Catching Up.... again!

I can't believe it's been almost 2 weeks since I've posted anything! In that time we've gone to the beach, cleaned our house (by far the most time consuming task!), bought two turkeys - long story!, hosted Thanksgiving with my family - which was awesome!, and finally things are back to "normal". The girls are off at school and I'm sorting through what I need to do today.

I've had many thoughts about things I want to post, but they are all still milling around in my head. Eventually, I'll post them one by one. For now, I'll stick with the one that has been on my mind for the whole 2 weeks and still on my mind now. Report cards!

The day we left for the beach, the girls received their report cards. Kt was quite pleased with herself, having earned straight A's and 1s for effort. She also managed, for the first time, to get Above Grade Level in reading and in math. The crazy thing about this is that this is the first year when school has seemed effortless to her, at least to me. She is entirely independent and I rarely even know what she is studying in school. Her teachers love her, as was quite evident at her conference. I'm happy I don't have to worry about her....

Onto child number two! Up to this point, kindergarten has been a breeze, other than being totally exhausted when she gets home from a full day. Em has on occassion mentioned being a little noisy in class, but I hadn't given it much thought. Her teacher has always mentioned how sweet she is and most of her work is pretty average. Her report card, however, painted a very different picture for me, of course possibly because it was in such stark contrast to her sisters!! What stood out the most to me were all the 2s for effort. While Kt hasn't always been at the top of her class in skill, she has always been a people pleaser, so I don't think we've ever seen a 2 in anything but handwriting. Em, on the other hand, had 2s everywhere on her report card.

Really from the beginning of her life, I've always recognized that we will have to learn what makes Em tick. T and I, both being first children, and Kt as well, none of us understand a second child. She's the only morning person in our house, discipline of any kind does not really faze her, she seems hard-headed but the truth is that she has the softest heart around. While I would have loved to keep her home another year, she absolutely refused to learn anything from me, so sending her to school to learn was imperative! The trick now will be getting her to actually show some interest.

At her conference, her teacher displayed some questionable work, all of which was very typical Em. Pilgrims with pink scribbled hair, Venn diagrams that she'd clearly made mistakes on so had given up and her flashcards?? Well, she knows a few of them, like "a", "I", and "one", although any word with an "O" in it is "one"! Last night, she knew which cards her best friend knows, but couldn't tell me what word was on them. The whole time complaining that she didn't want to do anymore. What could I say? Em was so excited about kindergarten until I told her she would be required to color. After that, she completely lost interest!!

The good news in all this, she didn't get any Needs Improvement or 3's for effort. At least we are getting somewhere. She is just a breed of child I am struggling to work with. T and I learned an important lesson about not comparing our children and keeping report cards under wraps. I'm certainly glad we never instituted the "pay you for good grades" reward!! So with all that hanging over our heads, we bound into the second quarter!