Kidland

Man, but kindergarten kids are annoying. And man, are they ever cute.

Volunteered at Justin's class today. I got to sort construction paper and get the kids to write their names on a card for the (retiring) principal, and take down the art work from the walls.

Cute moment: little girl came over to write her name. In sharp contrast to most of her classmates, who slowly and laboriously write out each letter with much fidgeting and their tongues sticking out of their mouths, this little girl wrote hers quickly and neatly, and got up to go. Problem: she'd written it right-to-left. I almost stopped her and asked her to write it properly, then I read what she'd written: HANNAH.

Now going off to cooking class, which Justin has been rhapsodying about for three days, then off to Nick and Oliver's. I just hope Justin's behaviour improves, as he's been having a Stitch day. Actually, he's been having a bit of a Stitch week, but let's not get into that. I survived three years of that behaviour 24/7; I can certainly survive a week.

However, Beatings are scheduled to commence once this week is over, if he's still being this charming. Or Daniel may set fire to him. We'll see.

I'm not actually a good mom...

... I just play one on lj.

Went to the cooking class and found out we'd signed up for the wrong class. Today's was for 3-5 year olds, who were going to decorate rice crispie squares with smarties. According to the leader, "Yeah, this happens a lot... here, don't go to the service desk to fix this, they'll just screw it up even further. I'll just leave a note for Shirley to sign them up for the 6-11 class on Saturday."

Had an hour before we were supposed to go see Nick and Oliver, so we came back home, looked through our Kids Can Bake cookbook, settled on a recipe (shortbread), mixed it, baked it, and were ready to go in 40 minutes. That's with 20 minutes of bake time.

Have I mentioned lately that I love having older kids? A couple of years ago it would've taken half the day just to pick a recipe and gather the ingredients, what with tantrums, diaper changes, spills, paper cuts, etc etc. And by the end, the kitchen would've looked like Taz the Tasmanian Devil went through it and we would've all been in tears.

Anyway. Went to visit Nick and Oliver. Oliver was in fine form, and as per usual reminded me of one of the true joys of having parent-friends: you get to see that their kids can be every bit as unpleasant, obnoxious, demanding, whiny, unreasonable etc as your own little darlings. And that No, it's not just your poor parenting that causes this, because hey, here's this other mom who's doing it all right and her kids are still monsters sometimes.

Near the end of the visit, Justin started to cry, complaining of an ear ache. He's been complaining on and off for the last few days, but it's never seemed serious. When questioned, he was vague and wanted to run off and play, so I thought nothing of it.

However. Now he was crying. So I cuddled him, told him we'd see the doctor tomorrow, patted him on the head... and he kept crying.

OK, the doctor's office happens to be on our way home, we don't we stop there?

Oh, yes, Justin said, and kept crying.

Got to the doctor's. Waited for over an hour, with Justin whimpering or crying most of the wait.

Got in. Doctor took one look in his ears and prescribed amoxicyllin, a lot of it, because he's got a raging infection. It's probably been there for days. It just might explain why he's been such an impossible little cuss for the last several days. And perhaps if I'd been a little more observant and proactive and less annoyed, he might've had it dealt with earlier.

::facepalm::

----
Arthur: Days like this, I wish I'd listened to what my mother told me.

Ford: Why, what did she tell you?

Arthur: I don't know, I wasn't listening.

(Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)