"We Hung Out" - Star week

"We Hung Out" -Star week -
A thoroughly aggravating experience! On Monday Caitlin brings home a canvas bag with "Lucky" the dog in it, and "Lucky's Journal", oh, and a guessing jar. And Caitlin is SO into this, she's carrying the dog everywhere, the guessing jar is immediately filled with cheerios, (nope, not even enough time for me to start urging her to be more creative), all is well. I remember there is a poster, but do I wing it since there were no instructions, or do I wait? Midweek I look through the back to school night stuff, find it, and very specifically, it says you will get it on Friday, return it on Monday, - oh -, that makes sense, no problem, we'll do it all over the weekend. Apparently she missed show and tell, but again, no problem, Caitlin didn't seem to notice. Friday, Caitlin takes Lucky to school, I tell her not to because "we have him until Monday, so, . . . please mom please, . . . OK, but you'd better not loose him!" I'm sure you can see the writing on the wall already, (I couldn't, but I have very clear hind sight), Teacher made Caity cough up Lucky for the next person.

I find this all out Friday after school. (When I thought I'd be taking pictures of Lucky and Caitlin over the weekend and putting together her poster.) Fast forward to Saturday morning, 6 am. Caitlin is sobbing in my room - what on earth for? "I didn't get to say goodbye to Lucky - you said we'd take pictures - sob sob sob - Mrs. Gray made me give him back". So I ask what exactly happened - apparently there was a bit of a lecture on how she only gets one star birthday week, she can't have him anymore because it's not fair, and Lucky gets snatched back. Great!

There's more. Should I go on? Why not, you only live once. So I'm a good - if not perhaps over-involved mom, so I call the other kid - thinking they live in the neighborhood, maybe we can borrow him for a 1 hour photo shoot. Good idea, they were even home. (Actually Caitlin called by herself while I was still at a meeting which added to the confusion, but that's an aside.) Mrs. Mom does english as a second language I'm guessing. I never managed to ask because she assumed I was calling to find out if her son was going to Caity's birthday party. She probably thinks I was badgering her, poor woman! She's promising me over and over that they'll get Caity a present even though as her son tried to tell C., he can't come to the party. I'm saying no no, don't do that. Yes yes I insist. I finally said thank you and hung up completely defeated. Long story made even longer, we took pictures of "Moo Cow" as a stand in, which Caitlin thought was hilarious, and I've promised her we'll make her a poster of some kind. I'm still going to email the teacher to ask for a copy of the poster-worksheet for our own personal use so as not to infringe on the rights of the current star of the week. Wish me strength as I try to do this without jumping on my soap box about lecturing my child on being fair when she's the one who mucked it up in the first place!. . . and hope that she doesn't peruse blog sites.