This morning was not good as far as school related subjects. Okay, if I were completely honest, this whole week has been bad as far as school subjects go.

And I’m not talking about math, grammar, history, handwriting, spelling, AWANA and science. I’m talking about Ariana and Elizabeth. But more specifically Elizabeth.

It seems we’ve been skipping around in our math book a bit. If multiplying is too hard, if division drives you to distraction (and your Momma to consider drinking…a third pot of coffee), just skip ahead in your book and tell everyone your math is done. Be sure you put away your math book right away, because you know your Momma is far too distractable and busy to remember to look at your math.

You can keep this racket going for a couple weeks at least, until Momma wises up to your schemes. (I almost spelled “skeems”) When she wises up, you can call yourself, “Busted”. Because well, you are.

This is not the first time I’ve dealt with her on this very issue. Same subject even.

That is just math. We had similar issues with grammar. Why is it my highly intelligent offspring can’t seem to follow simple directions? I give directions, “Put the lesson number, then the title of your work, like Oral Drill or some such nonsense, whatever your book happens to say, write it next. Then put a letter A just like your book has, and under than put numbers, as many numbers as your book has. Always, Always, ALWAYS start a new lesson where your old one left off in your notebook. That makes it easy for me to check.”

Not followed. Not at all. She opens her grammar notebook and just randomly writes words.  And calls it good. It isn’t that her lessons are extremely long…not at all. They are at MOST a page.  I should take heart in that she not only doesn’t follow MY directions, she doesn’t follow those in her grammar book either. Apparently she’s an “equal opportunity direction avoider”.

This afternoon, after I spent almost all morning working with her and her grammar, (I need to take a moment to say, I see absolutely NO reason for misspelling a word you are looking at. If you’re copying a word, and have no learning disabilities there is no excuse. And being in a hurry to get it done so you can play Barbies or yo-yo, is not a reason or an excuse.) I then move to her math.

Now I have Bible study on Wednesday mornings, and the girlies go to Mr. FullCup’s office to do their school work. I had checked her math and told her she had some correcting to do and that I had written “Stop” where she needed to work to, to get caught up and be where she should be.

I would say it was almost completely disregarded. She corrected one problem and did 5 additional problems and called her math done.

Today when I checked it, I thought I would die. I’ll not lie about it, I was mad. I was angry. I told her she got to spend the afternoon in Daddy’s office doing math until it was done.

Ariana and I had the most peaceful afternoon. It’s amazing.  I never thought of my afternoons as not being peaceful and I never thought it would be better without Elizabeth. But it was.

And I’m a bad Momma for thinking that. For realizing it. But not for confessing it. You see, I don’t think I am the only one who has ever thought that, or experienced it.

(Now is where I spread some real wisdom about dealing with feelings like this, and having days like this, and where I say it won’t always be this way.  But I’m just a mom in the trenches and sometimes I don’t have all the answers, and sometimes I just need to vomit my thoughts on my blog, so I can see what I’m thinking and maybe someone will read this and be encouraged that she isn’t the only one to experience it. Life isn’t always solved in 30 minutes, or in one blog post sometimes we have to live in the trenches for awhile and trust God to show us in HIS time the reason.)