Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Can You Say Overachiever?

Bug came home with a project assignment from her 3rd grade teacher last night. As part of their unit in nutrition, they had to design a balanced meal, then create it artistically using a paper plate as the background. As Bug solemnly explained to me, it was acceptable to just draw on the plate, but her teacher said that the more unique it was, the better the grade would be. Oh, and she needed to turn it in tomorrow. Plus she had math homework.

Fabulous.

The timing could not have been worse. I was smack in the middle of preparing for a book club meeting that evening. I already had the tablecloth ready to go on the table, the nice serving dishes out ready to be filled with appetizers, and I was frosting a cake.

We swept all of that aside and gathered glue, paper, markers, and the stapler. For an hour and a half, we cut curls of paper for spaghetti, wadded little strips of green paper into peas, cut out chicken nuggets, and watermelon, and rolled paper into a cylinder to make a glass of milk. Then Bug painstakingly glued everything to the plate and decorated the edge with markers. It was lovely, time-consuming, but lovely.

I swept the bits of paper off the kitchen floor and scrubbed the table free of glue, with barely enough time to get ready for book club.

This morning, as she carefully laid her project in a plastic bag, Bug said to me, "Mrs. M. will be so proud of me for getting this in early!"

Wait. What?

"I thought you told me it was due today," I said slowly.

"No, it's due in a week, but Mrs. M. said she'd really appreciate it if we could get it in during the week," Bug said casually, "I bet I'm the first one to turn it in!"

Type A, anyone?

4 comments:

#1quiltinggrandma said...

Where's the pix of the masterpiece??? Another example of a wonderful MOM! No matter what our children come first above all others :-)
Now to another important subject, what wonderful yummy did you serve your book club. Remember, I have smellavision on my computer :-)

jenn said...

-Crackers & Sweet Pepper/Cream Cheese Dip

-Tortilla Soup w/ lots of toppings

-Cornbread

-Applesauce Cake with Caramel Frosting

(Plus, everyone brought a dish - heaven!)

Nana said...

I'm beginning to notice that Bug and I have more and more in common as the years go by. I'm Type A also. I would have had my assignments done yesterday if only I knew what they were going to be. This is a trait that will serve her well in school - her work will never be turned in late. Now if we could just get Bear to lean a little more towards Type A... :)

And Grandma and I weren't invited to partake in the book club conversation and goodies because...Oh, that's right. We live too far away. Bummer!!

The Chic Chauffeur said...

That scene could have occured at my house as well, except add a sentence saying: Mom! I forgot the instruction page at school. Could you please drive me back up, and sweet talk the custodian into using his keys to let me into my classroom so that I can get the assignment page?

Thanks for letting me share your blog! It's great!