He Might As Well Of Brought Home Calculus. Or Meth.

Nothing is scarier than a 4-year-old boy with scissors. Except maybe, MY 4-year-old boy with scissors. Something about his genes armed with sharp, pointy things just scream "CUT YOUR FACE OFF, but it was an accident". See?

My uterus is trembling. It thinks he's coming back for revenge. Eek. Ers.

This year, as we progress into more Real School-esque Activities (note: as opposed to last year when it was just Structured Coloring), Conner has "homework". And yes, it's exactly how you remember the early days of homework.

Conner comes home with a work sheet. I pour vodka into my eyeballs. We sit at the table. He gets frustrated cutting out a straight line for the monkeys. I do a line of straight ground coffee bean with a rolled up piece of construction paper right off his syllabus (going to be a long night).. He screams because his number 2 (not that number 2) doesn't look like it's supposed to. I debate boarding school.

You know - EXACTLY like you remember homework.

Today, he brought home the Glue Suitcase.
Holy Moley, he brought home glue.

Let me tell you how much patience Conner has for this project:
*&@(#%$%@* ? m;*!@ #%!@&p;^$#(@JIUNY&  ^*;!@^#()P _!)(@#_)(+! +_($#&a!?

Understood?
Good.

Which, I have about 2.3 characters more than that, so I TOTALLY get it.
The instructions:

"Glue is very difficult for your kindergartener" - well, hot damn, why am I paying you? And all these instructions! I figured if they are calling the glue bottle "the baby", I could say "don't squeeze the baby" without getting a "WTF?" look from Conner. Which would make me WRONG. He DID give me the WTF Look and I asked "do you call this 'the baby' at school?" to which he replied "that's glue".

Oh, right.
Yeah.
FAIL.

And isn't gluing supposed to be fun? Who even USES liquid glue anymore? Don't they still have those glue sticks? This is akin to learning cursive writing. Who the f writes in cursive? We should learn our name in cursive and that's IT.

I remember fondly making glue puddles on my desk. Where's the opportunity to do that? Well, it's most certainly not in these instructions.

"Make skinny lines of glue close to the edge, not right next to the edge..." FOR SERIOUS? I get it, yes. But when I explained that to Conner it SOUNDED LIKE DUTCH.
"No, not in the middle, your teacher said for it to be close to the edge. Ok, that's ON the edge, a little farther out... no... that's still really close to the edge... farther in.. EP! That's kinda the middle again..."

And that's when you just ask "could you practice lefty loosy, right tighty for me?" - "now don't watch as mommy sniffs the glue."

Just be glad I didn't blog about having him learn to sign his name in his own blood drawn from last week's scissor suitcase. THOSE cherished memories will be forever in a scrapbook somewhere on my coffee table.... Ahhhhhhhh....

Live Blogging ISH of "Parents Night" and Conner's "Meet My Teacher"

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Now back to our regularly scheduled bloggy blog:

Last night was, wait... let me go find the paper so I can call it by its proper title... ah - "Parents Night". Which should really be more appropriately titled any of the following:

•  "Parent Night" (not plural seeing as children are not welcome and they do not provide daycare and we live in a city heavy with military and people who don't have arm fulls of family to help keep the kids, so it ends up with one parent being left in the dark...)
  
•  "We Do Not Believe That You Will Read The Manual, So We Are Going to Read It To You As Well As Degrade You About Not Reading It on Your Own" Night
  
•  "Let's Keep You Out Till 8:30 On A School Night" Night
  
•  "Sit in Tiny Chairs" Night
  

OR

• "Meet the Teacher" Night.
  

For PR reasons, I'd recommend the last one. Although the second is soooo dang catchy, but we are all about saving ink, right?

So, they basically read this manual to you a-la "SATs during school" style. You know "do not open this booklet till I say the time has begun. This is a timed test so please keep track of your progress. It is now 10, this test will begin at 10:05 and lasts for 25 minutes - MEANING it will end at 10:30 because DUH - you can't do math, which we will learn from the math portion of this test. Now.... let me read you 3 whole paragraphs on how to properly fill in a bubble with a pencil, because we don't test for that..."

And then they read it.

And it's great.

Here's a snip it of internal dialogue from about 2 minutes in:

Me: "Why won't Twitter pull up...."

Them: "No one reads the manual, everyone should read the manual, let me highlight what is in the manual since we just don't believe you people... Ok, parking... is..."

Me: "Oh! Score! FB is working..."Amanda is not paying attention... should I or shouldn't I read the manual..."

Them: ...oh... who knows what they were saying...

Me: "Wow... the weather should be stormy tomorrow through Friday... 90 again on Saturday but then back into the upper 80s. Not bad... Let's check on Twitter again"

----

You know God is trying to tell you something when you show up AN HOUR EARLY for this meeting AT CHURCH. It was good 'me' time though, and I managed to keep it together. Which is good.. seeing as I've been "keeping it together" for the last day + by doing anything I can get my fingers on. 

And then when I thought I might lose it? Another mommy friend from Conner's class last year came walking around the corner. She was an hour early, too. Weird.

----

Conner's teacher is the "loving but stern" type - exactly what he needs! She reminds me of my mom. She seems to know what is typical childlike behavior and what needs to be dealt with in a firm manner. I appreciate ALL people like this in Conner's life. He needs it round-the-clock.

At one point she said "I won't call you if it is typical childhood disobedience, I will call if the child is habitually bad..."

I thought "Should I tell her I have free nights and weekends?"

----

They use a red light system: green =  good, yellow = warning, red = Conner.

----

At this age, they start doing specific bath room times. I have NEVER agreed with this logic. There is no other time than in school that you are told outright "Frickin HOLD IT" and for children? This must be especially hard. If you have to go, then go! I do understand not letting them abuse it though.

Think about it - yes, there are times you have to hold it in Big People World - but you are AN ADULT and can DO SO. In middle/high school? I risked many a pair of pants because of those retarded rules.

"Luckily", I got Conner out because of his medication which can make him go from "no" to "NOW" in a few seconds - easily.

----

The teacher had us draw a picture of our children for them to see on Friday (first full day) (yeah, I know.. she made us COLOR). Here's mine:

Here's what I considered:

----

Mrs. Conner's Teacher gave me her email address. I told her I could write her a novel about Conner's behavior issues as well as everything we have tried and also his medical crap right now. 

I momentarily contemplated referring her to my blog archives....

----

They use a book called "Writing Without Tears"

I call that "typing".

----

She said the parties will be "stress-free". I've never THOUGHT of bringing vodka. Good call, Mrs. Conner's Teacher, GOOD CALL.

----

Today, after our "hour run" of school (also known as: WASTE OF TIME), I overheard a mother calling her son. She yelled out "Quarter!" "Quarter come here". I was right beside her. There's very little chance this was a mistake.

----

He got a slap bracelet. Apparently, they are no longer considered "lethal".

Yeah.... Interesting Isn't The Word.

The next two weeks of summer should be interesting.

And by "interesting", I mean I am both busy and not and I really REALLY hope Conner doesn't take on that Special Form of Monster that he does so well because people, he's got 2.5 weeks till school starts back. That's approximately 2.4 weeks too far away.

Well, that's kinda a lie.

I hate yanking him out of bed, shoving food in front of him, and throwing clothes on him, only to rush him off to school and then wait an entire 2.5 hours to go get him. Just seems like a lot of work for nothing. But, it's not "nothing" it's "preschool" and not just ANY pre-school, but Pre-4. That's practically college, right?

Yup.

And this year, I get to do it 3 times a week instead of two. I'm not complaining. Yet.

So this time last year, I was having some wishy-washy feelings about him starting school for the first time. TOTALLY justifiable as he turned out to be exactly what I was afraid of - "that kid". That annoying one in Time Out for un-Godly amounts of time. The one that does time in the Principal's office when - get this - they don't even technically HAVE one because it's CHURCH and Conner is acting up like THAT in GOD'S HOUSE. For shame, kid, FOR. SHAME.

You don't just have to answer to me, Conner, but God might be a little ticked off that you knocked over the last 3 people in your path and planned a massacre with your sidekick to shove the entire play table into the wall throwing 6 to 8 of your classmates into last week's coloring project. Brought to you by the letter "F". Yup, the letter "f"...

Ya know... no pressure to straighten up your act kid. I did get you baptized, but that's only going to last for a bit. I'm not sure on God's age limit for "youth", but I get the feeling you are on his "special circumstances" list.

Oh that's horrible of me to say.

Conner's on MY "special circumstances" list.

So, yeah.

Next week is his first pulmonology check-up - yup, it's been almost 3 months! That's a totally separate update/post in itself, which will OBVIOUSLY happen post-checkup (because I'm known for my follow through on my blog, right? stop laughing. seriously.).

I get the pleasure of driving to Birmingham all by my lonesome and then driving back the same day. It occurred to me to stay overnight, but I positively despise packing and unpacking for ONE FREAKING night by myself. Especially when said night will last all of 2 hours before bed time...

That breaks up the week pretty well.

Then, next week I might have a mini-stroke because my calendar is wide open and it'll probably be 145 degrees outside OR tornadoe-ing OR 42 and raining. WHO KNOWS!? Then again, I'm implying that my children enjoy playing outside. Strike that. CONNER doesn't enjoy playing outside. Chase is WAY busy eating sand. From the sand box. Where the spiders live.

I rock at life.

Chase just likes to rock:

(Hehehe. He likes my iphone/ipod.)

The week after that is Conner's first day of school. This one hour gig that I didn't freak out about at all last year. Yeah....

Guess summer's over?

(When's September?)