This Was Not The Results I Was Expecting

Not too long ago, I gave Rascal one of those purple plaque tablets.  You know the ones - you chew on them and they turn the plaque in your mouth purple so you know where your tooth brushing needs improvement.  After a few moments of chewing there was the big spit and reveal.  Rascal's mouth was PURPLE.  With globs of purple saliva hanging out, leaning over the sink drooling purple drool, his teeth clenched together and his lips pulled back in a strained smile Rascal simply stated (as clearly as anyone can with a mouth full of purple spit) "This.IsNot.TheResults.IWasExpecting."  I can't remember the last time I laughed that hard.

Also not the results I was expecting?  Our homemade Valentines.  They looked great but were a huge mistake.  Here's why...

One of the things that I hate about our new school is the total lack of communication tools shared with parents. I am used to schools with class rosters with phone numbers and emails, and for whatever reason, our new school feels it's a violation of people's privacy to distribute any information about families.  It's ridiculous.  There are a couple of kids in both Domino and Rascal's classes that they'd like to have playdates with - but those kids are "daycare" kids.  The parents barely stop their cars in the loading zone outside the school in the morning for drop off, and the kids are shuffled to the Boys & Girls Club after school until the parents come get them after work.  It makes it impossible to communicate with anyone that you'd like to have a playdate with their kid.

I thought I had outsmarted the system.  I had the boys put our phone number on the Valentines we made.  The kids would bring them home, the parents would see them and think "Hey, what a cool Valentine!  Would you like to have a playdate with that boy? You would?  Great!  Let's call him right now!"  Except that's not how it went down...

A couple of days after Valentines, the phone rang with a young voice asking for Domino.  "Success!" I thought to myself, giving myself a pat on the back for my brilliance.  Finally, there's a glimmer of hope to make friends outside of school.  We've waited for so long.  Why didn't we give out our number sooner?!

I asked for the boy's name, and he said Sammy.  I passed the phone over to Domino but was very confused.  There's no Sammy in his class.  Who is this kid on the phone for my son?

Domino talked to him for a bit and I grew more and more concerned. The conversation was pleasant enough - but I quickly realized that Domino had NO IDEA who the kid was on the other end of the phone.  This was NOT going the way I planned.  At that point I shut down "operation make a new friend".  What the heck just happened??

I interrogated Domino.  Who is this kid?  How did he get our number??  Who did you give your Valentines to???  All of Domino's answers were to be expected "I don't know.  I have no idea.  Just to the kids in my class."

And then the phone started ringing.  I answered and got no response so I hung up.  A few minutes later, same thing.  Over the course of the next 2 hours I fielded about 20 similar phone calls.  I even looked into getting Caller ID just so I could call this little sh*t back and tell his parents off.  Who in the world lets their kid use the phone unsupervised?!

Cut to the next day, repeat.
And again the following day.
And again the day after that.

After a bit of detective work, I figured out who the boy was and spoke to the school guidance counselor about the problem.  Thankfully, we've had phone silence ever since.

Tonester is furious with me and thinks it was the stupidest idea in the world to give out our number to everyone.  I'm flabbergasted that this has exploded so negatively.  How could such a simple thing of trying to make friends with classmates go so horribly wrong??

I still have no clue how this boy got our phone number.  My guess is he goes to the Boys & Girls Club with others in Domino's class and when kids were going through their Valentine loot, he probably swiped the Valentine and the rest is history.  It is a pretty cool looking Valentine....

I feel like I'm standing in front of the mirror with a mouth full of purple spit.  This.IsNot.TheResults.IWasExpecting.

Eight Versions of Crazy

I just read a piece at Alpha Mom about kids and homework.  Go ahead and read it.  I'll wait....

I sit somewhere in the middle on this topic. 

I review homework each night.  I help and walk through the problems if necessary (and lately I've been having to refer to Google to help Domino with his 3rd grade math homework) and I make sure they understand what they're working on.  Teachers used to be able to give their students this one-on-one attention, but current classroom sizes make that nearly impossible.  I am the only one-on-one educational time my kids will likely get during the day and I better make the most of it. 

I get irritated when I see kids come in to school with over the top projects -- like the kindergarten leprechaun trap that looks like something that would appear in Lord of the Rings.  Or the massive paper mache dinosaur shaped mailbox supposedly made by a 6 year old.  Or the Egg Drop container that has clearly not been built by a 5 year old, but has been designed and built by someone with a degree from MIT.  Or when the child wins the award for the new jog-a-thon slogan and she announces "My dad is the best at rhyming!".  It is obvious the child had zero involvement in the project with the exception of bringing home the assignment instructions.

BUT...

The view isn't quite so clear from my high horse.

I have been guilty on more than one occasion of  taking over a project or two.  For example, you should see Domino's 100 day of school project from his kindergarten year... 

Kids needed to bring in 100 of something.  One came with 100 Cheerios in a baggie, another came with 100 stickers on a piece of paper, and another came with 100 Legos in a box.  What did Domino bring?  At the time, Domino was a huge NASCAR fan so he wanted to bring 100 of his Hot Wheels cars.  I convinced him that he would lose those, so I painstakingly researched photos of NASCAR cars, searching out photos of each car with their numbers 1-100 on the side, and printed out each car to exact dimensions.  "We" got a huge roll of butcher paper and Domino glue-sticked the cars in numerical order - well, at least up until about #34 when he got tired of the project and me nitpicking where he was placing each car on the page - and the end result was a 50 foot roll of paper race track with cars glued in numerical order.  A very cool looking 100 day project, but I was guilty of a hostile homework takeover.  Lesson (sorta) learned.

This week is Valentine's.  Both boys need to bring in Valentines for all of their classmates.

I dutifully went to Target and picked out FOUR boxes of Valentines, 2 for each boy, selected each box based on the boy's likes as well as the kids in their classroom.  I must have spent a good 20 minutes in the Valentine section, mulling the merits of shiny foil Transformers style versus Clone Wars with pencils, Phineas and Ferb with tattoos versus an unknown brand with silly bandz. Valentines come in packs of 24 these days and since the manufacturers haven't gotten the memo about the increased class sizes of 28+, an additional box was necessary for each boy.  I showed them the Valentines I spent so much time picking out and was met with a tepid response at best.  It wasn't the "THAT'S AWESOME MOM!" I was hoping for...

... so I became "that mom".

"I can whip up some quick Valentines off the internet", I thought.  "I can get some really cool graphics from one of their favorite video games.  It can't be hard to come up with some catchy Valentine's phrases.  They'll love what I come up with!  They'll be the cool kids with the cool Valentines!"

Five hours later and about $50 worth of printer ink, I now have this to show for my Saturday afternoon.

I made EIGHT different styles because I'm just that crazy.

Tomorrow I will battle with the boys to scissor and glue stick, fold card stock, and address 30 Valentines each.

I'm sure if they knew the workload that lies ahead of them with these new homemade Valentines they would have responded more favorably to the Target ones.  Maybe that's the lesson they're supposed to learn.

Wordless Wednesday