9/22/09 Silliness

Katrina completely recovered, and so far, no one else has gotten anything. Whew!

We all have a lot of work ahead of us. Gabriel's "Star Of The Week" thing is due Monday (and a parent "or family friend" is required to attend, as the information sheet I finally got today says), plus his book report that we're way behind on. And Julian had a "book report" of sorts to do tonight too! They call it a "story map" for kindergartners, but it turned into a whole lot of drawing. He really wanted to finish it tonight though, and did.

My irritation over the demand the school places on a parent to do a child's schoolwork is boiling over. It's one thing to have to help so much with homework at home, but having to miss work or find childcare at a particular time set by the teachers to attend the classroom during schooltime is going too far. I'm pretty sure that all I will accomplish by complaining is getting myself marked as an annoying parent, and the principle of the thing will be lost.

Still, I'm prepared to make a point with the best point-maker I have: Katrina I'm thinking I'm going to push to do it on a Tuesday, and she'll just have to join us. Parent-teacher conferences, sick children and any number of other situations cause us to miss work too, but this is in a different category. Indeed, I need the margin of error for those very situations.

We got a little comic relief tonight from Katrina. She was having fun "dancing" around her "stage" (the spread-out blanket), singing her own Muffin Man song, with the electronic piano playing completely unrelated music. The really fun thing about this scene, which I didn't get on camera, is Gabriel's delight in her silliness.

Julian soon destroyed the moment, putting his hand over my camera's lens, and stepping all over her blanket stage and messing it up, making her cry. That brat!

I hope that when she starts first grade (only 3 years away!), that I will have complete work-related flexibility to be there for her, and the boys, at school. But I'll still object to excessive impositions.

9/22/09