Don't Mess with Mama Bear

As you may know, if you have read any of my prior entries, my family and I are preparing to move - home, to Annapolis. I call Annapolis home, but none of my family is from there. I am from western Pennsylvania, but I wouldn't want to go "home". Annapolis has the same smells and the feel of home for me, thus making it as close to my real home as I would ever want to be.
When preparing for a move, I get all the required paperwork from doctor's offices and schools all lined up. I always hand carry at least one copy because you just never know what is going to happen. These are my records and my children's records and I want them. I don't need a reason, that's just the way it is.
On the 30th of May, I went in to the office of my children's school, where I also work, and I requested copies of all their school records, particularly those pertaining to testing and giftedness. We are moving to a school district where they actually *have* programs for gifted children. My oldest daughter has been "tagged" since she was in the second grade; however, the district that we currently live in does not consider allocating funds for the gifted to be important and so they don't. Now that my daughter has an opportunity to engage in these programs with advanced curriculum and enrichment activities, I'm going to make sure that she has full access.
When I went into the office yesterday to pick up the records, the staff was umprepared and the files were incomplete. One of the pieces of information that I most needed was sent onto the middle school in our local area, even though the staff has been well aware, since January, that my daughter would not be attending there. I was polite at first, asking how we may go about getting the results of this testing. The secretary, who is a lovely woman, said she would make a call for me. No big deal.
Later in the hallway however, the principal came up to me and stated how this wasn't her job and this was all very irregular. I stated that I would simply call the middle school, no big deal. Her attitude was very antagonistic. That's when I finally came back with, "Look, these are my child's academic records, they aren't your intellectual property, I want them and I want them by 2 o'clock today, as I informed you of over a week and a half ago. I don't care how it happens, or who makes it happen, but those records need to be ready. No excuses."
After much hullaballo over what should have been a very simple request, I finally picked up the records of both my children, though still incomplete. I do have all the testing records that I will need, but the attitude of some schools when dealing with parents is just frustrating. Don't act like you know better than me because you are an administrator of a school. I'm a parent, that's my child and it's my job to do what's best for her. The best thing you can do? Help me or get the hell out of my way.

Surely Not My Daughter

It reminds me of that 60's song..."She looks like an angel, walks like an angel, talks like an angel.... but I got wise.... She's the devil in disguise." Ok, so maybe not the devil per se but my little angel came home with some very unexpected news from First Grade.

As she sits herself down to the kitchen table for her afternoon snack today, she nonchalantly tells me that she needs to buy Mrs. Jeffrey some new crayons. Come again?? "Any why, pray tell, would you need to do that?" I calmly asked. "Oh, because I snapped some crayons in half today." HUH??? My sweet little angel that likes to wear twirly dresses and dance went on some sort of bender and snapped a bunch of crayons in half? What the heck is going on??

I asked, "Did you break the crayons by accident, pressing too hard while coloring".."Not exactly...." "Well, how exactly did you break them, or better yet, why??" "Ethan M. told me to." I don't think that anything could have made my blood boil more than the preceeding statement. After all, my daughter is desended from a long line of Irish bare-knuckled fist fighters. Snapping the crayons because someone had the audacity to tell her that her coloring sucked is something that I could at least understand if not condone, but this... Oh this was totally unacceptable.

"What if Ethan M. told you to cut off your hair with scissors, would you do that?"
"Mom, don't be silly...." Well how is one thing silly and the other isn't, I ask you???
So, the end result is that my little princess will have to give up three weeks worth of ice cream money to pay for the new crayons, in addition to a hand written apology that she will deliver tomorrow while also giving a heartfelt in person apology. I told her that this was unacceptable, and I explained why. After all, my husband and I work hard to teach our children right from wrong and the Ethan M's of the world aren't going to stand in our way!

On a serious note, Ethan M. can hardly be held responsible because, while he may have planted the seed, it was my tiny little dancer that did the crayon snapping.