Clean House!

We have a nice clean house now. The baby and I cleaned the shit out of the house on Saturday and the reason she and I did that is b/c her grades are now all of a sudden sucking majorly and she also is having bad behavior days at school and that is totally unacceptable. So, as I put it to her, since she apparently is having all her fun at school and not doing what she's supposed to be doing, she didn't need to be having any more fun on Saturday and she was ordered to organize her toys and books in her room, scrub the bathtub, was not allowed to watch any tv, and had to mop both bathrooms and the entire downstairs (the latter which she totally enjoyed, by the way, and wanted to do it again after she did it once).

I just don't know what to think or do about this child and the most frustrating part is that there's practically nothing we can do to help her anyway. We talk to her and express our concerns, and meet with her teacher, but the limited time we get to spend with the baby is just not really significant enough to have an impact on her day to day living. A 6-year old can't be expected to remember on a Tuesday that if she's bad that day then 11 days from now when she's back at our house there will be consequences and she will not like them. I was not thrilled that she enjoyed the mopping, and S said as long as she did what I told her to do on Saturday--and she did--then Sunday we could have fun with her again. The only other thing I can think of to do is just not have as many fun rewards for her, but S took her to the movies on Sunday anyway. She already has not gotten her allowance all school year due to bad behavior reports. We give her $1 for each "A" she gets on her report card, which she promptly spends, so when she wants things at the store I am constantly reminding her why she has no $ to spend. At this point I don't know what else to do and maybe I don't need to be worried so much anyway since she is, after all, just in 1st grade. I guess I should just be glad that we are saving $ by not giving her her allowance and that I might continue to have good slave labor house cleaning assistance.

After cleaning house and going grocery shopping we had just enough time to go to the park before it got dark. I ran just a tiny bit but couldn't stray too far from the playground so I could keep an eye on her. I was wearing my "Miss Nelson Is Not Amused" t-shirt and the baby asked about it, so that warranted a stop by the library down the street to pick up the "Miss Nelson" books! When we got home I read them to her and we had a lot of fun doing that. I had to re-read them, too, by popular demand!

Tonight is our monthly sheriff's meeting and I am hoping my transfer will take effect beginning today. S got a call from our investigator this past weekend who said that S's bad credit issue is a problem. I can't believe that as outstanding as S is in every other way, that his bad credit could be the one thing keeping him from getting commissioned as a Texas peace officer!!! This is frustrating as hell for the both of us too and is very disheartening. I feel like calling up these assholes and pointing out that since he's married to me he's not a bribery risk b/c I make good money, and if he could only get a decent job I could stop working all these extra hours and then I could give more of my time to law enforcement and my patrol time, so they'd DOUBLY benefit, by getting an awesome asset like S and getting more of me at the same time!!!