He must be eight...

I have two very different children. With Nick, I had the ideal pregnancy - I felt great all of the time, I was giddy about having a baby. He was two weeks late, I had to have an emergency C-section at 11 am on a Saturday morning, but he was the perfect baby. His little head was perfectly round. He seemed to come out of the womb talking - seriously, the first night the nurse brought him in to me she said "You hardly EVER hear a newborn talk this much" and he hasn't stopped talking since. He was a good baby, a well-behaved toddler - I could take him anywhere without a problem. He is polite, respectful and does what you ask of him (Most of the time!).

I prayed to get pregnant for 6 years and then I went for spiritual healing and Michael was conceived. It was the WORST pregnancy in the history of pregnancies. I was sick each and every day - violently. I was awful to my husband and had no time or energy for Nick. My little bean was born three weeks early - I went in to labor at 3 am. He was sick for the first 6 months of his little life and he was not such a happy traveler. He was high maintenance all the way. He escaped from the church nursery at 18 months of age (they found him near the main road!), he would hide in tiny places (very quietly) so you couldn't find him and I had several friends who actually refused to watch him. But he is my snuggler. He wakes up every morning with a smile and climbs in to bed with me to snuggle. He is very helpful (when he wants to be) and while still a bit adventurous, people welcome him in to their homes now.

Both of my boys started out their school lives in public school. We took Nick out of school at the end of the third grade and began homeschooling him. Public school was not a good environment for him - he liked to "change" everything just a little bit and that made it very hard for him to fit in to the structured world of school. He was eight when we had to make that decision.

For all of their differences, guess who seems to be following in big brothers footprints? This school year has been one big note-home-from-the-teacher after another. Frankly, I am a little tired of it. I mean, I don't doubt anything that the teacher is saying - I am not one of those parents - it is just annoying at this point because the child is just REFUSING to follow the rules. ANY rules. Yesterday he refused to pick a non-fiction book to read during reading time, so his teacher picked one for him. Well, this set off a tirade of how he does NOT like polar bears and did NOT want to read about them. So he ripped his reading paper in half and then handed in a paper that had the word "No" written on it like 50 time.

Anger? Party of one.

So we have a conference this afternoon that both Frank and I will be attending. I have no idea what the future holds but I know that something has to give here. I just find it so weird how two such opposite children could form such similar behavior patterns at the same age. Apparently, God has a sense of humor!

*Update* So we went to the conference and sat down with the teacher. I have to admit that I was a bit afraid of what she was going to say but basically we all came to the conclusion that Michael is pretty much mastering the fine art of avoiding any and all work. If that means faking an illness, he is going to do it. Charming. We pulled him in on the conversation and he tried to pretend that he didn't understand what we were saying, but in the end, we ALL got our points across. So, for now, all is well. We only have to get through until Friday and then we have a two week break, praise the Lord! Then we will have to re-program him in January to get him back in to the swing of things. Fun, fuh, fun!