Random ramblings

I love my son.  I really do.  But sometimes, I want to strangle the little twerp. 

So, Thursday, he started kindergarten.  And Friday, he came home telling me the vowels.  Brought a folder full of classwork that he'd completed...badly.  He either hadn't listened and followed instruction, or he'd deliberately done it wrong.  One of the two.

Of the two, knowing this child, I'm betting it was deliberate.  He doesn't want people knowing the extent of his capabilities.  I'm not sure why.  I'm not sure if he knows why. 

He's a bit young for that, but he's been that way since he was an infant.

According to the school's sent-home handouts, they're planning on having him reading by the end of the year.  I don't think it's going to be too hard...his grandmother told me that he spelled out most of "airport" while he was playing with a "car rug"--a printed map of roads and places to be played with using matchbox-style cars.  And that when she looked later, that word was nowhere on the map.  And he's refused to do it since.

The pixie came home from three year old preschool telling me she'd made "too many friends."  In pixie-speak, that means too many to count.  And I can believe it--she's the sweetest, most outgoing little girl ever.  She helps younger children to do things, and she's one of the oldest in her class, since she'll be four in December.

She brought home a folder of things she'd completed, and a behavior report card that had a perfect score of three stickers.  And a few things telling us what she'll be learning in class: she'll be learning to count (she can already make it up to fifteen), learning the alphabet (she already knows it), learning sign language a bit, and learning the alphabet, numbers, colors, and shapes in Spanish. 

Color me impressed.

I asked her what her favorite lesson was, and she reported that her favorite was the bible story.

Last night, Odysseus and I sat down and watched a movie.  We watched X-Men: First Class.  I loved it.  He loved it.  The cats...ended up perched together on the back of the couch, washing each other's ears very intently.  Kind of a relief, that--they'd been fighting, as in tearing fur out of each other fighting, all week.

I'm beginning to wonder if it's because the dog's gone, and they don't have a common "enemy" anymore...

Speaking of the dog...my mother said that she bit my sister last week.  Not hard enough to draw blood, but certainly hard enough to leave a good bruise.  She said that my sister had been playing with the dog, then stopped to do something else, and the dog got jealous.

That does not bode well.  And I'm going to need to do some research to a) make sure she'll be safe with the kids in the yard when we get a place outside of town, and b) see if it's possible to train that out of her.

Classes start for our local university on Monday.  Odysseus and I plan to head in and drop the kids off at school before heading onto campus.  I'll have two and a half hours or so between arrival on campus and start of class, so I've decided to hold office hours during that block of time.  Odysseus has two hours before his will start--Tuesdays/Thursdays, too--he's planning on using that for homework, study, and research time. 

I've been too busy with the start-up of school--the kids' preps and my own--to get a whole lot of writing done.  I have gotten some done, but nowhere near as much as I want.  Call it a chapter every other night, instead of every night. 

I do, however, have three hours of free time lined up for three days next week, and the week after.  Starting the first week of September, I plan to use that time for grading papers.