I Hate Tuesdays

Today, Tuesday, started like most days. I did a load of laundry and hung it out to dry. First load was hung by 7:00 am. One thing about using the line to dry clothes is that I have to wash clothes every day, a load at a time, instead of a bunch of loads all in one day, with the dryer burning up my wallet all day long. But, no big deal.

Then, Tuesday hit. Lots of stuff to do today so we might have started a bit rushed in order to squeeze it all in. Mistake #1. So, adrenaline was flowing to begin with. Then Tyler happened. Ugh, can he push the buttons. When we got to Language Arts, I gave the twins a brief lesson/review, I don't even remember what it was on, now. Then I asked them to answer a few questions on a worksheet. Neither of them seemed to make an attempt. Then, I asked them very leading questions, essentially giving them the answer, using the worksheet to re-teach them what I just taught them. I can always give them more exercises to show proficiency, later. Tay began to make an effort; Ty just started crying and refused to tell me what was wrong, or even that he didn't understand. He gets very stubborn, and at this point I should've just walked out the room. Mistake #2 (I stayed). I am also very stubborn, and I refuse to let a 6 year dictate my schedule. I yelled instead. He cried more, so I yelled more, thinking, stupidly, that if I gave him the answer LOUDER, he would write it down. Mistake #3. It ended in an ugly scene of him sobbing, me giving up, and nothing getting accomplished.

At this point (10:00 am), I had to take Tay to his singing class. This was fortunate as it broke up the day and allowed Ty and me time to calm down. So, I left everyone with Alex, except Ty, who wanted to ride along (I guess this means my outburst didn't leave any emotional scars: he still wanted to hang with Dad), and dropped Tay off.

Upon our return, I got out Ty's math book. We have had a stretch of good lessons in this subject. He has had no problems in Math since I made that adjustment in teaching him. Until today. My blood pressure was already pretty high, so when he turned on the tears, I began to dread math as much as he did. We were doing something that he has been doing for a week. There was no reason for him to not understand the exercise. We managed to do a few problems together without either of us getting too upset, but the peace wasn't going to last much longer. I decided to take down some dry clothes and add some wet ones to the line. This was the first smart thing I did today. When I returned, Ty had completed the exercise without me. He's such a brat :o)

I teach five kids. They are all mine. I know them each better than any teacher can know her classroom. I think I've figured out most of them, but I still have to figure out how to adjust to teach Tyler. Each of my kids requires a different approach. It totally amazes me how different each person is! I don't have any idea how a teacher teaches a classroom full of kids that aren't even from the same gene pool.

Back to my day. After lunch, we went back to the classroom. I sat down with Kenzie to review the work she'd done all morning. She is pretty independent. There a few things that I need to read to her or teach her, which I do while the twins are coloring or answering worksheet questions. But, generally, she pops over to my desk here and there for short lessons or clarifications or questions throughout the morning, as I'm working with the twins. And then we sit down at the end and go over everything she did that day and we discuss, and fix, problems and errors. By the time Kenzie and I finished, I had to pack Kenzie, Connor, and Tyler up for their piano lessons (2:00 pm). Since I didn't quite finish up with Ty, and since Tay missed some stuff during his singing, I also brought along that stuff (and Tay) to work on all that during piano lessons. Alex and Connor stayed home while Bekah took her nap.

Got home from piano around 4:00. I didn't mention that at some point earlier in the day I had reviewed Connor's work in the same fashion as Kenzie's. Connor is slightly more independent than Kenzie and, thankfully, like McKenzie, he his very bright and needs relatively few corrections when he takes his time. Connor finished everything but History today. Now it was Alex's turn. Same story. Mostly independent. Review work with me. Fix mistakes. Alex is also very bright, but he is also a teenager and does require a little more of my time. He has the biggest work load and tends to rush through his work because he sees his siblings getting finished before he does. Therefore, he tends to have a higher rate of errors and requires more teaching/reinforcement/instruction.

Now it's after 5:00 and I haven't started dinner. Somehow, I got four loads of laundry washed and hung, the kids through school, except History for Alex and Connor. We blew that off today. Just not enough time. Alex was happy about that. He had a test. Now he'll have an extra night to study for it. Somehow, I got dinner on the table by 6:00, and it wasn't a frozen job; it was a real dinner. The only saving grace for the day was that we had no soccer games tonight. If we had, there would've been no dinner until 8:00. AS it was, though, I had all the clothes folded by 7:30, Bekah in bed by 8:00, an hour or two to chill, and blogging before bed.

And by the way, about half an hour ago, Vicki went to the hospital to have her contractions checked out. I told her I had my army knife and basket ready, but she declined again. She doesn't think anything's really happening yet; she just wants to err on the side of caution. I guess I should feel a little guilty about letting her go to the hospital alone, but all the kids are in bed and it's a little late to call her mother to watch them if it's, as expected, a false alarm. The hospital's only twenty minutes away. If I'm needed, Ill get there in less than that.