Life as a Parent 2.4

[Neon Ignition]

Cheers

@gunrock We've only recently had to faff with the school with a similar situation. Jr1 had a chesty cough and they kept sending him home, after about two weeks he finally go back in just to catch a stomach bug after a few days and have them send him home again. That went on for another week or two and the next thing we got a phone call from some school associated group asking if they could assess him because he is behind the rest of the class in his learning so they want to check in case he has special needs and may need specialist tutoring. The missus went nuts at them about how he's naturally going to be behind if they won't let us take him in. Finally he gets well enough to go in and stay in, one week passes and he's caught up and doing fine. Didn't stop us getting a note from school telling us that he'd been off too much.

It's parents evening tonight.

God help them.

[vanpeebles]

Having worked in a school for many years now, don't give them an inch. Cut loose!

[Mayhem]

Kathryn is now 14 months, walking with minimal aid, reaching for everything under the sun (I call this the "fighting Zangief" tactic, make sure everything stays just outside grab range!), refusing very little food wise we try her with, and just plain stubborn like her parents heh. We are waiting for all this to dissolve once she reaches the terrible twos!

Cut loose!

Footloose, kick off your Sunday shoes?

[prinnysquad]

Having worked in a school for many years now, don't give them an inch. Cut loose!

Ignore this fishy fanny. ^^^

[Zaki]

I knew there was something fishy about Missa Pebble...turns out he never left school!

[vanpeebles]

Schools spend large sums of money on monitoring and staff for attendance only. Sending out generic automated messages is just lazy, especially if they are wrong.

[prinnysquad]

Maybe in some comps, but most stuff is handled by the office admin using that crap SIMS system. Another government outsourcing gashfest using Crapita.

[vanpeebles]

Yes, they were big Labour party donators.

[prinnysquad]

New Labour. The Tories, then.

[dataDave]

Teachers are twats. I left school thinking that they were probably alright "in real life" outside of school.

No. I went back to work at my old school from 2005-2010. They are twats to the absolute bone.

That said my old deputy head of upper school was my boss during that period. Paul Matty. Total legend of a chap. He had put his own neck on the line for his staff so many times during the time I was working under him. We're still in touch today. Probably one of the best people I've ever known.

[Neon Ignition]

As expected, parents evening comes and goes and there's no real issue. As long as he stays well enough to be attending we're going to refocus on Jr2 for a bit just to get a start on potty training and any bits she could do with learning before she starts preschool in September as by the time summer time comes then the impending arrival of Jr3 will likely dominate all till well into next year.

[cutmymilk]

How on earth do you watch as many films and play as many games as you do? It is baffling. I have a 4 month old and a 20 month old and we get them to bed at 7:30-8:00 every night when we can have a couple of hours to ourselves. Last night I played Spiderman on PS4 until 12:30 so I assume you do things like that every night but even then Spiderman will take a couple of months!

[Neon Ignition]

You're key detail there is that you have a four month old, man, everything goes out of the window for those first six months and I'm bracing myself for doing that a third time. Typically my time goes as:


05:20am - Wake Up
06:50am - Arrive at Work and game on Switch till start time
07:30am / 08:00am - Start Work
<Half Hour Lunch - Game on Switch>

We pick the kids up after work and get back for an average ball park of 5:00pm, there's loads to do feeding the kids, going over school books with Jr1, odd jobs, prepping their stuff for the next day etc but whilst eating or after all that's done we'll crash out on the sofa watching something which is where updates on more family friendly fare come from like the Tangled series, animated movies etc as we pcik through them now that the kids are at an age they can hold their attention on them.

Between 7:00pm and 8:00pm the kids will go to bed depending on how well they're behaving and how long the routine takes to settle them and then it's a deep dive into whatever we're working on at the time. Typically we'll get through 2-3 episodes worth so some stuff takes a while to work through but the increasingly common thing of 8 or 10 ep seasons instead of 22 eps makes a big difference.

The missus has always gotten tired before me, especially now she's approach Trimester 2 so it's common for her to go to bed between 9:00pm and 9:30pm at which point I hop onto the PC or PS3 and I will commonly plug on till 11:30 or all the way through to 1:00am sometimes before getting up at 5:20am again.

Weekends it's the same night routine but maybe an hour or so in the afternoon during nap time for the missus as the kids play. With a focus it gives me say 12-14hrs for a big title at least which is usually enough for most stuff especially since I don't bother with all the collectable or padding gubbins many games put in them these days. The rest comes from episodes watched on my mobile, the 3DS/Vita etc which is small bits now and then when the chance arises.

[cutmymilk]

I think you are a person that can function on a relatively small amount of sleep. I am quite envious of those people and it is common in the ultra successful.

My 5 month old is actually easy and the sweetest baby you could ask for. He puts himself to bed and only cries when he absolutely needs attention! He will happily sit and gurgle for hours if we let him in between feeds and nappy changes whilst we spend the majority of time on our busy, busy toddler. He is very energetic and doesn't stop moving until he is exhausted usually after 7pm. He is way ahead of others his age physically, and absolutely dominates soft play designed for 4 year olds. He is brilliant though, and it keeps us fit - we have to be!

[Neon Ignition]

I'm definitely not successful! Thanks to how bad transport to work is I've always had to get up early for work and always begrudged the idea of going to bed early as it'd mean life was just work/sleep so I think it's just been something I've trained myself into. These days I get more drowsy than I used to as the week goes on but broadly I'm okay unless it's a hard phase with the kids.

My recent new arrival nephew is a good one for sleeping and chilling too, not like ours who live and breath a need for attention from us. When Jr2 arrived I got next to nothing from the first 6 months, it was all work and I was also preoccupied with Jr1 to take the strain off the missus. Mindful of that with Jr3 as the distraction is twice as much this time but I need to not miss that this is the last time we'll go through this experience too.