A Mommy Story

Each Monday at school, Cordy’s class starts their week by writing down all of that week’s homework assignments on a homework log provided by the teacher. This helps the kids plan their week and, more importantly in our case, helps Aaron and I guide Cordy on her homework for the week. I absolutely love the homework log.

At first, Cordy’s homework log was written in pencil. However, I think she was getting bored with pencil, and so she started bringing home a log written in different colors of pen each week. I wasn’t concerned, other than pen made it impossible to erase or make corrections without scratching something out.

Apparently she became bored with pen, too, because two weeks ago she brought home the homework log with everything written in pink highlighter. Not terrible, but it wasn’t a fine point highlighter, so it was a little hard to read.

Last week, however, I think we reached an intervention point:

“Yellow highlighter?” I asked as I squinted and tilted the page to try to read what was written. “Don’t you think that’s a little hard to read?”

“No, mom, it’s okay. I know what it says,” she responded dismissively.

“You do?” I asked incredulously. “You must have better eyes than me, because I can’t even read the dates at the top of the page.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” she cooed. (At this point I’m reminded to be careful to not sound too condescending to her at any point, because she mimics the tone as well as the phrase. And clearly in this moment she was giving me the verbal equivalent of a pat on the head.) “See? That right there says December 3 to December 12.”

“Uh, Cordy? The dates for this week are supposed to be December 8 to December 12.”

She paused for a moment, looking at the log with her eyes wide. “RIGHT! 8! It says December 8. I said the wrong thing earlier. I meant 8.”

Sure you did, kid. I’m just thankful there weren’t a lot of assignments last week to decipher.