The Gift of Cursive and Thievery

Did one child copy the cursive and then another the print?

Nope. Will wrote BOTH columns! How is this possible?!?! He said in 100% earnestness, "Mom, God gave me the gift of cursive." :-D I replied, "That doesn't mean it's OK for your print to be unreadable!" :-P I still can't get over it when I look at his papers - he has tons like this! When he started cursive, I almost thought he had brought home someone else's packet of papers by mistake (maybe even one of the girls'!) b/c it's so...pretty! :-D A few friends have told me that from an OT (occupational therapy) perspective, the majority of the time, "bad" printers are much better at cursive, b/c they don't pick up the pencil in between letters; it's a smoother motion than writing a letter, stopping, then finding their spot again to write the next. (Hmmm, yeah - it's actually true for me! Wow, self-revelation! :-P)

Now from school success to the pit of parenting despair: on Sunday, I saw that Annelise had a pack of [new, delish] Strawberry Fields Tic Tacs

in the back seat of the van. Curious, since I told her on Friday that we could NOT buy those. I asked her if she had just taken them, or if she had bought them. She lied: someone bought them for her. Who? Ummmm... I had her look in my eyes and told her that I knew she was lying. She had just taken them, right? Right.

BTW, all of this transpired in the parking lot of the zoo, where we had gone with my mom to have a happy afternoon with her visiting us here. I didn't want to ruin the outing, b/c it was literally our LAST DAY to visit before our membership ran out, and we were all so excited to see the meerkats and ride the train. [I think God didn't let me find those Tic Tacs until we were in this spot on purpose.] I choked down my rage over the fact that my daughter had just broken the law and LIED to my face. God immediately gave me the words to rescue the outing AND the situation: "I am extremely disappointed that you took these when I said, 'Not today,' but I am even more upset that you just lied to me about it. When we get home, you're going to get $2 out of your bank, we're going to go back to Publix, you're going to tell the manager what you did, and pay for the Tic Tacs you took."

The zoo trip wasn't ruined; in fact, it was cute as ever:

And she even made it through confessing to the Publix manager that evening without hiding behind me, bawling her head off, &/or refusing to speak (which is what I had envisioned.) She did speak quietly, but she did it...and THAT made my mama heart burst. I told her how proud I was of her for doing the right thing and to always remember that whenever you mess up, if you tell someone right away what you did wrong and try to make it right, then no one will be as angry with you.

As we walked out, she said, "Um, where's my Tic Tacs?" NO WAY, CHICA!!! I told her that she would get NONE of those Tic Tacs, b/c she lied to me. If she wanted some now, she could by herself another pack. [Super secret bonus: I would've never bought them myself, even though I was dying to taste them; but now that I get to eat hers? They are SOOOOO YUMMY! Strawberry Fields Tic Tacs are absolutely the best ever! :-D]