a sharing family!

but not in the good way. all three of us are on antibiotics for strep. jeffy was diagnosed yesterday and the PA wanted to see me today since i've hada sore throat for about the last week. she's not sure if i have (or recently had) strep, but she's treating me as such since i have a very red throat and the voice of someone with strep (it's a quality to the voice, i /gue?SS"
)[']=[='['].) owen went to his doctor today just for a precaution and he is in the beginning stages so he as well is going onto meds.

pardon the wierd stuff up there, owen was helping mommy type.

the week at school was pretty good. apparently i got one kid suspended. he was refusing to follow very simple directions - please get in line, please sit up - and was actually firmly telling me, "No" with the "i don't have to listen to you" tone/attitude. he also wasn't about to talk with me about it until i had the referral in my hand, this after i gave him several chances to talk with me. finally i told him he could either talk with me or talk with the principal about it and counted to three. he stood absouletly silently. that was his answer as far as i was concerned. as i walked back across the room with the referral, he decided he wanted to talk with me, but i told him it was too late. he had already made his choice. i later heard him on the phone with home blaming me. in another class, which has been a thorn in my side for the majority of the year, has had what friends of mine might call a "coming to God." they've been horrid all over the school. lots of bickering and pestering and teasing and harrassing during class. we've all had enough so the riot act has been read to them, several times in fact, and things are slowly changing. yesterday afternoon several key players were gone and class was wonderful! today they were back and it was a lot better than it has been. i've started marking on a transparency sheet that i magnet to my white board both positive and negative behaviors. for example, i put a + every time a student does something that helps contribute to the class discussion or lesson (if they are verbally adding to class, they must be called on to earn the +). i am also marking negative behaviors which take away from class. they start the day with 10 points and need to keep an average of 8 to be able to do mallet madness when that starts next week. they can only lose points and if there are negative behavior marks, but they were still participating and mostly involved with class, they'll get a 9, but not a 10. it's helping me also discover what kind of contributers there are in class. i'm doing this with a couple of classes and there is one student in each class who i'm discovering doesn't like to contribute verbally, but if asked to perform a task, will gladly do it. it also ensures that i call on people equally and don't focus just on a handfull of kids.

that's all for now. we've had two wonderfully solid nights of sleep around here (well, at least as far as owen is concerned) so i'm hoping that trend continues tonight. it's nice to not have to get up and rock him back to sleep, which then means that i don't get to sleep for at least an hour or more after he is back down. that severely cuts into my sleep quota for the night. i was really crabby at jeffy the other night. he was snoring pretty loudly and constantly and i couldn't get to sleep. at 10:30 i lost it and stormed to the couch. as far as i was concerned, i was going to be facing a 12 hour day the next day on about 3 hours of sleep due to the assumption that owen was going to be getting up in the middle of the night. not a fun prospect. once i got to sleep (and was able to stay asleep thanks to owen), i was in a much better mood in the morning and even wrote jeffy an apology note for the night before.

ok. NOW that's all. i mean it this time. have a wonderful weekend!