Great moments in parenting

It's 9:30 pm and Tessie is not asleep. Not only is she not asleep, she's not in bed, nor even in her room. No, she is in the kitchen doing her homework*. She is doing her homework because, in search of something to keep her occupied while "not at all tired" (her all-too-frequent words) and therefore not at all interested in going to sleep, she found herself in the kitchen and started filling out her job chart** for the afternoon/evening. When she got to the bottom, she discovered a blank space in the "Finish homework by Thursday night" row.

I had just banished her from our bedroom (another place she often finds herself when avoiding her own bed) and so she called to me tentatively from the end of the hallway, "Mommy, I have to tell you something."

"What's that, sweetheart?"

"We forgot to do my homework!"

Since sleep is clearly not going to happen before the homework is completed, I find the packet, Tessie retrieves her pencil case, and off she goes. Trace the upper- and lower-case U's, circle the larger number in each pair, cut out the pictures and glue them in matched sets; all the while singing, "You are my sweet tart sweet tart sweet tart."

We'll see who falls into bed, exhausted, first.

(Any guesses? Hint: She just hopped across the living room on one foot, proudly bearing the homework for inspection. She then grabbed the user guide to the "Learn To Play Chess" DVD she recently received*** and skipped back to her room to peruse it further.)


* Homework, you ask? Yes, every Monday she and her pre-school classmates get a packet of 4 worksheets to be completed at home and turned in on Friday.

** The job chart is an ever-evolving tracking sheet for encouraging Tessie to complete her daily/weekly duties, ranging from "get out of bed" to "set the table before dinner" to "go to bed on time." When we forget to complete it, she does it herself, and to her credit does so quite honestly (with frowny faces for items she failed to do).

*** Thank you to my chess-playing attorney friends -- you know who you are! :-)