12/11/12

1.  Busy Tuesday.  It wasn't a great day for me, teaching-wise.  I managed somehow to elicit the most undesirable reactions in my kids sometimes.  There is a woman whose blog I follow, although I have never met her.  I admire her tremendously, and if I had the chance to exchange my personality for hers, I think I'd do it.  I kept asking myself this morning, "How would Michelle handle this?"  And I think I failed at every turn...  :-(  I need her to come and coach me in my life.

2.  Another sad thing-- Mosey's airsoft gun broke today.  Stupid cheap made-in-china plastic junk.  It wasn't an expensive gun, but it did get decent reviews on Amazon.  I felt so bad.  I took the whole thing apart, found the part that broke, and determined it was not fixable.  Poor Mosey!  This was the gun he used all his jewels to get, the one that he waited for days and days to get, checking the tracking every two hours.  The one he has had in his hands almost nonstop for the past 6 days.  It makes me so mad.  Why bother making stuff that is just crap?  It broke where one of the high-tension springs was mounted inside of the gun, and it wasn't because of any misuse on Mosey's part.  I'm torn now.  Do I let him learn how life is hard sometimes, and that things break and life isn't fair?  Do I buy him a new one?  Do I let him go half-and-half on one?  I guess you get what you pay for, so it's probably worth getting something more expensive for him next time, which means it will be even more difficult for him to save up for.  Christmas is coming, I suppose...  The other problem is that more expensive (and hopefully higher quality) guns have a higher fps (shooting speed), which Mosey actually does not want.  I am just sick of cheaply made stuff that breaks. 

3.  I officially banned all computer games on weekdays, except before breakfast.  If they want to play, they have to get up early.  I don't let them play a lot, but it was annoying me a lot that Tanki or Poptropica was their first go-to when they had free time, and too much of my energy was being spent policing the time on the computer.  Amazingly, I really didn't get much resistance.  Mosey immediately picked out a book to read, and when Brigham and I got back from violin, Mosey and Joseph were out in the forest making a fort.  Joseph found an awesome opossum scull (like that rhyme?).  Which at least confirmed that I made the right call once today.

4.  This afternoon Brigham had a make-up lesson at Blackerby Violin shop, and afterward we rented a full-size violin for him.  They brought out a couple of them for him to try, and he played on them both for a while in the store before deciding on one of them.  Brigham was so excited!  He came home and immediately wanted to show his brothers.  Then Mosey decided he wanted to get out his old violin and see what he could remember.  He told me, "I think maybe I want to play another instrument, part time."  He actually remembered a fair bit of violin!  And then he got out the guitar that neither Ben nor I can play very well, and spent 20  minutes or so tuning it and playing around.  Yep, this is why we won't have any computer games after school.  :-)