TING!!!

      Yesterday was a brutal day of homeschooling. It was the kind of day when I send SOS texts to Scott from the kitchen table while I am teaching. He sends me messages back telling me how great I am and keep at it, and those kids are so BLESSED to have me and promises back rubs later in the day. I tell him they are trying to overthrow me and to please start teaching them Math. He always says yes but it's always me with the flash cards the next day. Still, he's a smart man and knows to not tip my scale in those crucial moments.  Most days are not this way. I love teaching those little cherubs and usually things really click. We read great books and go from subject to subject happily. They sharpen their colored pencils and create fabulous notebook pages and shade in rivers and oceans on their maps. They sketch in their nature books and write beautiful poetry. They clap out their helping verb chants and practice their spelling words together and I beam with happiness. Sometimes I have to drag them away from the book basket because they are so interested in the material.


NOT YESTERDAY.

I had to drag them TO the table and they were glaring at each other and mouthing angry things each time I bent my head to read. It got so out of hand, I even recall telling them all of the amazing things I could be doing if not for educating them all day and to please be a little more grateful. No, I am not proud of that but you can't unsay words. It obviously didn't work because they complained about each thing we did and had full on tears during math. I sat there gripping the edge of the table as I read about conjunctions. I love English, so I get irritated when they fight through the whole way through it. I said through gritted teeth,

" A conjunction is a word that joins two words together. As in, Autumn AND Chase need to zip it."

      We finally made it to Geography and Science. This is when things usually lighten up. They really enjoy these two subjects because they tell me it's so much fun it doesn't feel like work. I admit, I also enjoy these subjects. We are studying North America at the moment so I asked them to please get out their maps.

I leaned down and looked Chase in the eye, my nose touching his and said so calmly and so lovingly, "I am going to use the restroom. I would like you two to behave for the two minutes I am gone from this table."

 He replied very seriously, "You should do that Mom. And we will not fight."

 I was gone no more than thirty seconds when I heard Chase screaming and wailing. Now, when that happens I usually also hear the offending party spurting out apologies and convincing the victim to reconsider tattling. This time however, I heard Autumn laughing her head off. Hard. I opened the door to Chase standing there with a tooth his hand and a napkin in his mouth, which made it very hard to understand his words. Behind him, was his sister bent over busting a gut, with a ruler in her hand.

"What happened?!" I asked, trying to decide who to deal with first.

Autumn dried her tears and sweetly said, "Well, Chase asked me if he could borrow my ruler (LAUGH) so I tossed it to him across the table. ( "THREW!" Chase corrected.) He missed my throw and it hit him in the face. (CACKLE)  He yelled, 'YOU KNOCKED MY TOOTH OUT!' I felt really bad Mom, but then he spit and his tooth went flying across the room!! I heard a teensy...... "ting!" when it hit the floor! (opened mouth LAUGH, LAUGH, LAUGH)

  I looked at Autumn sternly but I couldn't say a word because I was two seconds from laughing. I know it wasn't nice of her to throw the ruler and it needed to be dealt with, but I was thrown off by their opposite demeanor. Chase was in hysterics, and she was laughing so hard that nothing I said could sway her at that moment. I bent down and looked at Chase's tooth and said, "Well, there is only one explanation..."

Chase got really serious and asked, "What?"

"Autumn is working directly for the Tooth Fairy," I said.

He started to smile and he looked at her and said, "Do you think you could knock out another one?"