Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Our Weeknight Chaos...

I can honestly say that I have a TON of respect and adoration for women (and sometimes men) who raise their children on their own!  With my husband working 2nd shift, I definitely feel like a single mom through the week and it is HARD! 
Austin auditioned for and got a part in the spring musical, called South Pacific, so he has practice every day after school until 6 or 7 pm (or whenever the director decides to let them go).  So when I leave work every day, I have to go and pick Addison up from my mom and then pick Austin up from practice (or make other arrangements for him) before I even get home for the evening.  (My commute to and from work is 45 minutes each way so I spend 7 ½ hours a week commuting.  It sickens me to think about that because I could get SO MUCH done in that amount of time but anyway….)  Then once we get home the REAL CHAOS begins! 
Well last night, we got home at about 7:10 pm.  Thankfully, Addi and I had eaten dinner at my mom and dad’s house while waiting on Austin’s practice to be over and mom sent food home for Austin so when we got home, he just heated his dinner up—it was nice not having to deal with dinner.  I did cut up some strawberries for Addison though because she hadn’t eaten a whole lot for dinner and I wanted to make sure that she wasn’t hungry.  (She loved them by the way!  I also believe that she could live on bananas alone because the child can put them away!  I need to buy stock in Chiquita because we buy bananas every week!!)
Austin informed me that he had a quiz tomorrow in Science and that he didn’t understand it at all.  Now Science was not my favorite subject (math was) but when he told me that the stuff he didn’t understand related to sin, cosin, and tangent, I knew there was hope.  I had learned all of that stuff many, many years ago but it was math back then and now they are learning this stuff in Science class?!  Oh well, don’t get me started on education because I could go on and on and on.  Which, by the way, did you know that they don’t require students to learn their multiplication tables anymore?  We had to memorize those in like 4th grade…. Yep, my 15-year old doesn’t know that 8x6=48 unless he uses a calculator or sits there counting on his fingers!  I did encourage him a couple of years ago to learn them even though it wasn’t required of him (since they let them use calculators)—I even made him some flashcards.  I use my multiplication tables daily for figuring out stuff—it just makes life easier but anyway, I digress…  Long story short, he still doesn’t know them but at least he has a calculator on his cell phone (sarcasm)!  
Where was I?  Oh yeah, so while Addi was in the bathtub, I sat there tub-side reviewing his notes and trying to re-learn sin, cosin, and tangent.  After letting her play in the tub a little longer than normal, I felt I had a good enough grasp on it to teach him.  I went over it with him and I saw the spark go off in his head.  I gave him several problems to do on his own and he went to work on them while I dressed Addi in her pjs and read her bedtime stories.  When I got her in bed, I came downtstairs and checked Austin’s work while washing bottles, packing my lunch, and packing her diaper bag—multi-tasking at its best.  HE GOT IT!  He was thrilled and so was I.  High-fives all around!!  He really cares about his grades and schoolwork (thankfully) so I was so glad that I was able to help him.  He told me that I should have been a math teacher which I thought was really sweet and if I could go back in time and do things differently, I probably would have gone that route!  Good luck on your quiz today Austin! 
That’s about how our nights go through the week.  I am usually exhausted by the time we get through all of that!  Definitely looking forward to the weekend—only 2 more days!!  J

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