2:20am is a good time to party down, right?

Last night was basically hell, and by hell I mean it was like having an infant again. A combination of many factors (shitty cold with choking gasping cough and nasal congestion, up too late at Baba and Djedo’s and over stimulated, missing the Very Important Favorite Pacifier which was never the Very Important Favorite Pacifier until that night, etc) led to him waking up screaming and howling at 2:20 am and then staying up for over an hour screaming and howling. Fun times! And by “fun” I mean “terrible!”

He woke up before 7:00 am and was much more cheerful, possibly because he had pooped. In fact, when I reported the goings on to an experienced friend of mine, her first question was “Is it gas? When’s the last time he pooped?” Butts! They are powerful things!

The rest of the day went much better. Niko was incredibly charming and adorable all day, lavish with hugs and MWAH style kisses. He took a good long nap, a little earlier in the day than he usually does, and then lay down quietly with me but didn’t sleep for about 45 minutes later on. Stories were read. Toddlers were cuddled. At one point he dug his sharp pointy elbow into the small of my back and when I said ow he patted me gently. D’AWWWW.

I actually wrote half of the first paragraph this morning, while he was still napping, and then he woke up. I forget where I originally intended to go with it. Probably someplace complain-y. Today was pretty good, though. Except for the time that he was tantrumming and I knew he was hungry and was working on getting a meal ready, but he wanted the MEAL not the crap ass SNACK I was offering him, and I told him to just put the snack in his mouth, he liked it, just try it, put it in his mouth, and he took the offered snack (it was a freeze-dried dollop of yoghurt, he loves those), rested it on a molar, and howled at me furiously. Then took it out of his mouth and handed it to me, still yelling. HE SURE SHOWED ME. When his meal was ready, he ate the fuck out of it, asking for seconds on the peaches. After eating his meal, he grabbed the bowl of snack, marched it into the living room, and munched on it while playing.

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Tutoring update

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For those of you who don’t know/don’t remember, I tutor through a local community center. I have one student, and we’re working on Adult Basic Education (ABE), Math. Sometimes we touch on Grammar and stuff, though, as my student is also an ESL student. Her goal of working with me is to be able to take a math placement test that will get her into a math credit course in college– a 101 or higher level class, not a remedial class. You know, something that will count toward a degree.

She brought in a booklet on placement tests, from the college, and if we crammed really hard for a few sessions she could probably take the PreAlgebra test and do well on it. However, the PreAlgebra test wouldn’t get her into a credit class. It gave us a good look at where she’s at, and where she needs to be. We went over some sample questions and she got the hang of some stuff pretty quickly.

Our current plan is to touch on a few more PreAlgebra things (mean, median, and mode; brush up on time zones; continue reviewing fractions; order of operations), move onto Geometry, and then hit Algebra. The current goal is to have her take the Algebra test (which includes Geometry) this summer. We might push it back to the fall, but I’m hoping we’ll get it this summer. We’ve been held up and not really progressing because we keep coming back to fractions… we start doing a quick review and it turns out she’s forgotten stuff, so we spend some time on it, she remembers it all, she does well, we do a bit more review, she seems to have it cold… and then next session she needs to be reminded again. So I’m going to put together some practice worksheets with reminder instructions/steps and a handful of problems for her to work on when we’re not together, and hope that consistent practice will help keep things fresh in her mind.

If anyone has any advice or resources, let me know.

I’m going to try and attend more tutoring workshops this year as well. So far, they all seem to be geared toward reading/writing and ESL and not math, but I won’t be working with my student forever, and my next one might be reading/writing. So I might as well gobble up all the knowledge I can, right?

IN OTHER NEWS, Nesko might have to spend the night at work because it is snowing LIEK WOAH and apparently there are no snowplows out near him and it’s massively dangerous to be on the road. He is a dispatcher for a towing company and they are getting a lot of work tonight. Be safe, everyone!