Josie has been crying and throwing a total tantrum for about 20 minutes now! Ever since I committed the crime of going downstairs to Kate's room to take her temp and check on her. Kate's home with the flu, apparently, along with about half of her middle school. Those unsanitary food-sharing, nose-wiping-on-sleeves-and-hands, never-washing-hands kids... Anyway, so I left Josie's presence, which she just couldn't take, and she fell on the floor throwing a tantrum of the ages, and there she is, still crying. I figured I'd let her go on and on and see who gives in first. I'm guessing it will be me. Little miss stubborn...

So, in other news... Mac has worked the last 5 weekends, plus, you know, his normal "80 hour week" hahahaha. Josie sees him for maybe 10-30 minutes a day, if I keep her up which usually happens because I have to take kids to their after school stuff, etc., etc. Mac has a special academic thing this Saturday, and then he won't have to go in for something like 2 weekends in a row. How wonderful... How pathetic...

The kids are getting into the groove at school. Steven races through his homework and I think his handwriting is actually worse than it was in first grade. He's bored out of his mind in advanced 3rd grade math but he needs to know his math facts better AND have nicer handwriting to go on to the next level... We shall see. Not that I MIND doing flash cards with him every day. I mean, what else do I have to do? AFter schoo, I spend about 2 hours with the kids on homework and agenda-signing-paper-collecting-mother-child-collaborative-homework-assignments... So, hell, throw in flass cards. I'd LOVE to.

Isabel is super duper diligent about her work. A total first for me. Ironically, she's the one about whom I received *the first phone call from the teacher* for this year. The teacher called to tell me that Izzy hasn't been doing her homework OR finishing her classwork. My Isabel? Are you serious? GOOD FOR HER! snicker snicker... No really, Izzy just didn't get what she was supposed to be doing. She can not stand not doing everything *just so*... This all happened after school had been back in session for about 2 weeks, and so she had no idea what she was supposed to be doing. She didn't know that the red marks on her paper meant *do this at home*. 3rd grade is totally different from 2nd. It's in hyper-drive and I'm already sick of it all.

Oh! Update, the tantrum ended and Josie is asleep on the floor of the kitchen.



She won't sleep in her crib at all during nap time (believe me, I've tried-- she cried yesterday for 2 hours and then I had to take her to go pick up the kids from school). Maybe I should just put her down on the floor of the kitchen from now on...

Well, I'll go take care of this situation... I'll follow up with an update on Luke and maybe myself in maybe a couple of weeks!

ETA: Here's the picture I took of Josie conked out...