Ohgod I love my flist.

After my forlorn plea from yesterday, I received lots and lots of help and lovely links and sites and what do you know, I'm almost all done Australia (thank you so much, sangerin!) and am well on my way to being done the US (I love you klostes, bandgeek and sidravitale!) Just need to tighten stuff up, work on the overall flow, and fill in the spaces that currently say things like "Subsequently, the Supreme Court ruled in Atkinson Trading Co., Inc. v. Shirley et al. that [fill it in once I understand what the hell they're talking about], stating among other things that Montana's exceptions are not triggered in this case [WTF does Montana say?]." Because I don't think my prof will be impressed by that kind of language.

Hm. Hang on...

"Subsequently, the Supreme Court ruled in Atkinson Trading Co., Inc. v. Shirley et al. that bad things happened to tribal sovereignty, stating among other things that Montana's exceptions, which I do not understand, are not triggered in this case."

There! Done! Wow, that was easy.

::seething fury::

DO NOT WAKE US UP!!

ABSOLUTE SILENCE UNTIL 10:00

NO EXCEPTIONS

IF YOU WAKE US UP, I DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE PUNISHMENT WILL BE, BUT IT WILL BE VERY, VERY, VERY SERIOUS!!

***

Like just about every parent in the world, I think, we have had problems with the kids waking us up too early in the morning for years. For the first six years or so (ie, until our youngest turned 3) we normally just had one parent (mostly me) wake up to be with the kids so that the other parent could sleep in.

In the last few years, we've had morning privileges in place to encourage them to let us sleep on weekend mornings. They get to watch TV and play computer games on Chris' laptop. Since they normally don't get to do either, it's a real treat for them and keeps them away from us. Every few months one of them (usually Justin) is too loud or one of them (usually Daniel) comes to wake us up for something that isn't an emergency (eg, the laptop isn't working) and gets in big, big trouble. Privileges are taken away - eg no laptop at all this weekend, no TV for two days. We go over the rules and the reason behind them (mostly that I'm an extremely light sleeper and the smallest noise wakes me up for good) and the behaviour goes away until the next time.

For some reason that must have something to do with the fact that the universe hates me, in the last few weeks Daniel has been coming upstairs to wake us up over nothing at all. The TV isn't working. Justin's bugging him. Where's the oatmeal?

We've had longer and longer talks. We've taken away more and more privileges. We've stressed the importance of letting us (ie, me) sleep during exam/essay time. We've pointed out that the courses I take cost somewhere between $700-800 each, and will help determine what kind of job I can get once I'm done. We've become vague in our threatened punishments, stating that they will have to be worked out on a case by case basis and will involve more than just a two-day ban on a few privileges, because this is really, really, really important and he really, really, really needs to get that.

My 100% paper is due tomorrow. The gruntwork is done. It's mostly written; now I need to go through for grammar, spelling, and flow, and make it sound pretty.

I went to bed at 4AM last night, because I was determined to finish the first draft so that I would only have to work on the nebulous "stylistic feel" part of it today. I figured I would sleep about 6-7 hours and wake up ready to devote all my mental energies to verbal prettiness.

This morning, at 8:30AM, Daniel popped into our bedroom and trilled "It's 8:30, I really think you should be awake now!"

Hence the sign above, which has been printed off and taped to our bedroom door, his bedroom door, and his wall. He has also lost all computer and TV privileges for one month.

We have also pointed out that although our rule has always been "No waking us up unless it's an emergency", the rule has now been changed for Daniel. It is no NO WAKING US UP, EVER. We have left Justin in charge of deciding whether or not something is an emergency, because although he is 7 and Daniel is 10, we trust his judgment far, far more than we trust Daniel's. So unless his little brother says so, Daniel is barred from going anywhere near us in the morning.

I am so damned tired and slow right now. I'm guzzling caffeine desperately, but my mental faculties are not what they should be and I'm too angry at Daniel to be able to focus properly. If I believed in corporal punishment, I would've used a belt so hard he wouldn't be able to sit for a month. Hell, I'm even wondering if this might not be a good time to rethink my whole anti-corporal-punishment parenting belief - or at least set it aside for five minutes.



No, I'm not actually serious about that last. I did make him cry, though, and right now I don't feel terribly guilty about doing so. I might, later. I might not.

Expecto Patronum

Hee... Chris is reading the bedtime story to the boys, which, as per usual whenever he puts the boys to bed, is whatever Harry Potter book they're on. Right now it's Prisoner of Azkaban, and I'm getting a warm glow of nostalgia, because the scene he's reading is the Gryffindor-Slytherin Quidditch match, which was the first HP thing I ever read to them. Discussing books v. movies, I had told them that although movies were far more exciting than books, books gave you more details and there were lots of cool things in books that usually got cut out of movies. So they asked if there was any Quidditch that had been cut out of the HP movies, and oh my, yes, there was.

I read them the scene Chris is reading now, all three of us in the back yard on a nice spring day. And at the end, when Gryffindor won, they were so excited they jumped up and down and yelled HOORRAAAY!!! until I thought the neighbours were going to come and complain :) :)

Actually, I think I wrote an entry about it... yeah, here it is. Wow, almost two years ago to the day.

Justin says he remembers it too. It's a nice memory :) :) :)



Edit: Oh yeah, and I no longer want to kill Daniel. I'm still a bit cheesed, as today's writing has not gone smoothly and the essay's not great, but I no longer feel a deep need to murder him slowly and painfully. More like just make him really uncomfortable for a while. Perhaps I'll go into his room and wake him up whenever I'm done writing. Which will probably be pretty damn early in the morning. I'll tell him "I think you should be awake!" and see how cute he finds it.