My Report Card

Alex and Anna have officially finished another year of school. Chris is bumming because gone are the days of his "easy" job with just having one kiddo around for most of the day. I, however, am actually glad school is done because it means a lot less homework that I have to "help" do. And so in celebrating this I was thinking about all of the things we as parents have learned this year......

1. You can never have too many lunch boxes. Never. Buy them in bulk when possible.

2. Ditto to number one except for gloves and hats during the winter. Not even close to ever having too many.

3. When the principal calls you at work, it probably isn't to tell you how wonderful your child is.

4. In continuation of #3, it is probably not a desirable thing for the principal to know exactly which kids are yours.

5. The school nurse has chap stick and extra clothes. If your child wears the extra clothes home it will be expected that you promptly wash them and return them the next day, even if you weren't planning on doing laundry at 9pm when you happen to notice the note in the backpack and then have to sort through a pile of clothes on the bedroom floor to determine which was the "borrowed" item.

6. If your child has one too many visits to the above mentioned school nurse, you will get a call. Said child should not visit the nurse in the future unless bleeding or puking.

7. You cannot, I repeat, CANNOT prevent your child from taking hot lunch. EVEN if you do not put ANY money in their account and send them with an overpacked cold lunch every single day. Despite all attempts, they will take hot lunch anyways only to return home with the stamp of shame on their hand stating that they need money to pay for the hot lunch they took anyways.

8. Coming home with both shoes is optional.

9. When you are invited by your child to chaperone their field trip, do not assume this means they actually want you to speak to them or acknowledge that you know them during said field trip.

10. Do not make unannounced visits to your child's classroom. They will state you have "completely humiliated them" and will not speak to you the rest of the day.

11. Make unannounced visits to your child's classroom. If you don't do this enough they will ask you why everybody else's mommy always comes to their class and you never do.

12. When attending the all school family picnic, it is best to just find another family because your children will want nothing to do with you and will completely ignore you the entire time. You will then be left looking like some some strange school predator hanging out by yourself on the playground.

13. Your child knows more about computers than you ever will.

14. When your child does not want to do their homework, it will magically disappear.

15. After it reappears, it may have a note on it stating that they now have 1 day to get 15 pages of math homework done.

16. This will be the longest 1 day of your life.

17. Don't be surprised when play dates get set up completely without your knowledge and friends start showing up at your door. This does not include neighbor kids- they will show up non stop once the snow melts.

18. If your 6 year old brings home the phone # of their 12 year old "boyfriend" it is probably wise to rip it up and it wouldn't hurt to lock her in her bedroom for awhile- like maybe until she is 18.

19. You can't send your 2 year old to school. Doesn't work, we tried.

20. There will be parents who will allow their children to dye their hair funky colors and get mohawks. This will make it that much harder to explain to your own distressed children why they cannot do this.

21. Every child has at least 3 birthday parties during the school year and your child will be invited to every one of them. I swear it's true. You will also not be given some of these invitations until an hour before the party starts. Good luck.

After all this learning, we are pretty tired. But, the most important lesson we have learned is that even after a crazy year at school we are still so incredibly proud of our kids. They made us laugh, smile, cry, yell and want to pull out our hair. Yep. And we loved every minute of it...well, mostly ;)