What I’m about to say is going to further tarnish my mom-putation. Oh well, I’m not winning any mother-of-the-year awards anyway. In fact, Adlani recently screamed at me, “YOU’RE NO MOM! YOU’RE A MONSTER!!” For some reason I take pleasure in being called a monster.
So…it’s that time of year again, when along with the rest of the year-end frenzy, the kids prepare for the big research fair. I’m not a fan. There, I said it. I don’t mind the actual fair itself, which is when parents spend an hour talking to the kids about their projects. It’s the preparation that gets to me.
Call me crazy, but I think a first-grade project should be whatever a first-grader is capable of. If he fashions a lump of clay into what he thinks looks like a frog, done. Maybe there’s a benefit to having the first-grader sit for hours with Mom and Dad, making a diorama of a Siberian Spotted Salamander’s habitat, but when it comes to our family, those moments together always seem to lead to some sort of family strife.
This year, Adlani’s project was a red-eyed tree frog, and he was dead-set on making a tree frog out of clay for his project. I don’t know why he couldn’t have picked a snake, which I’m pretty sure I could have made out of clay fairly easily (or out of a stocking like one of our friends). He could also have chosen to stick some photos of the frog on a piece of posterboard, draw a picture, or hell, even go to Petco and BUY a red-eyed tree frog. But nooooooo…he had to make one out of clay.
We’ve had a lot going on the last couple of weeks, so even though Adlani was reminding me daily about the frog, I hadn’t had a chance to go buy the clay, paint, etc. until Sunday. On Monday (Memorial Day), we spent at least 3 hours making the most beautiful clay frog you’ve ever seen. You’ll have to take my word for it. The project was due Tuesday, so I drove the kids to school, carried the frog carefully to his classroom, and put it waaaaay back in the corner behind the other projects. I almost took a picture of it before we left the house, but we were running late and I literally said, out loud, “I’ll just take a picture of it at the research fair.”
Tuesday afternoon, Adlani got off the bus with this:
That’s it. After my head exploded, Adlani told me that he had accidentally dropped the frog while they were practicing doing their presentations for the parents, and Señora Jeyadame said, “It’s ok, just make another one by Thursday morning.”
Huh? It’s Tuesday after school, I’m a single mother because Ben’s still receiving visitors who have come to his sister’s house to pay their respects. Adlani and Aliya have soccer practice, and I have hired a babysitter so I can finally go back to Zumba after 5 long weeks of town meeting. Wednesday afternoon I’m supposed to go to my office (which didn’t happen because of the tornado), and then Night #2 of my Zumba reentry. There is no 3-hour time period in my schedule to make another frog.
Needless to say, Frog #2 did not take us 3 hours. We had the replacement shaped within about 20 minutes, let it dry, and slapped on some paint. Here’s Frog #2, and don’t ask me what Adlani is so friggin happy about at 7:30 in the morning. That just doesn’t seem right.
Thankfully, Aliya’s projects have gotten a lot easier, because she does just about everything herself. She tried to convince me on Monday that she had to make a clay model of the Iditarod, but I didn’t fall for it. If she really needed one, she would have been bugging me multiple times daily to help her with it.
Good luck to anyone else who’s in the year-end frenzy right now!