Why I'm Not Worried

Two is my media consumer. He would watch movies, play video games and surf the Internet all day if I'd let him. He's never met a screen he didn't like. We've have to step in and make a host of rules about the time he spends with his two best friends, the TV and the computer (we've banned gaming systems altogether out of an abundance of caution), but strangely enough he doesn't object. I think he knows his habits are a little excessive and he welcomes the chance to take a break and try something different. To be honest, as much as I've griped about his media addiction over the years, I have to say it doesn't have me that worried. Because what he uses all that screen time for is insipration more than anything else.

These are two creations that he invented today:

Harry Potter's Potions Cabinet: Harry has no hair and an angry face because the potion he concocted made him bald.

Some Kind of Spaceship: Cobbled together from four or five Star Wars kits. The propeller at the back makes me think it floats, too. This might have been inspired in part by The Incredibles.

If this is why he loves movies so much, then I love them, too.

Happy Birthday to my Dad

It's my Dad's birthday today - the day we used to set up the Christmas tree when I was a child, and then have steak and baked potatoes, my Dad's favorite special meal. Here's to the man who spent 13 of his own birthdays wrestling with a cold, snow-covered Christmas tree just to make me smile.



Happy Birthday, Daddy. I love you.

Heard Around the House

One to his Dad while wrestling: "Hey, a little higher and you can kiss those grandchildren goodbye. Watch it."

One on buying a llama at Heifer International: "It's not every day you can buy someone an animal that can spit from 15 feet with pinpoint accuracy."

Two on the llama purchase: "But how are we going to pick who gets the llama?"

Me, at 9:45pm: "Hurry up - it's past your bedtime." One: "What is our bedtime, anyway?" Me: "8pm - has been since you were a litte boy." One: "So that's always been just a goal for you, I take it?"

Either child, when I get near the bathroom door they have left ajar while showering/dressing: "DON'T LOOK!" Yes, as I said, the door is always ajar. And this comes from the same two monkeys who continue to talk to me through the bathroom door every time I take a potty break.

Wounded

I feel beaten up most of the time these days, as if people and circumstances are contriving to put me through round after round with Manny Pacquiao. It makes me tired, all this fighting, especially since so much of it seems to be about whether I have the right or the ability to make good decisions. I'm constantly on the lookout for another wound, another verbal punch that is meant to tell me "I blame you for this" or "What you did caused it to all to go to hell."

I'm used to having my judgment and worth questioned, and I'm used to fighting back. I'm covered in wounds and yet, I'm still here. After all, I'm the one whose birth parents dumped her because 21 is "too young" to be a parent. I'm the one whose mother said "your fiance is possessed by demons", and I fought back and married him anyway, because it was my decision to make, not hers. I'm the one whose father said "I'm tired of all this shit" and walked away because I wasn't worth the trouble, and I still stayed alive. What I don't understand is why these attacks continue to come, over and over no matter how old I am. Why everyone around me inevitably reaches the point where they openly question everything about me. Where they wonder what the hell they are doing with this mulish, difficult woman who won't shut up and do what they want her to do. Where they begin to openly doubt my ability to do anything right. Sometimes that doubt is unspoken, but really, come on: I'm not stupid. If you really think I'm capable of making the right decision, why are you standing there fighting with me?

All I want is the benefit of the doubt. I just want someone to respect my judgment and my opinions, to think my decisions will be and are solid. I want someone to defend me, not attack me. And I don't have that. Not anywhere I look.

I'm getting pretty damn tired of getting beaten up, I have to say. Really. Freaking. Tired.

Belief

Two still believes in Santa as fervently as he ever has and none of us - not even One - has the heart to tell him the truth. When his friends tell him Santa is really just mom and dad he denounces them as heartless liars and goes along his merry, believing way.


God how I love this child!

What Did You Learn in School Today, Sweetie?

One's answer: "Today I learned in Health class that the dad of one of my classmates is in prison serving a life sentence. We've been talking about who we are and what we like about ourselves and what we don't, and when it was his turn he started talking about this and then he was just sobbing all of a sudden. It was awful."

Two's answer: "We did math, like, almost all day, even fractions. Because fractions are going to be on the STARR test and it's going to be a really hard test so we have to study a lot for it."

So I feel overwhelmed by One's answer. 11 is too young to deal with that. I don't want him to go to private school with kids whose parents have private jets at their disposal, but did he have to learn about "dads who go to jail" today? Really? Not that I blame that poor child for talking about it: I wouldn't want to do an "All About Me" project in Health class either if that was one of my talking points. But I'm feeling very much like a protective mama bear right now, and part of me wants to stuff One back into a shell for a few more years before releasing him into the wild.

Two's answer today is, in reality, the more troubling one (and yes, he frequently talks in onelongsentencelikethat. just in case you were wondering). This STARR test is the replacement for the state-wide TAKS, and most of what we've been told equates to "if you were commended on TAKS you'll barely pass STARR." For all of that, I don't give a rat's patootie about the damn test. I don't want anyone teaching anything because it's on some test written by a bunch of yahoos in Austin. I want my child to have a good, intelligent teacher and I want her to teach my child what a third grader should learn. Why does it have to be more complicated than that? Yes, I am aware that is merely a rhetorical question. But why does it have to be?

Fortunately for everyone, neither of the boys seem horribly upset about his day. It's just mom who got all stressed out. And that would be, of course, business as usual.

School Frustration

I have many moments in my life when I am grateful for the boys' schools. Our experience with our elementary school has been overwhelmingly good: a sensible, intelligent principal, good, solid teachers, an overall nice group of kids, and intelligent and involved parents.

Correspondingly, our experience with middle school so far has been more positive than negative. It's free, it's safe, most of the teachers are good (math right now looking like the only exception), the kids seem decent (from what One has told me - I have yet to meet any of them, as there are no opportunities to do so) and One has ridiculously good grades without an overwhelming amount of homework every night. But there are problems, and the problems are not ones that can be fixed. They are endemic to life in a 1,100 kid school in the 7th largest school district in the country. So far this year we have:

1. The lack-of-parent-communication problem. No fix for this, other than One has learned to borrow the office phone if he needs me (after I wrote every conceivable phone number in Sharpie in his go-everywhere binder, of course). Yes, Mom will fix it if it's broken. That's my job.

2. The lunch room problem, which consists of a 6th grade principal who thinks the proper punishment for loud and obnoxious students is to ban an entire third of the lunchroom from talking. Because he can't possibly find out who is making the noise: he's only interested in ferreting out the general direction from which it comes. I asked One if I could email this man about it, since One is not in the group making the noise, and he paled in fear. Please don't let Mr. W. learn my name. It will only come back to hurt me, because he's not a person you want to cross. Well, now: that's nice to know. I'm glad they've put him in charge.

3. The district-wide surprise testing, taking up an entire week. New this year: how fun. Four 2 1/2 hour tests, one on each core subject. The teachers weren't allowed to tell the students about it until today and the tests start tomorrow. We don't know if the teachers have prepared the students by covering the material beforehand, or even if the teachers will count this test as a grade (it's up to them individually). Just show up, pencil in hand, spend 10 hours taking tests you can't study for and live with the fact that you have no idea if it will affect your grade or not. Sounds just fine to me. And these tests are all in addition to the yearly Stanford and the new STARR (replacing the state-wide TAKS). How many weeks are we going to spend on standardized testing again? And who exactly does it benefit? Somehow, someone forgot to tell me the answers to those questions. Or maybe the answers don't exist. Who can tell?

4. The rumor-based problem: One's has a friend and fellow 6th grader who was given days of detention for filming a bus driver screaming at a fellow student. He took his video to the school administration and threatened to put it on You Tube; the threat may have been what earned him the detention instead of the filming. Nonetheless, you have to admit: it's disturbing. It makes me very glad I put in the extra effort to drive One to and from from school every day, rather than leave him to the tender mercies of a bus driver.

I know very well that, while these problems would be solved by a move to private school, others would crop up to take their place. Homework would double, for one. And there are other problems - perhaps mostly social ones - that I don't know if we are prepared to deal with. Never mind the cost: adjusted for inflation I make 25% less than I did when One was 6 months old, so spending $20,000 a year to educate him really isn't very palatable. Or possible. And even if it were, at this point we're stuck for another 18 months at the very least: you can't put together an application to the kind of private school One deserves to attend on a whim, nor do we have friends influential enough at those kinds of schools to make his acceptance possible without us jumping through all the standard hoops. We have made our public school bed, and likely we will lie in it until he goes to high school.

Overall, I still think we've made the right decision in choosing to keep One in public school. But if you think that once a decision is made I stop thinking critically, you have another thing coming.

Christmas Cards

Kristen Howerton at Rage Against The Minivan has a post on what to do with Christmas cards post-Christmas, and I thought since I hadn't posted on this in a long time I would put up a picture of what we do every year with all the beautiful photo cards we receive.

This:
So if your card is up there, please know that we stop and visit you frequently as we head in and out of the house through the kitchen door. And we all like that, very much.