Anyone want my kids?

I am not in a good mothering frame of mind this week. Somehow this past week both boys have found their way into the dog house. Pretty much with similar techniques too. It’s not fair when your kids gang up on you! Not that they were in collusion or anything, but did they have to coordinate their stupidity so well?

One took advantage of  the weekend travel situation and hosted a Sat night “bbq”. Uh uh. There are five trash bags filled with ‘recycling’  in the backyard.  Yes, they are all adults and of legal drinking age, but..the problem is they were noisy. To the point where the neighbors complained and then called the police (as I had instructed them to do if necessary) to break up the party. Did my son reveal all this? Oh no. The neighbor who called the police tells me about it two days later. Nice. And while I can tell that he did look out for my house – clearly they were all mostly outside or else in his room since he took the screen off his window and the dirt/plants under there are quite trampled – I am still not pleased that he disturbed the neighbors. After we had already talked about this last year. They just are at the age when they pay NO attention to how their behavior impacts other people. Grrrrr. At least he secured a job this week. But he is still in the dog house.

The other one…I think am MORE angry at him. In fact, it’s probably good that he went back to his dad today. He stayed with me a couple of extra nights while his dad was away on business. Which is actually what got him busted. I checked his Friday folder on Monday (holiday) and found THREE missing work slips, including one note pointing out that two of them were from the previous week with his dad. So clearly he had snuck it past his dad the week before and now I have the results – which he would have tried to sneak past ME but I went through things while he was distracted during his play date. So I sign the slips, but leave a note on one asking the teacher to confirm that the work had been turned in Friday, but was just late as he claimed. I drop him off Tuesday with instructions to clear this up and make sure all assignments really are in. When I hear nothing from the teacher all day in response to my note, I suspect something is up. I pick him up from child care and as we are walking to the car and I am asking him about it, look who is there going to HER car but his teacher! Turns out that he had only turned in TWO of the missing work slips, the one with the note? Oopsie! He plays the “Oh, it must have fallen out of my folder.” ploy as I can see a look of panic on his face. Here he is between me and his teacher and he is *busted*. I find out that NONE of the work has ever been turned in. She tells him that at this pace with how late these things are he is now skating at the edge of not making the grade for football next season. We both tell him we are disappointed that he was hiding things from us (see a trend there with the boys? Avoid avoid avoid.) I dropped him off today after two nights of work which kept him up with this week’s assignments and caught up 2 of the 3 missing ones. Just talked to his dad to tell him about #3 and what happened. Electronics restriction for two weeks minimum. And oh, wouldn’t I love an excuse like this to pull him from spring sports? He has two weeks to get it together or we will. Grrrrrrr. This one is in the double dog house.

Meanwhile I get to go out with SP tonight to a Padres awards dinner – and boy do I need  it!!!