Friday, May 30, 2008

Friday - Babbling On

It's Anthony's Friday off, which is very nice. He got up early this morning and went for a killer bike ride - 50+ miles with a good amount of hills. The down side to this is that I got up and got Max off to school, rather than sleeping in. ;)

Getting Max off to school went okay today, but there were a few complications. Max opted to not walk with me because he didn't like my topic of conversation. I was asking him how he thought Dad's business trip was going. You see, Max told his substitute teacher on Tuesday that his dad had left on a week long out of town business trip and Max hadn't had a chance to say good-bye. This is why Max was so sad that he had to put his head down and cry rather than do his school work. Yeah. Max didn't want to talk about that, so much.

When we got to school, Max had to give a pencil back to his teacher that he'd appropriated yesterday. His teacher is finally getting more strict with him about this issue. She, in fact, told him that he couldn't take some markers home when school is out (even though he was going to get to) because he took them early and then claimed to her that she'd told him he could.

Then it was back home to get Davan up, do chores, have breakfast and go off to open gym. Davan spent some time showing her coach some more advanced skills today. When kids move up to team from pre-team, if they have a certain set of skills mastered, it's a big deal and they get a trophy. Davan had a whole list of about 30 skills to work though that her coach wanted to check, including several things she'd never done before. Literally. However, she did all of them but two. Yeah, you read that right. Two. It was pretty awesome. She'll have a couple of weeks to see if she can get those last two in order to get the trophy. Quite a few of the girls that move up to team don't get it, so it's quite a coup.

Right after open gym, we went to Max's therapy appointment, Max having been picked up by Anthony during open gym. We all went so that we could go out to lunch afterward. During lunch, Max took his shoes and socks off. We explained that it was a restaurant rule that you have to wear your shoes, so he needed to put them back on. This was especially true because it was a buffet and there was a lot of getting up and walking around. He hemmed and hawed until he got a time limit after which his shoe needed to be on or he'd have to leave. I was near done and could have easily taken him out. He got it on. I explained that he needed to leave his shoes on or he'd have to leave the restaurant. He said he understood.

We got up to go get him some more food and I noticed that the tongue of one shoe was jammed down to the toe of the shoe. Max mentioned that it was uncomfortable. I sympathized, but told him it had to stay on, as he had several chances for it to not be on that way - not take them off in the first place, put them on as soon as he was asked to and put it on right when he was given the time limit (which he beat by a fairly healthy margin).

Guess what his shoe looked like when we left the restaurant? If you guessed that the tongue was fixed, you'd be right. The only way to do that was to take the shoe off and put it back on.

We have plans to go out tomorrow evening for dinner to celebrate Davan's moving up. We were going to do that after he testing, but she was too sick for eating out to be fun that night. Tomorrow is her last Devos meet, so we're doing it then. Max is now not invited. He wasn't able to follow the restaurant rules. We have to figure out what he's going to do instead, though. We'd hoped he could go to Anthony's MIL, but his cousin, Conor, who doesn't like him, is going to be there and we don't want Conor to have to put up with him more than necessary.

Here's a good thing, though. I was mad, but I didn't yell. I just fairly calmly expressed my disappointment and then started trying to make arraignments for him to be elsewhere tomorrow evening. I haven't even rubbed that in or anything. Yay me.

But, the drama for the day doesn't end there! No! We had more! Max came home today with a marble and a Lego figure, both stolen from school. We found out about the marble first because he totally flaunted it by putting it in Anthony's pocket while we were at therapy. What kind of sense does that make? When we got home from lunch, I just calmly when into his room and went through everything on his shelves and toy boxes. That's when I found the Lego figure, as well as another pencil and a couple of erasers that had been taken other days. Yeah, it's little stuff, but it's constant. And it's not his.

Then he, Anthony and I put his room back together. It looks much nicer now and he might actually be able to find stuff to play with. It probably won't last, but oh well. We didn't even do it in an angry way, so we spent relatively positive time together, even. It felt like a good, logical consequence.

Then Max went and betrayed our trust again. Sigh. He was supposed to be doing his chores and he went out side. I figured he was doing possession patrol, as he had left some stuff in the yard earlier. However, when I looked out there later, his stuff was still there. It turns out that he'd gone to see if Nate was at his grandparent's across the street! He's not allowed to leave the yard without permission and he was supposed to be doing his chores, which he was perfectly clear on. It's very frustrating. He seems to be getting worse and worse about being trustworthy. He's lying more, appropriating things from school more and generally doing things that betray our trust. Another example of trust betraying was that he had lost the privilege of listening to a book on tape earlier this week by being loud late at night. After Anthony said goodnight to him, he got down and turned it on himself.

Any-who, that's enough ranting on for this evening. Davan would like me to do something with her while the boys are at football practice.

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