The point of no return

The first thing I have to say is this...............It won't matter to me how sick Gage is the next time, he WILL be going to school! That little boy can be on his death bed and I will take him that way and prop him up on a few pillows. You would not believe the amount of homework he brought home yesterday from school for the 3 days he missed! And, you've heard me complain before about what a nightmare it is to do homework with Gage. We started on it last night and I could see it was going to be an ugly weekend because it was going to take us every minute of it to finish all of those worksheets. They are not at all difficult, but Gage likes to hurry through them without really reading the directions. Every time he brings stuff home, he's usually missed a couple of things and only because he was rushing through it. When I ask him what the right answers are, he always knows them and then rolls his eyes because he missed it. I have tried explaining to him over and over to SLOW DOWN and then double check your work. This child has an excellent report card, and I know if he would slow down and take his time, he would have E's in everything (an E is exceeding level of expectations all of the time). So, after we finished 2 worksheets last night, it was decided that we would wait until today to do anymore. It started out okay, but it quickly went downhill from there. As usual, he's hurrying and making mistakes, so I point it out to have him correct it. He only half erases things and then writes right over the top making it sloppy and illegible. Of course I can't stand that, so I make him erase it again and do it again. Well it is just a vicious cycle that we get into. Thankfully Scott was able to take over. He had more patience than I did and they actually finished all of the homework today. At one point I told Gage that if he could do the rest of his homework without a bad attitude that I would buy him a Bakugan ($5 each) for every sheet of homework he completed. I knew it was a safe bet. He started out pretty strong, but eventually he became overwhelmed and lost control and then lost his shot at earning $100 worth of Bakugans. That ticked him off even more, so again, you see the vicious circle we were in. After finishing his homework, I was reading one of the sheets his teacher sent home. Monday will be their 100th day of school and they are supposed to bring 100 cents and 100 other items to display on their desk for all the 2nd graders to parade through each room to see everyone's displays. I couldn't think of anything that Gage had 100 of. Yes, I know we have over 1,000,000 lego pieces, but I wasn't really wanting to go there. Emma offered him 100 of her Littlest Pet Shop pets. (Please don't be surprised that she has over 100 of these...............you know me...............all or none!) He didn't want to take "GIRL" things! We were looking through his things and he wanted to take his Bakugan cards, but only had 25. He thought about Webkinz cards, but only had 32. Then he thought about Yu-gi-Oh cards and before he even got to counting them, something made him think of Lego guys. I told him I didn't think he had 100 lego guys. We opened his drawer and started digging them out and I was actually starting to be surprised at the number and thought to myself, "Crap, maybe he does?" After we dug them all out, droids and all, and then had to break into some of his new lego sets he has gotten for his birthday and Christmas that haven't been opened yet to get the guys out, we came up with 89. OMG! I can't believe he had 89 Star Wars/Indiana Jones Lego guys. So, now we are at the point of no return. I am completely embarrassed to even say this because it was such a stupid thing to think and especially say out loud, but I said something about maybe they would have a set of Legos that were just guys and we could buy it and have enough. Scott wasn't thinking clearly either, because he didn't OBJECT like he should have! We proceeded to go to Walmart to have lunch at Subway (one of Gage's rewards for doing all of his homework) and then walked back to the Lego aisle. I found one set that was just 4 guys, like a police officer, fireman, etc. Gage thought that was completely lame of course. None of those stupid Star Wars or Indiana Jones Lego sets had more than 4 guys in it (we needed 11) and now after seeing that, and doing the math at how much this stupid idea was going to cost, I had to just leave the aisle. I couldn't even believe we were doing this. And of course, in the meantime, Emma is scanning the toys up and down the aisles trying to find something for herself. I seriously just wanted to leave. But, as cleverly titled, we were at the point of no return. We left Walmart, $69 later, and I told Gage and Emma that I swore I was never going to go to Walmart again unless I was by myself!!!! I'm so embarrassed by this whole stupid ordeal that I told Gage if he tells anyone about this at school, he will be in such BIG TROUBLE it isn't even funny. And here I am, blogging about it. In my defense, not that I am defending this idiotic plan at all, 14 of those dollars were spent on a book for me because I needed to buy the 4th book in the Twilight series.....................oh, and Emma made it out of there with a $5 Play-doh set............................have I ever mentioned how much I HATE Play-doh? Need I say more?