17 Days

I got cocky. Things were going so smoothly and I let peace settle in. 17 days of school without an incident. 17 days! For our circus, that's really saying something. Once I had reached day 12, I got rather excited. I actually let my brain simmer on the thought that we just might have a normal school year. That I just might have kids who act, well, normal.

Then the dam broke. The one that was holding everyone's behavior in. It came rushing away on day 17. Addie was sent to the principal's office. I was told that she was crying so hard she could hardly catch her breath. But by the time she stepped off the bus, she simply shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly.

She went into the boy's bathroom. She didn't just peek her head around the corner and look in...she went ALL the way in. And stayed there. She wouldn't come out. The 5th grade safety patrol had to get 2 teachers, one of them being Addie's, to come and get her back to class. She said that she knew she was in trouble and didn't want to move. So she just stood there. Not moving. AFTER she had splashed water all over herself from the sink, and AFTER she had surveyed the boys urinals.

Our 'normal' streak came to a halting stop. In my dismay I sent her to her room for 3 years and made her write 'I'm Sorry' 4.2 million times. She took the papers to class the next day and her teacher proudly tacked them right up on the board. In Ms. Crump's words, she just thinks "Addie was having a bad day". Um, really?

I asked Addison why she went in there to begin with. Her response, "I wanted to see what they do in there." The principal told her, "you really don't want to know", and then had her write sentences. Maybe after all this her penmanship will improve.

If all this just wasn't enough joy for me to swallow, Sam decided to act like a lunatic later that night. We both went to a mother daughter activity at church. For 90 minutes she openly sassed and talked back to me. She made some rather rude comments about me as well. In front of everyone. Sigh.

I guess I should be grateful for my 17 days. It was so nice to feel normal. I liked it. I actually felt like a semi-good parent. But now I'm resigned to the fact that we were just not meant to be normal, and I was always meant to have a personal relationship with the principal. Sigh again.

Goodbye normal. Goodbye parenting skills that actually work. I'm off to buy more paper and pencils. I have a feeling we're going to be writing a lot.