Arbor Day, Schmarber Day

This morning I attended a full blown, 2 hour, every elementary school in the district, tree extravaganza. Complete with songs, Kyle and Reed acting like 2 year olds, and me having a knock-down-drag out-fight with one of JR's teachers. (And since I probably shouldn't say which teacher it was, I'll just say that he only goes to this class twice a week, and doesn't do P.E. or art.)

First, JR.

Here's the only time I saw, and only picture I got, of the poor child. (More on why later.)

Kyle and Reed actually did good for about the first 15 minutes of the show. We saw Smokey the Bear, listened to the mayor talk, and made it through about 3 elementary performances.

Here's Kyle reading the program. Reed was in my lap. All was good.

Now had the Arbor Day Show (from here on out known as ADS) only been 15 minutes, we'd have been great. (And when you think about it, 15 minutes is a super long time for 2 year old twin boys to sit still.)

But the show wasn't 15 minutes, in fact, it was AN HOUR and FIFTEEN MINUTES before JR got up to "perform".

But before we get to JR's "performance", let's talk about what Kyle and Reed did for that hour in between:

(By this time I had moved to the corner of the gym with them.) They slapped each other with their caps, ran around on their squeaky shoes, cried when I took their squeaky shoes off, had to leave the show while they cried, ran out the gym and tried to run out the front door.

Needless to say after an hour of trying to keep them under control, I was frazzled. There was another little 2 year old boy there and they started running around with him. Unfortunately for me, they started running toward the performance area. Now the other mom and I were trying our best to keep them from running up there, but I think it's much more distracting to see kids plus and adult running past, so we didn't chase after them. They probably ran up there about 3 times, and apparently 3 times is all JR's teacher can take because she marched over to me and told me if I was going to let my kids run around (like I let them do that because I'm such an incompetent mom) then I need to take them outside.

Me: When are they going to sing? As soon as they sing, I'll leave. And, besides, YOU have kids. You should be more understanding.

(On a side note, this teacher happened to be eating out with her family the night we made all the napkin hats and accessories. Of course, we thought we were hilarious so we were all laughing and having a good time. Let's just say from the looks on her face then, she was not amused with us. But then again, her children were so well behaved they didn't need to make napkin hats.)

I also then told her: I'm tired of you being pissed (yes, I used the word "pissed") about my kids all the time. You basically stoped the show at Family Night to go give my kids 'go to hell looks' (Yep, I said that too. My mom is queen of the expression 'go to hell looks', and really, it is the best way to describe "that look".) I'm doing the best I can. If you don't want 'families' at Family Night or these shows, then don't invite the kids! (I didn't mention JR's "performance" at family night in this post since I was still huffy about the afore mentioned "looks" my kids were given.)

She then told me something about how I couldn't talk to her that way and walked off.

And here's the best part. So every other school in the district had performed by now. Some had poems and speaking parts, but almost everybody did a song. All of the songs were sung a cappella. And one of the schools even used sticks they had picked up in their yards to keep the beat (That was really cute.) So what was JR's "performance"? Well, his teacher turned on a CD of other kids singing to have our kids "sing" a long with. So yeah, I waited an hour and fifteen minutes for a lip sync number. Great. If I want to hear other kids singing I'll watch American Idol. And the other best part? JR was nowhere to be seen. Can you find him? Nope. Me neither.

So even though the ADS was a community event advertised all over the place, apparently 2 year old twins whose mother can't control them were not welcome by certain teachers. I wish they had put that in the flyer, it would have made my morning so much easier!