May day
I knew Isaac’s book report assignment was going to be a bad one for him as soon as I saw the rubric: five drawings to represent photos for the non-fiction book he read — an awful lot of painstaking realistic drawing for a kid who doesn’t enjoy drawing anything other than Nintendo characters. But it’s worse than I thought: the pictures are supposed to be 4″x6″ and fit on the page the wide way, but Isaac, who was already in tears of frustration from trying to draw one of the photos from the book (a wolf playing with a man — it looks good to me, but he thinks it’s horrible,) had chosen a vertical picture and ignored the specified dimensions — his was a wavy 4″x3″ or so. I told him where to find a ruler and suggested he could add a fence or wall on the sides of the vertical pictures to fill in the spaces on the side and fit them in the wide way, but these suggestions were anathema to him; the original aspect ratio of the pictures must be represented in scrupulous accuracy. I went so far as to use the ruler to draw the rectangles on the pages for him myself, which elicited more tears, a “Don’t I get any say in the decisions?!,” and a slammed door (he forgot the baby was napping in that room — he did come right back out to do his storming elsewhere once he’d realized his mistake.) Also, the rubric says that, among other things, the fake photo album/book report will be graded on its being “colorful and tidy,” but the photos in his book are in black and white, and he thinks that it would be a breach of integrity to add any color to them.
He’s now erased all the rectangles I drew. And is reading Dilbert.
Meanwhile, Mabel was brought to tears by my cruel edict that cleaning up from playing with the Play-Doh did, in fact, mean sweeping up all the crumbs, and no, just because I was the “only one who could see them” did not mean I should have to finish the job for her. Then she couldn’t find the dustpan, and everyone knows you can’t sweep up crumbs without a dustpan, and oh, she forgot she left it there on the counter, and anyway it’s not fair that Rose doesn’t have to do it.
Rose is recuperating on the couch, with three fresh band-aids where she skinned her knee and shin falling down outside.
Henry, who mercifully did not wake up in spite of the door slamming (I spoke too soon — there’s a wail) sneaked a mature dandelion in from outdoors before his nap, which I did not discover until my action of lifting him onto the changing table crushed it, causing a fleet of fluff bits to coat his and my shirts and embed themselves in the layer of snot on his face. Tip: next time this happens to you, a lint roller works well on the shirts. (The face can also be scrubbed clean, although you’ll still find residual peaches from his lunch under his chin later.) Then when I put Henry in his crib and was looking for his binky, I found a several-days-old sippy cup of milk under his bed, but I couldn’t reach it. So I left it there.
I’m, meanwhile, not feeling well this afternoon and have been trying to rest. I guess I’m going to have to let Isaac turn in his pseudo-album with irregularly-sized, tastefully-artistic black-and-white “photos,” although I’m tempted to make him take a note from me to his teacher that says, “I told him the right way to do it, so this is all his fault; just go ahead and dock his grade because he totally deserves it.” (That would be such a “cool mom*” thing to do.)
————-
I just remembered there are new episodes of The Office and Lost tonight. I hope they’re good ones.
————-
*Okay so I thought I was being funny linking to that Build You a Rainbow video, but in doing so I made the mistake of actually listening to it — and went and made myself cry. I guess with the correct youthful conditioning, even uncool living moms can get sentimental about cool, football-playing dead moms. Now, come to think of it, if I count Rose after she fell down and Henry when he realized he was about to be put in a nap, we’ve all cried this afternoon.
May 10, 2008 at 2:45 am
haha-you _cried_ at that?! Ah well. Maybe if I was a mom I’d cry too
May 10, 2008 at 11:32 am
Charlie’s Mom has always reduced me to blubber.
May 10, 2008 at 2:29 pm
You may not realize that they used to play this with an accompanying film strip in Sunday School and Seminary, Lili — hence the youthful conditioning I mentioned (not that I didn’t already think it was cheesy and corny back then, because I did — and it didn’t used to make me cry, I don’t think.) My wildly fluctuating maternal hormones do probably help.
Another one that dates to the same era and elicits the same response from me, (but warrants it better,) is that story (which also used to be depicted in a slideshow) about the little boy whose sister had a rare blood type and needed a blood transfusion, and he was the only matching blood type they could find. When asked to donate his blood, he readily agreed. Afterwards, everyone was celebrating the success of the procedure, but he was sitting quietly in a corner, and when approached, he asked “when do I die?”
(Yup, it works — there I go again.) (I do think this one still makes the rounds, if in text version rather than with a slideshow.)
May 10, 2008 at 3:37 pm
I was sure from the first three chords of that song that it was an LDS seminary/sunday school number. Delightful. It doesn’t make me cry, but then, I watch R-rated movies (high fives!).
Isaac’s perfectionism I completely relate to. Oh the frustration! Oh the impossible demands. Oh it takes me back. I wish I’d have known how okay it was.