Wednesday, September 26, 2007

The perks of parenting

It has been particularly insane around the Braun house for the last three weeks. I am still adjusting to the kids being back at school. It feels like I barely have a moment to myself. Andrew's dose of daily homework borders on child labor and trying to get Jake to sit down to complete a simple workbook page that he could do with his eyes closed is like pulling the tooth of a rabid giraffe. He does a lot of flailing around followed by heavy dramatic sighs about the injustice of being 6 years old. All the while Andrew sits Zen like at the kitchen table finishing his hundredth math problem.




In the last few weeks I have learned the necessity of adding art to everything school related for Jake. As long as I pull out the markers and say "let's draw a picture about this" he's into it. The art thing has actually worked wonders on his spelling ability. Last week it took him 4 days to learn his spelling words. This week it was only 2 days with the help of some crayon decorated flash cards. If only I knew this during the first two crucial weeks of school when I thought I might lose my mind entirely.




Apparently my kids are artistic, or so I was told at parent's night. I just about craped rainbows when Mr. Ash commented on how artistic Andrew and Jacob are. The joy that comment brought me borderd on insanity. It almost made up for the 15 minute humiliating public conversation about Jake's incessant thumb sucking and his odd habit of hiding under his desk when he doesn't feel like doing something. Due to a severe case of immaturity I almost laughed out loud at the very image of Jake hiding under his tiny desk thinking no one would notice a 40lb kid under there. A genius he is not. The only comment I could come up with was:

"wow…..our kid is weird."

I thought Aaron was also going to hide under a desk; that's how embarrassed he was. Later he told me to self edit. Note to self: when told your kid psychotically hides under desks come up with something more eloquent to say then "wow, weird!" I have a terrible habit of saying everything I think immediately without considering how dumb it sounds at the moment. Perhaps I have a mild case of Tourettes minus the swear words and mean comments (unless I have some booze in me). My brother's best friend growing up had tourettes and on a daily basis he called me Granny gray head fuckface until finally they medicated him and he decided to call me tinsel teeth instead. I actually preferred granny gray head fuckface because at least that had some originality.


Anyway, when we got home we spent a good half an hour discussing appropriate and inappropriate behavior with Jake and consequences along with drawing a list of family rules (because he is a visual kid). So hopefully the weird desk thing is behind us. I am sure he will pull some eqaully hysterical new stunts though. My kids sure do keep it interesting. I have a feeling this school year is going to have a lot of ups and downs.