Friday, September 30, 2011

Things that fall from the sky

The start of school this year has gone really well for us.  Supplies were found, schedules worked out nicely, teachers are good.  But my boys have still been a little forgetful with what they need to take with them to get out the door.  I told them they each had one beginning of the year pass.  I will bring things one time this year, and that's it.

Benjamin has already used his passes for his trombone and dance shoes.  He only has lunchbox and backpack left.

Caleb hasn't forgotten anything yet, which gives me hope for him in the world.  Seriously.  This is miraculous.

Nathaniel has been hyper-vigilant about packing things up the night before to make sure he's all ready to go.  Nathaniel is all about doing well in school, and in our particular school, 4th grade is the year where much is required of students.  Nathaniel is loving it!  Anyway, the other day I realized he'd left his assignment book at home.  4th grade teachers are very serious about the assignment book.  I have to sign it each night after checking to make sure that Nathaniel did indeed complete all the assignments.  I decided that even though Nathaniel hadn't called, I would be nice and drop it off at the school for him so he wouldn't get a missed homework.  I remembered to grab it on my way out the door for my spinning class, I then proceeded to park illegally in front of the school and sprint it in all the while thinking how grateful Nathaniel would be.  When I got into the office, a teacher that we know well offered to drop it off at his classroom for me since she was heading down that way.  I thanked her, sprinted back across the lawn (no parking ticket) and made it to my spinning class only a couple minutes late.

All day I was thinking about how appreciative Nathaniel would be when he got home that day.  I met him at the school playground at the end of the day.  We chatted for a minute about his day and finally when he didn't mention the assignment book, I impatiently said, "Well?  Aren't you going to thank me for bringing you your assignment book?"

This was our conversation:

Him: What?  You did?  I thought it just fell from the sky.

Me: [beat] Seriously??

Him: Well, I thought I'd forgotten it, but then I went to music and when I got back, it was sitting on my desk.

Me: So your book falling from the sky seemed like the most likely explanation to you??

Him:  shrugs shoulders


Me:  Arg!!  I was being nice.  I risked a parking ticket to bring you that book!  Mrs. Laughman walked all the way down to your class to bring it to you!

Him:  Oh.  Well, that was nice.

Me:  realizing he's all done with this conversation  Oh, go play with your friends!

Him: trots happily off to play with his friends




No more niceness from me!  They will need to call and beg first before I bring them stuff at school from now on!  

Nathaniel meets Scrabble




Todd and I have been playing a lot of Words with Friends lately.  Often the kids are hanging over our shoulders while we do this, so they've learned the rules of the game.  The other night for family night, Todd was out of town, so I decided that I would teach the boys how to play honest to goodness Scrabble.  I anticipated helping the boys along, since their spelling isn't always great.  After the first two turns, Nathaniel announced he needed no more help.  He then proceeded to absolutely kill Benjamin and me.  I mean KILL.  Like he figured out that if he had a "q" he needed to figure out how to get that q on the triple letter square.  And he did.  And then he figured out how to layer the words on top of each other so he was getting credit for for 4 words at a time.  I think I only recently started doing that.  Apparently, he's inherited Todd's Scrabble abilities.  Not mine.


I think I'll just play with Benjamin from now on.