my harrowing escape from the school concert

Hello, friends! Friday Miss A was off school and P had been up Thursday night coughing and gagging, so Friday we kept the boys home. It was a blissful day. Seriously. One of those rare days where everyone plays nicely together and I even got a lot of work done. It made me want so badly to PULL 'EM OUT!

Then over the weekend the boys were sick and now I am sick. I feel a tiny bit better today but yesterday I sent a lot of whiny texts to Jason about how I wanted to die. It's a very tragic cold I've got.

So back to last Thursday, and the school fundraising gala/concert. The kids and I sat in the very back row of the auditorium, because I was trying to find a place where 1) they could maybe be loud without bothering people, because P has a severe whispering disability, and 2) they could play on the floor behind the back row of seats, because sitting all day at school then sitting through speech then sitting through a concert isn't my boys' "thing."

Sadly, many other people also flocked to the back. Those people were then treated to G kicking the backs of their seats and P sticking his stinky Croc-bedecked feet up on the seat backs just behind other people's ears. They also got to listen to me snapping and hissing directives at the kids every few seconds. At intermission, after Miss A's class had done their thing, I gathered up the kids to go.

It was SO crowded. And here I am weaving my way through shoulder-to-shoulder crowds of people with my enormous purse/bag o' entertainment, and trailing three people behind me who are only 40% invested in staying with me. We got out of the crowded lobby and into the side hallway where Miss A was supposed to be, and Haney was seized with a desire to run. I was holding her hand, and she started booking down the hall, so I was forced to lean backward to keep from falling over. I realized I looked like a person walking an ill-trained dog. And that is how we arrived at the classroom where Miss A was supposed to be.

Now, consider, I have only seen her classmates once or twice. I went into the room and had to study every face to see if I was in the right place. Finally, some teacher told me 3rd grade was up in the balcony. What he said was, "You're gonna have to drag all these kids up there, I'm afraid." Ha!

He must have seen the look of defeat on my face because he then offered to keep the kids for me, or to go get Miss A. I said no, even though I should have accepted the offer.

I didn't even know where the balcony was, and I wasn't prepared to navigate the lobby again, yet. The kids and I sat down on a bench way off to one side. I thought about just waiting until everyone sat down again but it was almost 8 and my kids' bedtime is 7:15, and I was about 30 minutes from home, and the longer I waited the more my next 24 hours was going to suck. So eventually we tried again. P spotted the balcony stairs and the stairs were a big mess of people coming down walking across the entire staircase, so we were waiting to ascend until there was a place for us to walk, but then people were coming up behind us saying, "Excuse me!" for us to make way... I was annoyed. And tired. Everything about the night was complicated and confusing and uncomfortable, like a bad dream.

I remember when Miss A turned 7, that seemed SO OLD but she still seemed so little. I'm feeling that space again, between what I expected for a certain age or set of ages, and what life is really like. When I say my kids are 9, 7, and 5, I feel like everything should be easy. Tons of stuff *is* easy. I rarely have to physically dress them. I don't have to diaper them or physically feed them. They are comfortable enough with other people that we can go places without them climbing me in terror. I don't have to buckle their car seats for them. So when I hit upon something that's still really hard, it surprises me.

Everything about that evening was really hard, dragging my little ones through that crowd by myself, and trying to navigate a totally unfamiliar situation and place, and not having anyone I could trust to watch the kids a second, or go get Miss A. At the local elementary school, I have that. A lot. I am really lucky and there are a lot of people I can count on.

So anyway, I collected Miss A and dragged them all through the lobby again, and walked through the dark parking lot in the rain, and drove 30 minutes home, and got them in bed by 9ish. And was so relieved to have a good excuse to skip out on everything on Friday. Something about life right now is turning me back into a hermit -- I want to skip everything and stay in my house all the time!

In unrelated health news: The geneticist can't see us until 10/31 so we are trying to figure out if we can see someone else with this hospital group, or if we need to start over elsewhere to be seen sooner. This has been going on for a week now... I hate waiting for people to call me back, and I hate how every time I call back the same process happens but nothing is ever accomplished.

i needed a crappy school story to put my life into proper perspective

With all this worrying over Miss A's very survival, I've lost sight of what drives me: my hatred of all things relating to school. Luckily, tonight we had an event that helped me find my center, or something.

Since shortly after Miss A started school 1/31, I've had a vague awareness of The School Concert. Very vague. Eventually I realized it was at some Catholic high school I've never been to before in a part of town I've never traversed. That intimidated and discouraged me. That's as far as I got until about yesterday, when Miss A shared that the concert was mandatory and she'd have to do a make-up project if she failed to attend. Seriously?? None of the communications home mentioned it was mandatory. What if I'd just decided to blow it off because it starts at 6:30 and I have no idea where it is and I have 3 younger kids and if my kids aren't in bed by 7:15 the next 4 days of my life are a living hell?

So today my life went like this:
3:00 - pick up Haney
3:20 - arrive at Miss A's school
3:30 - get Miss A in the car, as boys are being dismissed from school 15 miles away
3:40 - notice my car will run out of gas in 3 miles
3:45 - get 2 gallons of gas
3:50 - get a call from the boys' school asking why no one has come to get them
3:55 - get boys from the school's office
4ish - arrive at 4:00 speech session
4:15-4:20 - G is in the bathroom at speech because he didn't have a chance to go after school and the school bathrooms are too gross
4:40 - arrive home from speech
4:45-5:20 - make dinner and try to feed people while Miss A convulses on the floor in despair over someone coloring in her fairy coloring book/poster that was in the common coloring materials drawer.
5:20-5:30 - begging people to put on their shoes/coats/socks and get in the car
5:30-5:35 - get 5 more gallons of gas
5:35-6:05 - drive to this Catholic school
6:09 - realize I am terribly under-dressed because the guy I thought was dressed with about my same level of formality turned out to be a maintenance worker

I asked Miss A several times over the last week whether there was a dress code for this shindig. Nope, there wasn't, she said. As long as it was appropriate enough for their school "uniform" (not an actual uniform but a very specific dress code) it was fine, she said. Well, clearly a lot goes unspoken at this school, probably because they're all so gifted they can read each others' minds. (Is that how you would punctuate "each others'?" See how I don't belong with these people??) The little girls were in sparkly holiday style formal gowns. The moms were in dresses and skirts and heels. The dads and boys had ties on. The parents had flowers for their kids. Grandparents were in attendance.

My family, on the other hand, went for the ironic-casual look. We dressed casually to turn this formal event on its ear, in a wink to something totally ironic and hipster-rific.
ME: Unshowered, yesterday's make-up remnants, jeans and well-worn tennis shoes
G: As always, hair that's insane in the back. Shirt a size too small and in a boxy toddler cut that doesn't fit his skinny-boy form. Pants with a GIANT new hole ripped in the knee.
P: Instead of shoes, he chose to wear Crocs.
Haney: Really crazy hair (her signature style -- I call it, "My Mommy died" hair because it looks like the forlorn attempts at styling of an overwhelmed recent widower), dirty tennis shoes, possible food smears on her face
And the star, Miss A: red turtleneck, black leggings and a black skirt, both covered in white cat fur, brown furry boots.

As you can imagine I felt really out of place. I even started to cry, and G brought me his coat and covered me up with it like I was an accident victim. Which I totally was. It was a trainwreck -- not the concert, but my day, and kind of my life right now. Everything feels upside-down. I am working constantly, and the client taking up the most time and causing the most stress is the one who pays the least by a long shot.

P is working his way toward puking right now, coughing and gagging and sobbing at 10:12 p.m. So it's not like anything is about to slow down. I want off this train. I want to quit working, or at least drop a client or two. I want to yank the kids right out of school so they can actually enjoy the stuff they want to, like baseball and plays and soccer and karate, without it creating a giant stress disaster. I want to be able to take the boys to speech without dreading it all week. I want to spend time with all the kids when I'm not driving them places, and actually look at them when they talk to me.

I hate this. I do not want this for my life. And I am getting sort of depressed, I think. Seriously, if I listed out for you the stuff that's going on in my family you would be blown away. It's just a lot. So I am just tired, probably, but all the driving and not understanding what's going on at school certainly contributes to my fatigue.

Anyway. Tomorrow I'll regale you with the story of how I escaped the concert, but it gave me flashbacks to when the kids were just a little bit younger and it was just honestly not possible to do some things with them. And they were actually very good tonight! But some very crowded venues are just not a good place for one parent and 3 or 4 little kids. We should also discuss my 10 hr/month volunteering commitment with Miss A's new school, since it's contributing quite a bit to my stress levels and I haven't even gotten started. In summary, homeschooling's siren song is calling my name.

maybe we will discover miss a has super powers

Hi everyone! Yesterday we had our appointment with the hematology/oncology guy. Because her lab values remained stable for about a month, he is confident she doesn't have leukemia. And if she does have this preleukemic condition she's in the latent phase where they don't actually give chemo, they just prepare you for it. I'm not sure what the preparation involves and I'm too scared to Google because this preleukemic thing doesn't have a real awesome prognosis.

Anyway. Because she seems healthy, and because the only thing that suggests the preleukemic condition is her unexplained very high B12 level, he referred us to a geneticist! This is exciting news because the hemat/onc doc hopes maybe the geneticist knows of other conditions/tests that might explain her B12 levels. And that is even *more* exciting news, to me, because it gives me hope for a super-happy ending all tied up in a bow. If, perhaps, she's not fully able to use B12, then all of a sudden she doesn't have cancer AND we have an explanation for some of her abnormal behavior AND maybe a treatment!

The hem/onc dr thinks she *is* able to use B12 based on her relative health, but doesn't know why she's storing so much of it. I think maybe we'll figure out something that will make it easier for her to process everything that goes on around her, and that would be great.

If the geneticist can't figure it out we do a bone marrow exam. If the bone marrow exam doesn't find anything, we just do periodic blood tests to make sure nothing starts changing.

In the last two days Miss A started asking a lot of questions, and it became apparent she still associated all of this with her behavior. I felt so bad. I tried to explain to her that it has nothing to do with her behavior now, and we can't stop testing to find out what's going on, even if we wanted to. We finally got to the point of her fully understanding, and she was very calm not upset, just curious about "what if I do have cancer?"

I told her, "If you do, then we'll think, 'What a blessing that your behavior was off enough that we went to the doctor, and what a blessing that your weight gain was low enough that he ordered blood tests, and what a blessing that we happened to land in one of the best cities in the world for health care.'"

We have a follow up with hematology/oncology in two months, and we're waiting to hear when we see the geneticist.

i'm beginning to think 2012 is not my year

Everyone in my family of origin is going through a major, life-altering, ridiculous crisis or two right now. It would be funny if all the crises weren't so massive. It's like the Holmes-Rahe stress inventory is a cloud hovering above us, and it's raining.

For my part, Miss A had her follow-up appointment today. The pneumonia has cleared up, she's gained back all the weight she lost and maybe even another pound, and all is well. So the pediatrician ordered her follow-up blood work, and with the aid of lidocaine cream Miss A was able to provide blood samples today without hysterics or fainting. She is getting good at having blood drawn. Which is great but also sucks.

Results: Still messed up. So, we are back to the oncologist on Wednesday morning. Or, maybe he will turn out to be our hematologist! And not our oncologist! Anyway. I guess I was not surprised. I hated waiting for the results today but once they came I felt a little better, oddly. I don't know what our next steps are except to see the specialist Wednesday, and to call a specialist at another hospital for a 2nd opinion on what her labs mean and what we should do. My friend told me her daughter never complained about her bone marrow biopsies so I'm hoping maybe it isn't bad if that's what we have to do.

even her tantrums seethe with specialness

A couple of you had wondered whether interacting with Miss A during her tantrums prolongs them. I meant to write about that but forgot until today, when I had occasion to experiment with this multiple times. Whee!

With Haney, once she gets into tantrum freak-out mode, I ignore her. Typically she stomps up to her room and screams and plays on her mini piano. Eventually she calms down and is still sad and mad, but then she'll allow us to hug her and cheer her up.

The boys are different because of their relationship with each other. I can't explain how but their tantrums are just different.

With Miss A, being ignored enrages her. She will scream, "I am TALKING TO YOU!!!" if you don't participate in her ridiculous circular conversation. If you continue to ignore her, you won't for long, because she will begin to destroy things and/or people in her path. For example, a favorite place to tantrum is the kitchen floor. She'll lay spread-eagle on the floor and spin in circles screaming, so anyone needing to pass through the kitchen, a main thoroughfare, must scoot by quickly enough to avoid all arms and legs. Otherwise she'll "accidentally" hit/grab/trip/kick, then insist the victim actually attacked *her.*

I can send her to her room to cry it out. In theory. Except that I must physically pick her up and carry her to her room, and she's gangly and awkward to carry when she's fighting me and grabbing door frames and stair railings as we pass them. Then she may or may not stay in her room, but she will most certainly bang her heels against something, hard. Because we don't have $$ for plaster and carpentry repairs, I'm then forced to go in and talk her down anyway.

The other thing is that she can and will keep this up for 3 or 4 hours, and I foresee the other kids developing PTSD if I let her tantrums run their course, unchecked. They shouldn't have to listen to that.

Miss A reacts to being ignored in her tantrums, much the way I would react if I was deeply upset and sobbing and Jason ignored me. I would be incredibly hurt and feel unloved, and I would resent it. She doesn't get that the problems that spark her tantrums aren't real. She's not really being attacked or rejected or punished or disregarded or whatever, but she thinks she is and lashes out in response.

It's hard for me *not* to ignore her. First, I don't want to encourage her ridiculous behavior by honoring it with a response. Second, I am lazy and the circular, nonsensical conversations we have to have during her distress are the bane of my motherly existence. Third, I always have other stuff I should be doing, and I'm not good at multi-tasking, so it's not a good use of my time to go around and around about why we comb our hair or pick up our stuff or do our homework. But if I put in the time early and act sympathetic to her imagined plight and soothe her, the tantrum is much shorter. If I let it go, she's already hostile to me when I start talking her down; if I start early, I'm an ally against whatever problem she's created and she's more receptive to my suggestions and the soooooooothing tooooone of my voiiiiiiiice.

I have recorded several of her tantrums and would love to post them here for your edification and amusement but I feel sorry for her, for when she grows up and realizes how crazy she was being. (That's hope talking, people!) Maybe one day she'll run for President and her insane tantrum tape will be leaked to the press and it will ruin her chances and that, too, will be all my fault. No, I'd rather just keep the tantrum tapes in my back pocket, so I can blackmail her into pushing for tax breaks and free Wendy's Frostys for everyone in my particular tax bracket.

the bunny planet (part 2)

Poor Miss A had a crummy day today. Nothing spectacularly bad, really. Just normal kid friend troubles on the playground, but she's extra insecure because she's only known these kids for two weeks. (They all seem very sweet. Today's situation was Miss A's fault because she couldn't be swayed from her objective, and because she failed to read her friends' cues that they weren't on board with her plan.)

In addition, she lost the really great pair of earrings she made in her elective jewelry-making class, and then this evening none of her neighborhood friends could play.

Normally she just gets mad, but today she was talking really quietly and slowly. She was down.

This morning I woke up with what is most likely pink eye. I worked out with Jillian Michaels, and I'm on the workout where she sexually harrasses one of her demonstrator girls, biting at her and smacking her on the ass,  and it's painful to witness. While I worked I became increasingly concerned about my workload... I left for a fun birthday lunch with my friend, and then moved into my hour-plus of driving to and from various schools and hoping to make it home before the boys' bus, and someone honked at me and made a rude gesture when I was trying to be kind and let her in. Then someone who shall not be named pooped her pants, apparently moments before I started exhorting her to put on her shoes so we could pick Miss A up from her evening activity. We were late.

When I returned home I found no less than 13 emails about new projects. I am hoping they are all about the same one or two projects, but so far I've experienced shortness of breath each time I've tried to read them, so I don't know.

Do you ever just want to drop out? Of life in general? I told Jason I want us both to stop working and I want to take this kids out of school and I want to just stay in the house and read and watch tv and play video games and build fires. I don't know what's wrong with me -- why I don't have any energy or drive right now. Is it because I've been getting up at 5:40 for this accursed workout and it's impossible for me to go to bed before 10:30? And I've probably been averaging closer to 11-11:30? (Parents of babies and toddlers, mock me all you like. But know this: Lack of sleep is behind all those times you secretly wonder if you're going insane.)

Anyway, something recently brought to mind Voyage to the Bunny Planet. I blogged about it in 2009. I need to read the book again because I don't remember much of it, but Miss A made me think of it again today. When really bad things are going on, it seems like there's usually goodness sprinkled around it. When Jason lost his job, friends, acquaintances, strangers, and many of you sent us money and cards and packages of clothes for the kids, and brought over meals... I am still overwhelmed by the goodness that flowed through that scary situation. Recently, when Miss A was so sick, friends and family were calling and emailing us to check on her, praying for her, sending her balloons, and offering to take our other kids so Jason and I could decompress together. People are so good, and so kind.

Except that nasty lady who honked at me in traffic today.

But so it's not the really bad times that are just colorless and draining. It's the just-sort of-crappy times. When your friends misunderstand you and they're mad and your feelings are hurt and you don't get what you did wrong. When you work really hard and then your work is lost. When you don't have anyone to help you laugh it -- whatever "it" is -- off. That's when life becomes very grey and dull and seemingly aimless. Miss A hasn't said so, but between her illness and the new school it's been a month since she last saw her friends -- her longtime, solid friends who know her and get her -- and I think she might be getting homesick.

apparently i have strong feelings about valentine's day

As I established last year, Valentine's Day is a woman-killer. Did I ever explain that my grandma describes the holidays as a woman-killer? Anyway, that's where I'm coming from.

This year was a little better. For one thing, Haney doesn't have 20 teenaged assistant teachers for whom she must also provide Valentines. For another thing, she can copy her classmates' names off a list. We still have the same massive problems with tearing along perforations and inserting tattoos into tiny slits, though.

Also. Last year, as you know, was the year of the Fortune 500 Room Mother. This year is the year of the slacker room mothers. The boys and Haney both brought home instructions not to label their Valentines. Instead, each kid should bring in 23 blank Valentines and the room mothers would toss them into bags.

WTF?

Okay, first of all, I'm not a room mother so their version of slacking off is my version of "effort I refuse to put forth." But!

1. I thought the way we fooled ourselves into believing the V-day party was educational was by making the kids practice their penmanship; and
2. Isn't a big part of the fun in choosing the right Valentine for each friend, and in receiving a Valentine that was potentially chosen for you? My kids think so.

So, my kids labeled their Valentines, much to the dismay of the organizing room mothers.

Miss A is another story altogether. I am still getting the hang of this new school, but there was no communication at all about Valentine's day. No notes, no letters, no requests for money or paper goods or a healthy snack... I asked Miss A if they were having a party and she said yes, and then she asked for a class list from the teacher. That was the extent of my knowledge about her class's party. But they did have one, with ice cream sundaes and paper bags they'd decorated, and a craft. Did the teacher handle all of these details? Is there a room parent who flies under the radar? At least the pressure to show up for the party was off.

I arrived at Haney's party as the harried-looking room mother was asking preschoolers to come to a table and drop one of their Valentines in each of their classmates' bags. Obviously, this became far more complicated when the preschoolers had labeled their Valentines... But we weren't the only ones who'd defied the no-labeling order.

At the boys' party, at least one other child had personalized her Valentines -- and she'd actually made them by hand! They were so cute, and so obviously made by this 1st grader and not her mom. They are heart-shaped doilies with glitter glue and heart-shaped buttons and glittery pom poms and basically they're ridiculous and over the top and so girly... and the boys LOVED them. They were so touched that she'd actually made them, and talked on and on about how "Maggie had to make TWENTY-THREE of these!!" And P vowed that he shall make his own Valentines henceforth! 

In other news, Jason brought the romance this year. It was surprising and awesome. Flowers and notes and candy and the like... I, on the other hand, bought him World of Warcraft playing cards.

not an exciting post

On Thursday, for the first time since she got sick 1/17, Miss A showed a quick zip of her former energy levels. She went into what we call her manic state where she is laughing really crazily and loudly over nothing in particular at breakfast Thursday morning. Miss A in any sort of a good mood is noteworthy, but when she is overly excited that whips the other kids into a frenzy and that's not helpful in the mornings when in theory we're getting ready for school. So I had to quell her insane laughter but it was good to see her acting like herself again.

Mostly.

Today she had a big hand-flapping meltdown over the following:
She chose to take her shower right before lunch, instead of earlier in the morning when we'd asked her to. Then she didn't comb her hair when she got out of the shower. Then she wanted to go ask a friend to play at 12:40, but she had to leave for play practice at 1:45. I told her she needed to comb her hair first, then she could go. *Boom.*

Then followed 30 minutes of screaming and hand-flapping and flailing on the floor and wild accusations. I talked to her really calmly the whole time (although I did crack up a few times but how can I help it??) and also recorded 10 minutes of it on my phone so we can review the tapes later. I tried to stress the connection between her decisions about time management and the amount of time she had to play now, including her current decision to scream and cry rather than comb her hair and go get her friend.

A major catalyst today was that she had to use leave-in conditioner on her hair and apparently hates the feel of it on her hands, and feels like it doesn't wash off. Wasn't I supposed to discover all her sensory issues when she was a toddler or preschooler?

However, she has been a lot better or at least more manageable. She's been less hateful -- less full of hate and easier to love and cajole out of her snits. She's been more likely to laugh at herself or her logic or a situation she's in, a little.

the girls' bedroom is the bright sparkly thing i needed to distract me from my nervousness

Hello, internet!

Miss A's next dr. appointment is the 20th. I've been doing all right at managing my nervousness, but today I was so distracted I couldn't accomplish anything. Then I realized why:

For the last week I have funneled all my nervous energy into redecorating the girls' bedroom.

Bulleted updates:

• Miss A loves school. On Thursday her class began dissecting owl pellets and that rocked her world. She talked about it non-stop for about an hour, then went to play practice. I picked her up after play practice and she said, "I can't wait until tomorrow." I asked why, assuming it was because it would be Friday, or because of the newest episode of "House of Anubis." Nope! She answered, "For science class!" Like I was a little slow for not realizing her mind was still on the topic of science class several hours later.
  
  I can see a difference in her, a little. She is expanding, like I noticed her doing last year during rehearsals for the play she was in. I don't know if it is confidence, or just joy in doing something she loves, but it is good for her.
  
• Health-wise, she is still coughing some and I don't think she's back to her pre-illness energy levels, but she is better. She still has a much easier time falling asleep around 8 than she ever had before, but that's a plus.
  
• P re-did the homework G erased without complaining. Had he cried about it I don't think I would have made him do it, and their teacher would have laughed it off. But he did it without comment. He's a good egg.

The highlight of my last 7 days is that we got furniture for the girls' bedroom and got it all set up. I will blather on about that later and post some pictures, but this was pretty huge for us. The furniture we bought was cheap, but we've never bought them non-thrift store or garbage picked furniture before. Their room is very small and all of the walls are interrupted by doors or low windows. We had a bunk bed but it was difficult for me to make the top bunk, and so it was always a mess and we felt it contributed to Miss A's sleep difficulties. This was really exciting for me and I felt like a real grown-up shopping on Target.com and Amazon instead of at Goodwill and on Craigslist or Ebay.

g will not abide even a hint of academic impropriety

Those of you who devour my blog and carefully commit every word to memory will remember that homework has sometimes been a bit of a challenge with my boys. But we've turned the corner on that and now, about once a week, they'll sit nicely and do the entire week's work. It is awesome.

Tonight I laid the boys' homework packets on the table, and asked P to do his homework while G took a bath. After a brief protest P sat down and, indeed, completed every bit of this week's work. He wrote complete sentences answering reading comprehension questions. He did a bunch of math. I was proud of him and paid him 5 marbles for being so good.

A bit later I sent G down to do his homework. He yelled up that P had done the wrong work. I went down to investigate but was sidetracked by a fight between the girls. By the time I got that ironed out, G's shrieking and squawking had driven me insane and I told him we would do his homework tomorrow night and he needed to go hop in bed.

Later still, the boys invented a reason they needed to go downstairs. I went too and got distracted by trying to clean up the kitchen. A little while later P yelled, "MOM! G is uhwasing all my homewuck!"

I rushed to investigate. Sure enough, G had erased ALL of P's homework. WTF?? First of all, who has the patience to erase that much? G's patience is fueled only by his rage. Second, oh my gosh that was SO MEAN! P had done sooooo much work and had written so neatly and now it was all gone. I could barely make out the letters and numbers that had been on the papers, but if I didn't put them up to my face the sheets looked blank.

Blogworld, the boys have the exact same homework. I double checked to make sure their teacher hadn't suddenly changed it up on me, and he hadn't. Exact. Same. Packets. I label each packet with a G or a P when I take them out of their backpacks on Fridays, so I can keep track of which kid has done which work. P did the "G" packet from start to finish, so G took the logical step of using an entire pencil eraser to scrub out P's answers, rather than lowering himself to completing P's identical packet of work.

It was a conundrum. Normally if he destroyed something his brother worked on, I'd make him rebuild it. Should I make him complete both their homework packets now? Hmm. I thought about tracing over as much of P's writing as I could make out, but again, it's tricky with the rigorous 1st grade academic integrity standards. I'd hate for P's scholastic career to be tarnished with accusations of cheating. I don't know what to do. P sadly said, "I guess I'll do it all again tomorrow."

So what would you do, blogworld? Short of tarring and feathering or straight-up whuppins.