Be Nice or Be Quiet

We have had many grumpy mornings since school has started.  I have told the kids, you can be nice or you can be quiet.  Apparently this was asking too much and my lawyer child wanted to argue that some days it is impossible to be nice or quiet.  And so started a 45 minute heated argument.  That argument ended with me stating, I am not a lawyer you can argue with, I am your mother, and you can either be nice or you can be quiet.  It needs repeating on the daily.  

In the middle of the week, my boss came in and observed me.  We get observed every quarter.  She said she would observe me from 8:00 - 8:30 a.m.  I planned my day accordingly, and had a craft project saved just for this day that I was sure would take a good amount of time.  My group of three-year-olds love crafts, but they did not get the memo that day.  They flew through every lesson and every project I had planned for the entire three hour day while my boss was in there.  I was sweating.  That mosaic butterflies project made from the letter "B" where I envisioned the kids carefully placing each piece of tissue paper?  One child crumpled up all her tissue paper pieces, dropped them in the "hole" of the letter B, and said, "I done."  What??  No!!    It was a very long 40 minutes.  (She stayed longer than anticipated...probably not a good sign.)  When I picked our kids up from school that afternoon, they had not even closed their car doors before asking, Did you get fired?  Quite the vote of confidence.  I told them my boss was meeting with me the next day.  That meant when I picked them up the following day, I was again greeted with, Did you get fired?  No.  Not today....  My boss did give me some very good suggestions and I will do every single one of them.  

Henry had a cross country meet Thursday evening.  It was a tough meet because everyone was tired from their day at school.  It was at the same YMCA course that he did last Saturday.  This time it was sunny and a bit hot.  He cut his time by about 30-40 seconds from the rainy Saturday race.  Because it was much hotter, we stood in a shadier spot to cheer on Henry.  That meant after he passed us for the last time, we casually walked towards the finish line not realizing he would get there about the same time, so I never got a video or pictures of that.  

This evening, the boys met some school friends at our pond out front.  The friends were fishing, but then they biked and ran some as well.  

This kid went from this...

...to this. 

His head must feel a lot lighter.  

Correction.  He says his head does not feel lighter, it just feels cold.