Homework

First grade homework is getting killer. Seriously, did you people have to do book reports in the first grade? I could be mistaken, but I don't recall ever bringing a lick of work home. In fact, the only thing I CAN remember about first grade was a really cool Spiderman sweatshirt, a girl who always smelled like fish and a friend named Hillary. Hillary and I would spread glue on our hands, let it dry and then peel it off. I sure as hell wasn't churning out papers about different continents.

BoyChild's (our) report is on the Poison Dart Frog. BoyChild was told to choose an animal from a South American rain forest and he came up with that right off the bat. There was no going through the books. I strongly suspect he picked up on this animal from school and the teacher is going to get 25 reports on the Poison Dart Frog.

Because of a slight date miscalculation (me not noticing that it's due this Friday instead of next Monday) we're forced to complete one page a night, complete with illustrations. A whine free night nets BoyChild 2 Pokemon cards. He's only netted 2 this week. We fudged on tonight's illustration by running off a picture from the computer and pasting it in. But at least the paper looks professional - it's in a classy blue plastic report sleeve. Because professional is what we're all about in the first grade.

* Image: Gail Shumway/Getty Images 2007