Georgia Clay Knees

This is the second morning in a row I've woken up with my ears all stopped up. I'm a little sneezy, too, so I'm just kind of waiting for the bomb to drop. A lot of the kids have bits and pieces of colds, too. Cold and flu have always made for great adventures at our house, but now that the big kids are in public school, I'm concerned about them keeping up with their school work.

I think we're getting used to the new work load. Keri Lynn is definitely getting a handle on her work. Even though she continually complains about how "ridiculous" it is that there is so much homework, she comes home with one A after another. I have to sit on Kristofer some to get him to do his homework, but he does fine as long as he's paying attention. He's gotten the gamut of grades -- As to Fs. I won't know how he'll do this semester until he's had a few more weeks under his belt. Kathleen is bringing home Bs, for the most part, and will probably do even better as her writing improves -- I'm really happy with her progress considering that she's been placed in sixth grade but was doing third grade material last year. Her sole motivation? Lunch detention. She's mortally afraid of it. That's when a kid has to sit through the lunch period with the teacher and doesn't get the normal lunch fare, but instead gets a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, water and fruit. Kathleen told me that a lot of kids have been getting lunch detention, even some of the girls, because they're not doing their homework.

I'm still trying to get paperwork done for the younger kids to begin their school year next week. Good grief, the paper goes on forever. And I'm still without the van, so I have to fax or mail stuff. This is the fourth week now without wheels, and I'm starting to twitch. Need. Car. Now.

I've got a lot of stuff to do this week, but because it's kind of like a last week before the younger kids get serious about school, I don't WANT to do ANYTHING. This is bad. Very bad. I send the kids off to play hoping that a neighbor will feed them lots of snacks and they'll be too stuffed for dinner. I find myself thinking, "Now, Kody, do you REALLY need to go out for a potty break? Can't you wait until we finish watching this movie? Kids, you want meals? What about pizza again tonight! Or popcorn! Better yet, crackers and bananas -- no fuss, no muss. Clean clothes? Highly overrated! Start a new trend, kids -- Georgia clay knees . . . "