All manner of news

Where to begin??

So much going on. Do I start with my freakish health issues?? Brain's troubles in school?? Jock's awesome-ness on the ice?? Clown's sweetness?? Princess's mice stinking up the house?? Holiday plans?? Wow...I really don't know where to start.

Let me start with my sweet Brain. Poor guy. He really enjoys public school and when Jock asks to quit and stay home, Brain insists he is not ready to quit. Which is great, we are encouraging them to stick it out until the end of the year. Jock is just bored and gets discouraged that teachers cannot spell and various other things of that nature.

Brain is discouraged for many reasons. Every group he gets paired up with for labs in Science either take over and mess the thing up so that it brings his grade down, or are so clue-less that Brain needs to explain everything and ends up doing all the work. On top of it all, the teacher tends to freak out and yell at kids.

I guess a few weeks ago a beaker burst and shattered when they were studying something about pressure and using hard boiled eggs, etc. The teacher swore at the kids and went on quite a rampage. Then last week, Brain said everyone was sitting quietly doing their work and suddenly there was a loud THUMP! Everyone jumped and looked to see what was going on. The teacher had slammed a book down and was right in a boy's face, screaming about him writing on the wrong side of the paper?? He screamed at the boy and yelled to get out and the boy gathered his things and ran from the room!?!?!?

I told Brain we need to speak to someone at the school and maybe have him change Science teachers. He said no, things were fine. If there was another incident, he would tell us and then we can look into that.

Well, he has been very slow to get up in the mornings. Science is his first class and I was sure he was nervous and that was why he was in no rush. I asked him a few times and he maintained all was fine, do not worry. I asked if he was tired of school. He said in many ways he is. It is pretty boring and he isn't learning too much new information that we have not covered here at home long ago. Yet he still enjoys the interaction and wants to continue. I said then you need to be responsible and get up on time. He has been late for first period about five or six times in the past three or four weeks.


I was writing note after note and then they would still interrogate him once he got there. Once the counselor even pulled him from a class to question him for half an hour (twenty-seven minutes by his calculations) on all kinds of things about his home life, etc. We were not impressed with that at all. They act all concerned that he is missing class time (the latest he has ever been has been five minutes) yet they cause him to miss almost an entire class to interrogate him about how many siblings he has and what his chores are at home!?!? HELLO!?!? None of your business. He came home and told me how uncomfortable that made him. We told him if they try it again, to tell them to call us and that we don't want him wasting his class time when we can answer any questions they have. I think it is awesome they have counselors there, if kids need them and seek them out and have any trouble. But Brain was really upset by it and said he felt violated. There was no need for it in that instance.


Now we got some things in the mail saying we will need to go to juvenile court if he is late one more time!?!? Man, they need to focus on other things. The kid has a B in that class, and the only reason his grade is that low, is because of labs that get messed up and he has no voice or say in what happens. His tests, etc are all 100%. We know he understands the material, ya know?? They claim that him being five minutes late a few times is cutting into "valuable learning time". Really? Well then why does he have 100% on everything that he does on his own?? And why do you pull him out of class to violate his privacy??

So Stud went to the school yesterday. They pulled Brain from one of his favourite classes and the counselor met with he and Stud for half an hour. They talked about what the Science teacher has done and saw the correlation between that and Brain being late for that particular class. They are going to speak with the teacher and Principal and we will go from there. I just hope they don't let the teacher know that it is Brain who is bringing this to their attention. You would think the guy would learn. Jock said that a friend of his, who is in high school this year, ran home last year because of this teacher screaming at him. His parents marched right up there and changed teachers. It is coming to our attention that others have complained about this teacher. The guy better get his act together and not yell at MY baby. He DOES NOT want to deal with ME.

He will be 14 on Friday and is none too pleased about it. All he is looking forward to is the gifts and pampering. The growing older? Yeah, he can do without that. Wants to stay a kid. Poor kid though, he has been an adult trapped in a kid's body his entire life!

So he finally got to over eighty pounds! We are SO EXCITED! I took him to his allergist last week and we have him on Prednisone for ten days. Just to see if his sinus stuff is an infection or what exactly. If it doesn't go away with this, it means it is infected. The doc wants to avoid scanning him all the time. It has been a few years, but he wants to avoid another CT scan if he can. Brain's sinuses were SO impacted a few years ago, they were considering surgery if we did not get it under control with antibiotics. We did (after about six months on four different meds!) and then with his surgery almost a year ago for GERD, he has been a lot better until recently. If it is not an infection, we will know it is allergy related and he will do a nasal steroid from now on. They are also talking about allergy shots. Various docs have suggested them over the years, but they scare me. His allergist never bothered me about them and said he did not feel that great about them and did not want to encourage that. Now, things have improved so drastically that he says he feels good about it if we need to.

So that is what is going on with our Brainster. I got more dye for his mop, better go get that taken care of and then he can shower. Jock had to stay late at school to finish some work he is behind on. I love this program they have for that. The VP called me and asked if it was ok. The boys tend to get distracted once they get home and we are still getting used to this whole thing, so we aren't that great about reminding them to do homework. More on that at a later date, though. I know our views on this may baffle some people, but...what can ya do??

I guess the other news can wait, this is long enough. I need to start and look through photos to do his birthday post on Friday:) I wish we had baby ones of him that were digital. Our scanner hasn't worked in a long time. I have GOT to get these old photos sent to this place that will make them available on-line for us.