Crayons, Playdoh & Wax

I was really hoping after last year, school would get better. Ok, it would help if I had her at a quiet room, at a table and I could could go about my business. The problem, she doesn’t need me sitting right there, cuz she can DO the work, but you can’t leave her alone because she won’t do a thing.

Right now our days consist of fighting in the morning (to get dressed). She will be awake, and then just sit there. Then even if she is ready, she has to put on her shoes. I figured out why we always wore Crocs, No tying! She takes almost 5 minutes per shoe! They don’t make Good Quality Shoes (that will make the podiatrist happy) that valcro.

Then she gets to school, doesn’t get everything done, not because she can’t do it, but because she is slow. So they send home whatever she can’t get done, meaning MORE homework. So then we spend the after-school FIGHTING, doing homework until dinner, then finishing what she hasn’t gotten done.

If we let her work in the kitchen without supervision, she turns on the TV. If she has to do work on the computer, she goes to the Warrior sites instead of the homework. She is 10, I shouldn’t have to watch EVERY SINGLE thing she does. No consequence seems to phase her. The first thing I actually found that comes close to working was me taking away her Warrior books. I had to explain to her teacher that she was saying she didn’t have a book to read, and I pointed out that she has library books and can read them. I told her teacher I only took away the 1 series to try and teach her about appropriate times for reading. An hour in the bathroom instead of homework, or at 10:30 at night instead of sleeping on a school night. Reading is good, but, HELLO!

She then doesn’t get to sleep on time, doesn’t get enough sleep, doesn’t want to get up, or wakes up late. Is crabby at school and doesn’t want to do her work, which they send home, which means more homework, which makes a vicious cycle!

Tuesday her teacher said to me “she isn’t turning her work in” and how “behind she is getting”, how “it is becoming a habit”, etc… I won’t even start on my frustration of Monday night, I had my reunion group… nothing new… every Monday for at least 3 years now! Tuesday, Ken has bible study, so it was just us. She was almost done with what is in her planner, so I left her alone, and I was not listening to MY doctor and was weed-eating the yard (the teen we hired did not come back as promised, and did a horrible job… Will not hire him again btw, didn’t want to this time, but K wouldn’t let me mow and I couldn’t even guilt the other person in the house to do it) Anyway, using the weed eater was not a problem, til I went to our south side of the front yard… to big of a hill and it hurt my toe! (trying to hold myself up… I had Ken’s croc on the surgery foot and my croc on the other, so toes were covered)

Anyway, my point, cuz I was way off track, she told me she was done except printing her grades and I had to approve the website (I Love my Mac), so I said she could play, and we would print the page after dinner. When I got in the house, I was looking in her folder and found MORE homework that she ‘forgot’ about. So, we spent the rest of the evening doing that. At 9:30, I reminded her she had’t had dinner yet. I had eaten while she was ‘playing’. Our neighbor’s gma was taking them chasing the moon since it was full. So, not only did she not get a shower, I was making her a sandwich at almost 10. Ken had gotten home and was hiding in the basement. Wednesday we ALL over slept, and she still moves just as slow! She gets very upset when her friends don’t wait, but if she doesn’t walk right out the door when they get here, they leave without her! (even when it is early!!) Then I get frustrated, cuz she gets upset.

Then in the afternoon I get a call from the school cuz she is ‘off’ at school and having issues, (she wrote on a paper that one of the para’s was Stupid… kids!!) cuz she is exhausted, which leads to more homework, and the cycle continues. Not to mention the fact she now has NO time for chores, the cats scream at me all day because their litter box is FILTHY, and it is self cleaning, but it is so full, it can’t do anything…. I gave up on her putting away dishes, because the sink was so full of dirty dishes, I couldn’t stand it anymore… and I did it… etc….

On Wednesday night K has bible study. She got her homework done, so she got to go, but was finishing the last 2 math questions and finishing coloring her map on the way up… it is a 15 minute drive to the Ministry Center, and I had to take her, even though I am still not allowed to drive! Then I asked Ken to get her dinner on his way to get her, so she could eat on the way home and get in the shower, cuz today is picture day. And he waits til after so she doesn’t have cold food. Since when does she care? So, at 10:30, she is heading to bed, cuz since when can K take a 5 minute shower… and Thursday is choir, Before school, which means getting up early. And then he wonders why I am putting in a call to my therapist before he leaves to go get her to see if they have an appointment for today!!!!

I am going to spend the night in Denver tonight, so I don’t have to get up so early tomorrow. I just need to get away!!! Women of Faith is this weekend. I so NEED this!

Today, K’s class got to finally do their mission. My dd’s teacher is involved in the teacher in space program. So, in conjunction with the Challenger Learning center (at a local middle school) they were in the year 2080 and saving a lost ship. They were wired to the learning center, pretending they were earth, and then proceeded to save some astronauts. K was on the transmission team. They finally put the article up on the news website.

Hopefully they will be in the paper tomorrow too K has been waiting so long for this!!! They have been planning all year!!

and the weirdest part is that it is NOT due to weather. People who don’t turn on TV or radio in the morning will have no clue and no reason to even look….

It is due to vandalism! They let all the air out of the bus tires… all 120 of them. At least they didn’t slash them… so it really only causes a loss of time for the people who have to go around and fill All those tires, but still. I was sitting her this morning trying to figure out how someone could cause that much damage because it is not in a secluded part of town anymore, like it use to be… it is next door to a Wal-Mart. That was before I heard what they actually had done. Now, if they actually pulled all the stems, that is a whole nother story… it would have been faster, but man, it will be a pain to fix and fill!!!

I called my boss at 6:45 this morning, figuring they would still have work, but to let her know… again, cuz who would have looked. I told her that I figured she would get a WHOLE LOT of phone calls!! I got 7 emails from the school district today. I think they wanted to make sure we knew!!! Ken had heard it on the radio… the first thing I did was pause and double check the date… I knew it wasn’t the 1st anymore!!

What a crazy day!!!

I have planned to write so many times this week and it just never happened. Life has been nuts. I got calls from the school twice this week… and it was to the point that my dh, the person who has his first degree in education, who has been adamant every time I talk about my friends who home school, that we would never do that… he said to me… do you think you could be organized enough to home school her? I almost fell over. I actually did go to the school and talked to the principle about moving her class… it has gotten that crazy. There are a few things with an Asperger’ child that you have to learn when trying to teach them. For one, I have learned that with K, even if you are not standing over the top of her, you CAN NOT have her in a different room when she is doing home work. With that being said, you don’t send her into the hallway when you expect her to get work done… or leave her in the class room when you are outside on duty, because 1. she is 10… and 2, she has ADD, and WILL get off task. Monday she started playing a game on the computer instead of doing her work. Gee, big shock… even for a kid without Asperger’s! And then on Wednesday, I get called that she is at the principle for calling kids names. Ok, I get there and expect butthead or stupid or something like that. No, she got sent to the principle… are you ready for this one… because she was calling every child that walked past her in the hallway MEGAN. HELLO??? Yes, that is right. And if he had taken 2 seconds to talk to her… the reason she was doing it is because a couple of the kids were talking about what it would be like if everyone had the name Bob… and one of those kids started calling everyone BOB… so she decided to start calling everyone Megan. I am sorry, that might be annoying, but that is NOT a reason to send a child to the principle.

And I spent the rest of the week trying to finish up cookie paperwork… with the majority of the troop profits still sitting in my garage. Anyone need cookies??? I REALLY need to get rid of them… not to mention the ones I had to pay for because I can’t get them delivered!! 

I need to go to bed. Night!! Oh, and guess what… my  CT came back saying I have a sinus infection. GEE, REALLY??? Isn’t that what I told the doctor when I went in there??? Might it have something to do with the fact that they cultured my nose and it came up MRSA, yet they didn’t treat it, even though I STILL had a sinus infection. When she asked me how long I have had it, I told her… since JANUARY 20!!! (I don’t think she believed me!!)

I have been teasing dh. See, although Colorado is actually considered a democrat state, the county I live in is definitely NOT. We will have 3 Republican precincts caucusing at our school… he has to go to a completely different school for his (and it isn’t even our HOME middle school it is the next one over from that). I said that is so the 10 of them can actually all get together in a middle area ::giggle:: In all the years I have been voting, tonight is my very FIRST Caucus. I actually had to ask how it works. I am kind of excited. Tonight is our normal Girl Scout leader meeting, and I told them that doing it against the Caucus was not a good idea, but since we are going to our Thinking day camp this weekend, they really need to meet with final instructions!! 

We have a 2 hour delay today. I am sure the kids have been really bummed while glued to the TV waiting to see if that 2 hour delay would change to a closure… but I think we are down to the final hour… and it has passed… so that also means I will be going out, cuz registration for the fall starts today, and my boss has pneumonia. (I feel so completely horrible for her. As bad as I have felt the last 2 weeks, she sounds so much worse… and being a single parent right now since dh was deployed is NOT easy being this sick!!! I keep offering to help!) Anyway, I am going to go in and help since my class isn’t happening (we cancel class with a delay)… and the gal who was going to help… her kids are in our wonderful main school district in town that NEVER delays or closes!!! (I mean we have to be snowed in under 6 feet of snow for them to even delay!!! Which is not fun for their northern schools… we are talking about 1500 feet difference between their southern most school and northern most school! The northern schools back up to our district and until this year, we would delay at a sneeze ::giggle:: I was actually surprised we got a delay after the lack of them the last few good snows we had!!)

It’s ok, I have a dentist appointment this afternoon and dd goes to the eye doctor (and I get to order my new glasses…. bifocals… I am getting old!!)

Sorry I haven’t been updating… still been horribly nasty sick… but finally decided I can’t sit home… so I went back to work after completing the first round of antibiotics. I will go post at BetterMe when I am done here.

Oh, and if anyone is interested in ordering Pampered Chef or having a catalog party… this months host special… 60% off your choice in the catalog!!! It’s a great deal!! 

Last… HELP!!! a quick WordPress question… I upgraded my program and have to MANUALLY put in my paragraph breaks, am I missing a button I need to have checked somewhere???? This is getting OLD!!!! (and it is on both blogs) or is this a MAC thing??? (but I am pretty sure I had to do it on the Piece of C#*@ in the basement too!!!)

This is our last week of school before ‘Winter Break’ Can you believe that??? I think that the people who planned out breaks are completely INSANE!!! I could have understood maybe starting next Wednesday, but come on… it would have been so much better having the time AFTER Christmas… when you have all your new toys to play with. Instead, we get a whole week to sit around and be board… yah, cuz being a mom, it isn’t like I am taking the dd shopping with me!

And then to top it off, we have a SNOW DAY today. So, I get to sit home and veg in the house… at least it is warm!!! Picture of the Peak should be pretty in the side bar though… providing you can see it… and the camera isn’t covered in snow!

K is in 4th grade this year, and in 4th grade they do a state report. I had been told K was behind. Ok, 5 paragraphs, a showboard, we can handle this. I ask that she bring stuff home for Thanksgiving break, so we can work on this while we are driving and her teacher says, ‘the kids have been working so hard, I just want them to take it easy.’ I then said to him, we have an 18 hour drive each way and you said she is behind, we can work on this while we are driving. Well, Mom did most of the driving, so nothing got done on her project.We were not even home 24 hours when we got the phone call about Dad, and the discussion about turning around and going back down to Texas. I told K that the board would have to be done BEFORE we left. K and I started working on the report and this whole time I am thinking, 5 paragraphs, one per area, not a problem. As we are working on this, K tells me that it has to be 1 per topic per area, which is 25 paragraphs. Wednesday, I go to the school to varify, and he teacher confirms that YES, it is one per topic. That night K and I spent 5 hours just on Geography. We did 5 paragraphs, and after typed, it was 2 pages. If we had put each of the pages on the board, the board would have been nothing but paper. I spent Thursday in tears. Ken had me send an email to the teacher, but since I was talking about her 504 and revisiting it, I included the guidance councelor. On his reply, the teacher cc’d the principle. The ball has obviously been dropped somewhere, but at this point, everyone is covering their butts and I feel like it is all my fault. Mr. G points out that he sent the papers home one weekend to be worked on and nothing got done. Well K never has homework on the weekends, so 1. I never ask her on Fridays, and 2, she isn’t going to volunteer that she has homework on a weekend. He tells us that he has told me that k is behind, but as I said in my reply, yes, but I had NO clue to what degree. In the parent packet that was sent home at the beginning of this project, that we had to read and return a signed sheet that said we had read it, it said 1 paragraph per topic and listed the 5 topics. I knew I was not crazy. I found that packet. No one communicated to us that they had increased the information required.K and I spent about 5 hours each night working on this project. It got to the point that she looked up the information, formed the sentences and I scribed the papers. When we sent in the geography rough draft, Mr. G. questioned K on her information and then sent me and email that she knew the information, but not where she got it. That is cuz it came from the internet and we hadn’t done the bibliography page yet. Turns out that not only do you have to do the bibliography page, but index cards for each source. K needed to be doing these cards as we were going. It took us almost an hour just to write down all the sources from the geography section onto the cards and what info came from each source. I started scribing on those as well.On Tuesday of this week I finally let K start on her board. I figured 4 of her topics were written and just needed to be finished typing, which the teacher was specific about K had to type it, and the fun part began.     She designed the whole thing. Mom came in with some of her fun Scrapbooking stuff and the 3D emerged K wanted the flower on the board, so Mom figured out how to make it. That is the one part that I think turned out the most cool. We had the board basically done by Thursday, and Thursday night we finished the last section. At least she saved the easiest for last… Tourist attractions.When we got to the school for the state fair on Friday morning, I don’t know if it was relief or being ticked off at how much more we had done than all the rest of the kids. The majority of the boards had 1-2 paragraphs per topic. Most of them had 1 page per section. K’s shortest secton was 2 pages, some were 3. Ken is really frustrated about this whole entire thing. We have a meeting on Tuesday to revisit her 504. Both the priniciple and vice principle, the teacher, guidance conselor, social worker, speech therapist and Ken & I will be there.I just know that this was too much project for the 1st project of the year. K did great on her research paper she did on an author last year. I might have helped her look something up once, but basically I didn’t see it til we got to the school when her report was done and on her desk. It isn’t that she can’t do it. I know that we sat and argued and bickered the whole time we were working on it, but that is because I have taught K since she was a baby to have her own opinion and she wanted things her way. Mom only argued when it was a gramatical issue. :)Anywy, she had her board and everything done and ready for the State Fair on Friday morning!   

I so can’t believe K starts 4th grade tomorrow. 4th grade was such a big deal in my life. I don’t remember a whole lot about my childhood, but I remember so much about 4th grade. It very well might be a coincidence, but I remdmber it with fondmess. That was the year I finally got into the Catholic school, and I’m not Catholic. I had my first boyfriend, and at the end of the year we moved cross-country. ok I have to do the rest of this tomorrow when I’m not on the phone!

So last night we finally got to the school (K and I waited for 45 minutes in the parking lot at Ken’s work waiting for him), and we get to the gym. Sure enough, K got the teacher that we were hoping for. Not sure why she wanted him, but I wanted him cuz he is a male… and I think she will do better with a male teacher. We were so excited… and we get to her classroom, to be greeted by the PE teacher. It turned out that her teacher couldn’t be at the back to school night… because he had been INVITED to the Space Shuttle launch. Is that cool or what?? I have a feeling she will be learning a LOT about space this year He was even seated down with the families. I have no idea if he was a finalist for the teachers thing or what, but it is really cool that not only is it her teacher, but even that it was a teacher from our school, let alone our district!!!

So, we all get to meet him on Monday when she starts school!!

For me anyway Yesterday was my last day of work for this school year! We really did have great classes!! I will miss my friends, but will enjoy the time off work!

I am not feeling well… Sometimes it really bits having asthma! But I will save that for Better Me. (not to mention the waiting game going on today!!!)
K had their field day yesterday, and came home crying. Apparently her class kept coming in 3rd the whole day (there are only 3 classes in her grade) and one of the other classes were being really POOR winners and teasing K’s class. I felt so bad for her. Then as we were talking, it turns out that she never really actually HEARD any of the teasing, she just heard the other kids in her class talking about it and one of her friends was crying.

I hope the teachers bite this one quickly!

Oh, and if anyone would like to order any of the Help Whip Cancer stuff from PC, then email me. I love that they do some pink items every May. $1 of each item sold goes to the American Cancer Society for Breast Cancer awareness and education. Oh, and if you would like my newsletter, please join my yahoo group.

Ok, I have been up since 4:30 again this morning… I swear the cats were trying for 3:30… but I didn’t give into that one!! So I have no excuse not to go make breakfast for everyone. Hey, I can use my new Waffle Iron they bought me for Mother’s Day!!!