Biting the Bullets

Odds and ends that could be entire posts, but aren’t:

• The last couple weeks have been extremely hectic and unpleasant.  I blame Mr. A who volunteered to write a brief he didn’t have to write. Granted, it was so important it will go on his resume, but he is working WAY too much to be paid as little as he is being paid at this job.  He also has to go out of town for the next few days, which makes me unhappy given the fact that the children have barely seen him in the last week and I am teetering on the edge of serious parenting burn out.  On Thursday, though, you will hear me make a huge sigh of relief as we hopefully all return to our regular groove.

• Adding to our busy-ness is the fact that I found a new Chinese class for M.  It is an experimental program that meets two days a week for 1.5 hours each.  It is the Chinese class of my dreams.  During the first session, I was so happy I almost cried.  The class has 9 other kids and several professional teachers and is a full-immersion program.  This should not be confused with the regular Chinese school program, the new class  is intensive, well-designed language education.

• With the addition of M’s new classes, we were doing Chinese no less than SIX days a week:  Sunday – regular chinese school for M, Monday-new Chinese class, Tuesday -  Chinese tutor for both L and M, Wednesday – Original Chinese tutor for M, Thursday- new Chinese class for M, Saturday – FCC Chinese school for L and Chinese tutor with her cousin S on the weeks there is no FCC school.  I talked to M’s Wednesday tutor and we are going to drop that session until the New Year to see if the  new program continues.  So now, we only have Chinese 5 days a week.  What a relief! (Yes, that is a little bit of sarcasm there.) It is almost enough to make me wish we had moved to D.C. so the kids could go to that free Chinese immersion school.

• The fact that we do 5 days of Chinese lessons has led me to admit that I actually am one of those parents who will need a huge planner to keep track of all the classes my kids have scheduled. Yes, we are those parents.  No, I don’t think it is bad for my kids.

• Yesterday, Mr. A and I had to put in the storm windows.  This is absolutely my #1 most hated job related to our house.  This time was particularly sucky because we had stashed them in the basement to hide them while trying to sell the house, so we had to drag all 57 of them back upstairs. (Ok, not really 57.  14.  But all 14 were effing heavy.)  There was much cursing and nashing of teeth during the installation process.

• Last night we did our annual Moon Festival celebration.  It was pretty lame because it was too cloudy to see the moon and we ate take out Vietnamese food (see above mentioned exhaustion).  The only thing noteworthy about the whole thing was that damn, L can seriously snarf down some mooncakes.  I think she ate two all by herself.  Blergh.