A Post A Day?

Maybe although I sure haven't done it lately. It's a national competition (just for fun and small prizes). If you're interested in participating, click on the banner on the sidebar to join up. It starts November 1 and should be fun.

Thanks for the input on the pedophile question. I have an idea now of what I want to do; it just involves sorting out the logistics. I know I don't want to join a crusade but a blogging friend and I may begin an online dialogue about child safety. We're just in the talking stage and we both have busy lives but perhaps we can do something.

The school conferences have come and gone. I was right to worry about Rochelle. Her teacher is concerned as well. She's known Rochelle for a couple of years because of Elcie and wondered what happened to the happy self starter we all knew last year. We'll have Rochelle talk to the school counselor and go on from there. She seems sad much of the time and can't seem to tell us why. She has started paying more attention to her homework and she was rollerskating this afternoon which is something. I'm hoping it's just a phase.

Both of Elcie's teachers are very pleased. We spent quite a while talking about preparing her for high school. They are working on replacing her lap top with a more up-to-date model which led us into voice recognition software (along with a typing program). It would save her so much time on her written assignments. We've done many of the longer assignments with me acting as voice recognition - she talks, I type. Her teacher is fine with it but I wouldn't mind having the computer doing it for me. If she has it when she starts high school, there will be no question of whether she needs it - it will already be there. She had one teacher who wouldn't let her use the computer. We fixed that but I don't want to go to war if I don't have to. It's easier to present the next school with an accomplished fact and there will be much more writing in high school.

And then there's Rebecca. We may have a problem. She has two teachers; one for math intervention and another for the balance of her classes. You'd think they were talking about 2 different kids. The math teacher spent the whole conference complaining about Rebecca not doing her work and wasting time. She's writing everything out instead of just putting the answers down and the teacher is convinced she's doing that to get out of actually doing the work. I'd already talked to her about it and she swore (practically in tears) that she was doing what the teacher told her to do. Breakdown in communication?

The other teacher couldn't believe it. Rebecca's doing all her work (including more difficult math), is focused, well behaved, etc. She's going to talk to the math teacher. (L., if you're reading this, the math intervention teacher was formerly at Our Lady of Mercy. You may recognize the symptoms.) If that doesn't work, we'll have another conference. I'm not going to have Rebecca bullied now that she finally has her act together.

On Monday afternoon she decided to clean the living room without telling anyone. She called us in to see the finished product. Beautiful (at least compared to what it was). Yesterday she finished her homework and then practiced multiplication and division for another hour. No one told her to do it. Somehow she's turned herself around. She still has a very short fuse but she's so much better.

By yesterday, I was so tired I did nothing I didn't absolutely have to. Today was much better. We (my friend Dawn and I) cleaned all the kids' work and play areas (or most of it) and put everything in order one more time. I caught up laundry and actually cooked dinner (not the same thing as defrosting dinner).

And now it's past midnight.

Thanks to all for the comments. I'm still playing catch up on reading your blogs and Blogger is still being stubborn. I'll get there eventually.

Take care everyone.