So, the weather is finally starting to get nice around here, though now I'm faced with a dilemma: do I open up the house to air it out, keeping in mind that I'm ridiculously allergic to oak tree pollen and the oak trees are doing their sexy-time thing, or do I keep the house closed up, and continue what will forever be known as 2013, the Year of the Stomach Bug? Today the choice was air it out. My eyes hate me. But if the young people in this house stop puking, it's worth it. I think.
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I finally got rid of Das Boot. I spent a total of 22 weeks in the two versions of the boot. Just about half a pregnancy. It was not the most fun time of my life. But I keep reminding myself, at least I can walk. Though honestly, it's called a non-union fracture for a reason.
Today my physical therapist called it "shifty." So apparently I have a criminally suspicious ankle. The therapist taped it up today to keep it from sliding around when I walk and it's made a huge difference. Now I'm regretting that I didn't get surgery. A couple of pins or screws and healing within a couple of months would have been certainly preferable to this, methinks. We'll see after a couple of months of PT. My running days are over forever, though. I told the kids if we're ever chased by a bear, I'm the bear snack and they should just keep running. This ankle will never be the same.
It seems all four kids have inherited my feet and ankles, as we just had to buy orthotics for all of them (what are the odds of THAT?). Maybe we can just wait til they perfect bionic ankles, and get a family group discount on new ones?
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My dishwasher has been broken since before we went on vacation last summer, and I've been stuck doing all the dishes by hand ever since. I'm not good at it at all, we used probably five times as much water as we use with the dishwasher.
Since I've been hampered in my ability to go up and down the stairs, BigDaddyFish has been doing the laundry (we have a four level townhouse, bedrooms are two floors up from the machines in the basement). Two months ago, the washing machine broke, and BDF fixed it the following weekend. Trout asked, "How come we still haven't gotten a dishwasher but the washer was fixed right away?" I laughed and told her because Daddy was doing the laundry. If he'd been doing dishes, we'd have a new dishwasher. But she must have asked him about it, because last week we bought and installed my precious. I lurve this dishwasher. I don't have to rinse anything, except apparently scrambled egg residue, and it gets it cleaner than our last dishwasher ever did, even with soaking. It's so quiet that I have to bend over and put my ear near it to hear whether it's on or not. It's amazing and if you need a dishwasher, right now I'd recommend this one. We'll see how it holds up to our abuse over time, though. We run it at least once a day, sometimes up to three if I'm doing a lot of cooking. We've been in this house just about 14 years and this is our fourth or maybe fifth dishwasher.
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Sunny brought home a paper from school that asked them to complete the sentence "If I found a pot of gold I would...." Her response? "Donate it to a museum and go on with my life."
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Sunny was accepted to the same magnet program Little Man has been attending for the last two years. Last year was wonderful for him, with a ton of growth on his part. This year, though, there is a teacher who, well, is probably burned out. And she isn't even nice. It's clear from her behavior that she doesn't like either my kid or me.
He threw up in class a couple of days ago, and when I asked him why he didn't just run across the hall to the bathroom he said, "I didn't know I was going to throw up until I did. But I also had to make sure [teacher] saw me so she wouldn't think I was faking it." When I came to pick him up he got to the car and then told me he didn't have his binder or his books to do his work. I went back in to get them, and when the teacher came to give them to me, she basically shoved them in my hands and walked off without saying anything, not even "Hope he feels better."
He was sick a lot of the year and missed a lot of school, not one big chunk but a few days here, a couple there kind of thing. It turns out he probably had mono like Nemo did, but we didn't find that out until Nemo got mono himself. I think she thinks he's a malingerer. And while he is a horrific procrastinator, and he doesn't like to work on assignments that he doesn't like and there have been many of those this year, he does good work once the assignment and he "click."
I don't know what she'd have me do - you can lead a boy to his paper and pencil and take away all electronic devices, but you can't make him write. He has to want to do that himself, and frankly he'd rather be taking apart a computer and putting it back together again than writing an analysis of a book that he hated reading or writing about how he got a particular answer in math. He hates to write, though he writes well once he does it, but he has to write with everything in this program.
I have no problem with the teachers failing him if his work isn't up to snuff, if he misses deadlines or forgets to turn stuff in; in fact, I want them to do it. He needs to learn the consequences of his choices and I'd rather he do that now, in fifth grade, than his junior year of high school when the stakes are so much higher. I'm not going to do his work for him, and I'm not going to be there his whole life to keep him organized and on task. They seem to think this is weird.
So I don't know if I want to go through dealing with this teacher all over again with Sunny. Now, Sunny's a different kid. She enjoys doing homework. I almost never have to tell her to do it, and she loves writing. She's more organized and persistent and can handle the heavy workload better than Little Man has, and is much better about advocating for herself if she doesn't know something or has a question. She's not shy in any way. I know fourth grade will be fantastic for her; one of the fourth grade teachers (there are two for each grade, and they work as a team) is one of the best teachers I've ever seen and I've seen many. But I feel like the fifth grade teachers will judge Sunny based on Little Man's performance.
I don't know what we'll do. We'll think, and discuss, and pray, and make what we feel is the best decision for Sunny.
Sometimes this grownup stuff is hard, ya'all.