Sunday, September 4, 2011

"Before": Desk Edition

Well.

I think we might just survive this school year. Two weeks in, and we are starting to settle into a routine of sorts. The boys are both enjoying school so far. I don't have enough good things to say about Dane's teacher. She lets Dane read as much as he wants to at school, as long as his work gets done. She doesn't own a cell phone. She appears to have a story to tell for everything, and Dane comes home telling fun stories about Mrs. W. She doesn't believe in homework. She is the mother of six children, and she doesn't assign homework because she thinks that family time in the evenings should be spent doing other things instead.

Amen and amen.

Aidan's surviving kindergarten after a somewhat rough first week of rule-learning and boundry-testing. Attitudes were adjusted, a sticker chart was hung on our fridge, and Aidan's getting the hang of this whole "school everyday and I have to listen to the teacher" thing. A prayer for the his darling teacher Mrs. S. would not be wasted.

The girls are LOVING school. LOVING it. Emerson is disappointed on days when she wakes up to learn that she is not going to school. Based on a sticker chart of her own that I found in the princess backpack, Harper's teachers have tentatively engaged in the futility of trying to potty train her. Good luck with that. Here's how potty training at home has gone so far:

Step 1: Harper pees in diaper.

Step 2: Harper immediately takes diaper off, leaving it where ever she may be.

Step 3: Naked Harper runs to Mommy, declaring that she needs to go potty.

Step 4: Hopeful Mommy plops Naked Harper onto potty, then watches as Harper does. nothing.

Step 5: Proud Harper claps her hands, proclaiming "Yay Harper! Harper go potty and get candy!"

Step 6: Proud Harper denied candy. Nothing in the potty=No candy.

Step 7: Proud Harper becomes Angry Naked Harper, throws her naked body on the ground and screams for a bit, refusing to have diaper reapplied.

Step 8: Naked Harper relents, diaper reapplied.

Step 9: See Step 1

Needless to say, neither one of us is completely on board with the whole potty training thing at the moment. I think I expected her to be easy to train, since she is a girl, but I think we'll just let her go at her own leasurely pace for a bit longer.

We've had a few ongoing projects around the Outnumbered House (besides potty training), and my the state of my garage is about to drive me crazy. The dirty floor. The paint splatters. The piles of junk making the tool bench inaccessable. I've decided that Mother Nature and I are in a bit of a standoff, and I refuse to have a Garage Cleaning Day until the weather dips below 95. And I am standing firm.

One of those projects?

Some friends of ours passed on to us their (now grown) son's desk. We have been looking for something for the boys' room, and I'm always psyched to score free furniture. She warned us that he had written on the desk in a few places:

Bring it on.

I've got a team of helpers that are not intimidated by stickers and graffiti.
And a can of red paint, leftover from another piece of bargain furniture.

The "after" picture will come later. As soon as I dig myself out from under the disaster that is my garage.

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