PICTURE DAY TODAY

This is Madison's class - you can spot her easily on the front row.  These pictures amuse me.  Parents all get the letter or email that says "PICTURE DAY DAY."  And inevitably, there are those that forget.  We're not those parents, which is not to say we're better than others.  It just means we're those parents that are slightly obsessed with school picture day and making sure we do our best to have some sort of nice dress on instead of - and I'm just making a random example here - a Captain America costume shirt.  Which looks cool, by the way, but perhaps not for class picture day?

One could argue that by wearing a Captain America shirt, or a "My Game is Sick" t-shirt, you're sending your child in for school pictures wearing what it is that child wears every day.  It's more of about capturing what your little student is day in and day out.  But gosh, we were raised differently.  I remember wearing a tie to school picture day.  You can see above that Mr. Reed is the only one wearing a tie.

And with a lot of experience taking group pictures, you can see how even the professionals just can't get a small group of kids to do the simplest task:  look straight ahead at the camera in 3...2...1...  Nope.  There's still two looking off to the right, and one with some sort of disgusted grimace that looks as if to say, "You forgot to file your paperwork!"

It must be tough being a photographer.  But then again, they probably are used to it.  I would be so driven for perfection that there might be a child crying somewhere:  "Mommy, the photographer said I need to look straight ahead and smile, and he threatened to throw a stuffed animal at me if I didn't!"

I'm just kidding.  Not serious at all about that.

ANYWAY, today we had ballet, and the pointe shoes are getting easier, according to Madison.  All the kids no longer have nerve endings on their toes, which is important for ballerinas.  You must make sacrifices for the art, and this includes mutilating your toe infrastructure like those old Chinese warlords would do to their female subjects.  Obviously I'm exaggerating, as I have no idea what I'm talking about.  All the girls are complaining about how painful it is to begin with, and I'm sort of like, "Well, it's something all ballerinas do, and it's culture.  So it's not that bad, right?"

Yes, of course.  Anyway, today Madison had her test on landforms, and of course nailed it.  Science poses little trouble for her.  It's the reading comprehension that sometimes ties her up.  And to be fair to her - not that I'm some crazy overprotective parent:  the questions are sometimes worded in the most bizarre fashion.  We can thank Common Core for that.  Someone up on high is creating these tests, and I swear no one is editing them.  I mean, there's typos galore.  And you'll see typos on this blog, but I don't get paid for this blog.  Nor do I have an editor.  With these tests she gets, and her homework, we'll look at the tests, and I am not an English major.  But I can clearly see typos that Madison explains afterwards:  that's just a mistake.  But the poorly worded questions are the ones that are most frustrating.  It's not that Madison doesn't get the concept:  it's that she doesn't understand the astoundingly stupid way you asked the question.  Some of these are worded in such a way that I swear you'd think that it's a trick question.  As if some educational government official was about to quit his job, and he said, "I'm going to try and trick these kids, and then they'll all see.  They'll all see!  Moo-ah-ah-ah-ah!"  And because with Common Core there is no team of editors to fix a whole lot of mistakes that our government (which by that I mean we ourselves) already paid for, the mistakes go straight to the classroom for our kids to sit there and struggle with.  I tell Madison the truth:  "I know you understand the concept, and I'm proud of you.  Don't let this weirdly worded question bother you.  It was just a little tricky to understand, that's all.  Even Daddy was confused by this one."  Inside, I'm thinking, "What moron made this amazingly stupid question up?"  Because I'm a dad, and I'm allowed to get all defensive like that.  It doesn't make it right for me, of course.  But I still want to find whoever wrote these questions this way and TP that person's house.

Okay, anyway, moving on:  we saw some Lucky Charms today at the grocery store.  Yes, this is important.  St. Patrick's Day is imminent, and we must have our seasonally appropriate cereals!  Mommy is somewhat repulsed by Lucky Charms of late, as she says it contains cleaning fluid in it.  Technically, it's trisodium phosphate, and it's not in enough concentrations to be dangerous.  Unless you ingest several boxes of Lucky Charms per morning, which is entirely possible this time of year.  We'll have to be careful there.

We were cleaning the basement today, which is an ongoing battle.  But the "holiday room" is organized nicely at least.  Now time for the rest of the basement, right?  Not quite:  it's pretty chilly down there, and there are a lot of other things going on right now, such as a new series and mattress research, and going to get more groceries.  We did some shopping today, yes - and yes, Daddy had to sneak into the cart some Lucky Charms...