Dragon to preschool every other Thursday for me. And she said...

"YES."

I hate relying on somebody else, but at this point, I don't really have a choice. I think it will work (except for when my parents go out of town, etc), but at that point the teacher will just have to take what she can get... and I can't worry about it until it occurs... IF it occurs.

All I can do is get some sleep.

[ By the way, I was floored by how many responses I got to my whiny lack-of-sleep post and by how many of you are also 'Sleepless in Blog-land.' Wednesday night I was in bed before 1:45 - not a great improvement but it was a full hour earlier than the night before. But Thursday night? Yeah, last night I made it to bed before MIDNIGHT. Crazy, I know. Keep the comments coming, eh? You guys totally made my day! ]

One Year Ago Today...

... we moved into our house. Yes, the 10th of June was moving day. I am glad that is over... for lots of reasons. The bad news is, we still have stuff in boxes. Ugh. Some of the "stuff" is probably stuff that we can get rid of. But some of the "stuff" I really do want to keep, but we just have no place for it. So sad. I'm hoping to decrease the number of boxes over the summer. Wish me luck!

On Friday, Mom's School was pretty much a complete flop... we went to IKEA instead. I wasn't thrilled with the store. I've been to IKEA before, and I know what type of furniture, etc, they have to sell, so it wasn't that. But they also have a "kid care" center, and when we went to drop off our kids, they had FOUR (count 'em FOUR) kids in the center, and said we had to be put on a waiting list, a LONG waiting list. When we finally were called back, they did have more kids in the center, but still - FOUR!?! I don't know what the child care laws are, but one person is certainly capable of taking care of more than four kids. And there was more than one day care provider working. Whatever.

The food could've been better - like if they had actually had what was on the menu. And, note to self, next time, skip the "display" floor and just go the main floor where all the stuff that you actually want to buy is.

On the plus side, we went with one of my friends and her 3 kids, so it went a lot more smoothly than if I had just gone with my kids by myself. It wasn't a bad day - but it wasn't what I had hoped it would be.

Friday night, The King went gaming. That means that me and the girls get to spend a nice peaceful night at home. Yeah, right. The Princess tormented The Dragon which caused The Dragon to bite The Princess - and everything went downhill from there. This is not normal behavior for our family, this is just normal behavior for when Mommy's in charge and Daddy is nowhere to be found. *sigh*

Saturday was interesting. I finally found swimming lessons that fit with our schedule, and that I could afford. This month we are only doing Saturday lessons, which means we get 4, 45-minute lessons for $15. Anywhere else, the same thing would cost about $28. As a bonus, The Princess is the only one in her swimming class, and The Dragon only has one other little girl in her class. Wow! $4 (not quite) an hour for private (or almost) swimming lessons! That's a deal.

So anyway, we went to swimming lessons, and the girls seemed to have a good time. While there were some protests about what the teacher asked them to do, it really did go quite well. The kids were drenched when they returned to me (including their hair), so that makes it a success right?

Immediately after swimming lessons, I dropped The Dragon off at a friends birthday party. Thankfully she was willing to stay by herself, so I got to go home and relax for a little bit, during which time I accomplished nothing.

An hour and a half later, I picked up The Dragon, brought her home, and the kids had lunch. The King felt that the kids, The Princess in particular, were being a little bit bratty so he wanted them to take naps because we had an activity planned for later in the evening. He got them settled in bed, and they slept for THREE HOURS. Wow. The King chose to take a nap too - I picked up a few things, talked on the phone, and played computer games. It was a peaceful afternoon.

After everyone woke up, we got ready for our evening adventure - a Salt Lake Bees game! The first inning was really exciting! Then the Bees got, um, stung? Baseball is definitely more exciting when your team is winning. We were really happy with our seat selection (The Princess got tickets from her baseball team earlier this year so they were FREE), and it was 'Oreo Night' so the girls had a lot of fun watching a giant Oreo and Milk Carton dance around the field, with an occasional glimpse of the "Bee." We had a winning sticker in our program, so we got a free double scoop of ice cream, which was probably more like a quadruple scoop of ice cream - Bumble Bee Ripple flavor (Banana with Fudge 'Ripples'). The kids went nuts over this unexpected treat. After the game, there was a "Kids Run" where the kids got to run the bases, and then there was a photo op with the "Bee." And then, (we love freebies), they gave us multiple packages of Mini Oreos! Wow! What a night.

"Mom's School" Update

Day 2 of 'Mom's School' was draining. The Princess threw a fit very early on because the picture she tried to draw of a 'blue bird' looked like an 'eel.' She would not stop screaming. I decided that most of the catastrophe was because she had stayed up way too late the night before when she went to see the play... and of course she didn't sleep in. So I sent her to take a nap.

The nap helped a little bit, but the rest of the day was still challenging, and her "screaming fits" drain me. I find myself completely empty and useless for the rest of the day.

Day 3 of 'Mom's School' went a little bit better, though The Princess tried to have another screaming fit. This time I lost it and went off on a tirade about what mental hospitals were and how I was going to have to take her to one. This is NOT one of my proud parenting moments - OH NO... not even close. The good news is, she stopped screaming.

But life isn't meant to be easy. Shortly thereafter The Dragon decided to lock her bedroom door. And pull it shut. With everyone on the OUTSIDE of the door. And then we get the joyful (NOT!) discovery, that her bedroom door has a lock on it that requires a key. And we don't have the key. Long story short, eventually The King came home from work and struggled long and hard before he successfully jimmied the lock. There is no doorknob on her bedroom door at the moment. And that fact is not bothering me AT ALL.

We also had to venture out into the hurricane to go to Grandma's house for piano lessons. I told the girls they were "this close" to spending the rest of the afternoon in their bedrooms, or in the case of The Dragon, MY bedroom - and if they didn't want that to happen they would have to have excellent behavior at their piano lessons. No whining, no crying. They had two choices: Do exactly what Grandma told them to do, or ask nicely for more help to do what Grandma told them to do. Ironically, it worked. The piano lessons went off without a hitch. Success!

Day 4 of Mom's School is taking place as we speak. The Princess was doing math, she came to a review problem that upset her. She was told that "Megan had 15 marbles and two boxes. List all the ways that the 15 marbles can be put into two boxes." The Princess got a good start, until she got about half-way done.

"Oh noooooo!" she wailed. "How am I supposed to do this? Inverse Operations?!?"

I looked at the problem. She was upset because she head reached the point where you could put 8 marbles in 'blue' box and 7 in the 'red' box, but from then on out, you were using the same numbers -- just putting them in different boxes.

"Yes," I replied, "you need to use inverse operations."

Here's the thing: Inverse Operations? Before she started Kindergarten, I wouldn't have even know what 'Inverse Operations' were. Sure, I would've known how to do them if someone had stuck them in front of me, but the term 'Inverse Operations' meant absolutely nothing to me.

Now she's entering 2nd grade. Her workbook has a page entitled "Introduction to Algebra." I don't think I had ever heard of "algebra" until I was in 6th grade, which was when I had started "pre-algebra."

In a way, I think it's good that she's learning the terminology to go along with the math. In upper grades I was often frustrated because I didn't know what certain terms were, and didn't know how to do certain things until I had my "Duh!" moment and realized that what they were asking me to do was something I had been doing since 3rd or 4th grade. I just never knew what it was called.

But still, it's strange hearing all of these "big words" coming out of your little one's mouth.

On another note, all of her teachers generally despise using the workbooks that they send home for "practice" and now I know why. (Which is why they send them home, because they use other stuff in school). You get math problems like this:

Jimmy has 9 stamps on his card. He gets 8 mores stamps. How many stamps will he have to carry over to a new card?

Well gosh, the answer could be just about anything since they don't bother to tell you how many stamps fit on the card in the first place! If you look at the rest of the page, your best guess would leave you to believe that 10 stamps are supposed to fit on a card, but there's no proof one way or the other. I tested The Princess by telling her a certain number of stamps could fit on the card, and each time she came up with the right answer, so the concept was sound. But the question sucked.

Anyway, all in all, I thought that Math would be the hardest part of 'Mom's School.' Ironically, that's been the easiest part so far. I've been pulling out pages from a variety of workbooks, and The Princess does 4 or 5 of them each day. I give her a mix - a review of stuff she learned in Kindergarten, to the stuff she will be learning in 2nd grade (3rd grade level). Counting, identifying patterns, simple addition, simple subtraction, telling time, counting money, interpreting graphs, simple fractions, place holders (ones, fives, tens, hundreds, thousands), adding two & three digit numbers, subtracting two & three digit numbers, plus a little bit of multiplication.

We're on a roll.