Day: April 24, 2008

My journal is often repetitive. Tonight I’m going to try to skip the repetitive bits.

Insert “woe is me” rant about the needs of my kids and how I can’t possibly meet all of those needs here.

Insert stressed musings about the state of business and merchandising here.

There. With that out of the way, I can get to the more original stuff.

I got the next set of digital proofs for Hold Horses today. They are beautiful. All the problems are fixed and we’re ready to move forward with the project.

Kiki woke up this morning cheerful and apologetic. She is ready to work hard and talk to her teacher about how to do better.

Kiki’s mid-term grade report came home and she’s brought all of her grades back up. She seems to be absorbing the lesson that practice is sometimes necessary. She’s even talking about re-taking German 1 next year so that she can really learn the language well. This takes all the teeth out of my threat to make her re-take the class if she doesn’t apply herself, but I don’t mind because she’s enjoying the class again and working hard.

Bedtimes have been a mess all week. There was much crankiness this evening because both Gleek and Link had a pile of undone homework and they’re both short on sleep. I was short on patience. But with support from Howard we had a good discussion about how bedtimes haven’t been working because it is still daylight and doesn’t feel like bedtime yet when they should already be asleep. Tomorrow bedtime has to start at 7 pm to make time for the pajamas and toy pick up and snack and story time and reading in bed. I frequently feel like our bedtime rituals are far too elaborate. It is hard for me to be so focused at the end of the day. But the kids are much happier and more secure when bedtime runs predictably.

Summer is coming. As usual I’m worried about the lack of schedule. Insert worried musings about how to manage the lack of external schedule here.

Today I did some bathroom scrubbing. This task was long overdue and took far longer than I expected because of the severity of the grunge that had to be removed. But it is truly clean now. Hopefully going forward I’ll be able to stick to requiring chores of the kids so that they’re helping me keep things clean. That system keeps breaking because I decide I’m too tired to enforce chores right at that moment. I need to remember it really is better for us all if I’m not the only one cleaning up the house.

It snowed today. I’m tired of snow.

And now it is time for bed.