1st Day of 1st Grade!!

Holy cow, a whole summer has passed and now it’s time to start 1st grade already!! So we packed our backpacks, planned our lunch, chose our outfit last night, washed and braided the hair and attempted to get in bed on time. The Child has been having trouble sleeping in her own bed all summer, so we tried a nifty little incentive plan, which is: if she can sleep in her own bed, all night long for 4 of 5 nights a week for a month, then she can earn a trip to Chuck E Cheese. So her response to this plan was “how ’bout vegas?”

Dude. go big or go home, I guess.

Happy Last Day of School!

Well, folks – we made it through Kindergarten successfully! At the beginning of the year, our teacher conferences were about the possibility of repeating kindergarten because the Child was more interested in chatting it up with her new friends than listening to the teacher. At the end of the year conference, the Child had improved to above average on whatever kind of test you can give to a kindergartner to measure progress. She still loves to talk. All the time. But she can write a few things, spell a few things on her own, read a few things on her own (although I’m pretty sure she’s faking and can read a whole lot of things!)

There have been lots of funny quotes, lots of firsts (first bus ride! first sleepover! first friend phone call!) and now it’s all over. Summer vacation began today at 11:15am and I get to entertain a soon to be 6 year old for 3 months. Any suggestions on that?!

We’ve been running every weekend for birthday parties, family gatherings, graduation parties, grocery shopping etc. I am tired people! and running out of money!! Who knew a 5 year old’s social life would be so expensive!! New shoes, gymnastics every month (which requires an outfit), school parties for every single holiday, end of the year teacher gifts, birthday gifts for every party. Man!

How Do You Like Kindergarten?

It’s been a little while since I had anything to post about Kindergarten. Well, I still don’t have anything really, considering Kindergarten is only from 8:30-11:15. I just don’t know how anything gets accomplished in those short hours, but those teachers are just amazing at what they do.

There have been birthday parties and sleepovers. Class parties and field trips. Did I mention the homework? In Kindergarten? There’s homework every single night. And it’s always a battle at our house. the Child has a serious case of the “I can’ts” and it drives me crazy, especially because she can but just doesn’t want to. Big difference, ya know?

Last day of school is coming up soon! June 11th or something like that.

Birthday Party Business

The Child got invited to her 1st kindergarten birthday party today. She must be extra special, because the “rule” is that you if you don’t invite the whole class, you don’t invite anyone. So The Child got a private invitation. Ooohhh. She was so excited!! I took her shopping, gave her a price limit and she chose the gift she wanted. I also let her choose the card AND the wrapping paper AND the bow.  I made her whole day 🙂 Go me!!

The Child got the invitation thursday and the party was saturday (I know, hello last minute!) and I’ve been so conflicted on whether or not to do a drop off or stay the whole time. One one hand, I don’t know the mom/family. I mean, I know her but I don’t know her, know what I mean? I didn’t want the mother to be all, OMG can you believe she just left her child here? But I also didn’t want to sit with someone I don’t know, forced to make conversation for 2 hours either. Hence my confliction.

So I called the girl’s mom and asked if other kids were coming, if other mothers were staying or what she wanted me to do. She said it was fine if I stayed, and fine if I didn’t. (Helpful, right?) I asked my Husband’s opinion, and his response was the typical; whatever you want to do. *sigh*

I opted for leaving her there and gave the mom my cell number. I decided it would be a good time to get some errands done. It’s just faster when you don’t have to drag along a 5 year old. So I swung by the car wash and ended up sitting in the line for an HOUR (because even though it’s January 7th in Pittsburgh, it was almost 60 degrees today!). By the time I finally got through the wash, I had an hour left before I had to pick up the Child. So I ran through Wendy’s for some lunch (so much for healthy eating!), then went to the store for some groceries. When I got to party central, there were 4 other mothers there who apparently stayed the whole time. So I was the only mom who dropped off her kid. Loser much? Not one mother bothered to introduce herself to me, and I just stood in the living room until the party was over. Then I wrangled the Child and got out of there was fast as I could. Yes, I know I could have introduced myself to them – but I entered into their conversation and not one of them even made eye contact with me, so why bother?

Ah. it’s only going to get better from here 🙂

Why Fish are Stupid

Apparently our fish have been secretly watching Finding Nemo, because one tried to escape the tank via the filter. Except, this particular fish is bigger than the filter and got stuck. I have no idea how long he was stuck in there, but once I found him – I, being the awesome mom that I am, saved his little fishy butt. Except, he must have been stuck in there for quite some time, because one he was freed he floated belly up to the top, twitching and huffing and puffing. He eventually righted himself, but then sunk to the bottom of the tank and took up residence between a plastic plant and glass.

I warned the Child that he might go to fishy heaven during the night but she insisted he would be fine. Turns out, next morning he indeed went to fishy heaven. Poor kid was devastated. You know that was her most favorite fish ever!!! She requested to bury him in the dirt, so the Husband put him in a Tupperware container (gross!) and left mr. fishy on the back patio until she came home from school.

We wrapped him up in a little piece of cloth, dug a hole and placed him ever so gently in the ground, covered him up, put a marker on top of him and threw the tupperware container in the garbage. The Child then said “ok, now I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”

Funny Quote of the Day

The Child didn’t eat all of her lunch today. When I was cleaning up the dishes, I asked her why she didn’t eat it all. Her response? “I was saving room for dinner.”

 

yep.

Halloween Crazy

There is so much candy in my house. Hershey’s, Whoppers, Skittles, Tootsie Rolls, Butterfinger, Kit-Kat, Mallow Cups, peanut butter cups, twix, m&m’s (plain and peanut), snickers, milky way – and the list goes on. By the time we separated out all the peanut butter stuff that the Child cannot have, she STILL had an entire reusable shopping bag of candy/chips. I mean really. Just because it was cold and rainy does NOT mean you can dump handfuls of candy into her bag!!! Some guy gave me a garbage bag, because her carry bag was getting too heavy. By the time we got home, the garbage bag was half full. Seriously. Diet? what diet?

I’ve been trying to convince the Child to donate some of her candy to the Halloween Candy Buyback program, through Operation Gratitude, but she ain’t havin’ it. Too bad for her, because she only get another day of candy eating and then it’s going to disappear. I wonder if some of it can go into a shoebox for Operation Christmas Child?

The Child informed me yesterday that she hates her life and wishes she was never born. I really have no idea where this came from, but hopefully I put the kibosh on that in a hurry. Conveniently for me, on the way to the dentist today, we passed 3 (three!) homeless folks on the side of route 28 with their signs. She asked what they were doing there, why they didn’t have homes and why they couldn’t get a job. I reminded her that she should be thankful for her happy life, because she could be homeless with no one to care for her. She cried a little bit and said I was being mean. Maybe the point hit home? I’d really like her to learn some empathy for others and want to be giving. This year I’m going to try and get her involved in Toys for Tots.

Anybody have other ideas for how to teach empathy to a 5 year old?

What you talkin’ ’bout Willis?

The district in which I live has been embroiled in some….controversy as of late. Last year it was a strike.  It was hard to get any reliable information, because my only source of information was this website, which seems to consist of a handful of people who have nothing better to do than cause trouble. They claimed the teachers wanted more money and a shorter working day and did not want to pay more for health care and the mentality of  “how dare they want more money when the rest of us are struggling! Don’t they care about the kids?”  Half of them claimed to be friends with teachers and were providing first hand information. Others just wanted to fuel the fire with misinformation and everybody was so hateful. For a few months, I actually considered private school, because if these were the parents of the kids she would be with every day, no way did I want her exposed to that kind of negativity!! Good grief. But I relented and sent her to school anyway. It’s been almost 2 months, and while I’m not best friends (or even friends or even acquaintances with these women – heck, they don’t even speak to you as you walk past them in the hallway), the Child is happy enough and that’s all that matters to me. I’m doing my part by participating in some activities (OMG I’ve never counted so many stinkin’ box tops in my life!), volunteering for some class things (I’ m donating supplies for a Halloween party!), and attending all the necessary events (parent/teacher conference anyone?)

I really don’t know why I keep going back to this website time and again. It only serves to agitate me, but at least I can keep up with what’s going on and finding out my own information. Want to know what’s going on now? No? Too bad, I’m going to tell ya anyway 🙂 Apparently, the district in which I live has chosen to move 5th grade out of the elementary school and into the middle school. There was a meeting last night that was supposed to explain the changes to curriculum and stuff like that. I chose not to go, because well, it doesn’t really affect me. By the time the Child is in 5th grade, whatever changes they make now will either be changed again or will be so ingrained in everyone that it won’t be such a big deal. Plus, the parents getting all up-in-arms would just agitate me more.

From the information I gathered from a separate newspaper article, 5th & 6th graders would be confined to the 1st floor of the middle school while the 7th & 8th graders would be confined to the upper floor.  If you choose to check out the article and happen to peruse the comments below, you’ll see the variety of opinions. Thank goodness we’re all allowed to have our own opinions and thank goodness decisions are not based on one person’s opinion.

What I don’t understand is why this move is such a big deal? Is 5th grade still “elementary level?” Of course it is! What about 6th grade? I would consider 6th grade still elementary, and 7th/8th grade to me is junior high. Of course, when I was a kid all those years ago – grades K-6 were elementary, 7-8 was junior high and 9-12 was high school. But you know what? Grades 7-12 were housed in the same building!! OMG!! 7th grade was in the same building with seniors?? Yes, and we were confined to the upper floor. We had our own bathrooms, our own computer lab and never left the floor except for lunch – which we had to ourselves. No one died, no 7th grader learned bad behaviors from seniors (we did that all on our own!) This is the same proposal that’s going on here; 5th & 6th grade will be confined to the lower floor and 7th & 8th will be kept to the upper floor. Each will have their own bathrooms, computer labs etc and will eat lunch with their own grade.

There’s one mom (at least, I assume it’s a mom) that comments about her 4th grader being up til 10:30pm doing homework. I’m sorry, but that’s just poor time management. There’s no reason at all for this to happen. The kids get home at 4pm (at the latest) and it takes 6 hours to do homework?? I don’t think so. The Child has homework in kindergarten (gasp!) and when she comes home from school, I  check her folder. If there’s homework in there, she does it right now, no excuses get it done thank you very much. No tv, no computer, nothing until it’s done. If I’m in a good mood, I might let her have a snack before she starts.  If there are extracurricular things involved (soccer, football, cheerleading – whatever),  then that’s your choice and your  issue. When I was in grade school/high school, I was in band, choir and drama. I had something to do every single day after school and I STILL got my homework done with enough time to chill out and watch tv before bed. Why? Because my mom told me I had to get it done and there was no arguing.

I have so many things I want to say in response to that blog, but I just can’t. I don’t know why it infuriates me so much but it does.  So I just keep my mouth shut.

 

What do ya’ll think? Would it be a big deal for your 5th grader to be in a building with 6th, 7th & 8th graders if the 5th graders were kept separate from the older kids?

When you let kids dress themselves

I woke up sick yesterday. I sneezed so much my chest and back feel like I did 874 push-ups. I went to bed early and was supposed to wake up at 6am to make it to work by 7. Somehow my alarm was set for 6:30, then rest for 7, then again for 7:15. I just didn’t want to get out of bed!! I contemplated staying home, but thought I had quite a few meetings to attend so I knew I shouldn’t blow them off. (side note: turns out there were NOT any meetings today so I could have stayed home). The Child heard me moving around and came into the bathroom to ‘wait’ while I got ready. I encouraged her to be a big girl and get herself dressed for school. I told her to surprise Daddy by getting ready and she happily complied. After I finished my routine and made my way to the kitchen for some OJ, I noticed the Child had an extra layer of clothing on. I asked her, and she lifted up her dress to show me her nightgown. That silly girl put her clothes on over top her nightgown!! She was adamant that she was not changing, and while normally I would have fought with her some, I was just too sick and too tired to care. So off to the bus she went with her nightgown under her pretty pink dress 🙂

Update on “The Story”

This is an update on this post from 3 days ago,

Daddy picked up the Child from school the next day, and the Child immediately said “You know that story I told mommy yesterday about Q? She told me she made it all up so T would stop talking to her.”  This was an unprompted comment, because while Daddy knew about it, he came home from work after the Child was already in bed, so the Child did not know that Daddy knew. Hence the unprompted-ness.

This to me means that someone either A) asked Q if something was going on and she then realized she made a mistake and took back the story, or B) someone had a chat with Q’s parents and they told her to come back to school and tell the Child that it was not true

I will never know the true story, because once I informed the school it was out of my hands. School personnel are mandated reporters in Pennsylvania, so they have to report what I told them.

Here’s the thing though: if it’s a true story, that’s devastating enough. If it’s a made up story, what in the world is Q being exposed to at home to know enough to tell a story like that?

Prayers for this little girl.