February 11, 2025 - Tuesday

I finally got started on Jonas's room in earnest today. Me and the kids tore out all of the trim and all of the carpeting and padding. We removed the tack strips and all of the tiny staples throughout the entire room. I swept and vacuumed it and got it all set for putting in flooring tomorrow! I was so grateful the kids helped so much. It takes extra time to teach them to do things, but I think it builds confidence and, as they get better at it, it is truly helpful. They did all of the trips to and from the garage with rolls of carpet and pointy tack strips and sat on the floor prying up staples for hours. They are hard workers! 

Of course, I did not take a before picture of Jonas's room. I don't know what's wrong with me. It's like I don't want to have any record of the hard work I'm putting into this house. *eye roll*

I went to bed feeling super frustrated with Jonas tonight. I brought up the idea that he would have to start putting more time and effort into school as he gets older, and he cried through the whole conversation and basically blamed me for everything. And, while I do understand to an extent--he is a kid--I also think that 13 is old enough to be a little more of a self-starter than he is. He told me he's just been faking it through all of his math assignments and doing badly at them, but not redoing, not going back to look at them again, and not asking for help. That made me so upset! I paid a lot for this math program and if he's not getting anything out of it, I want to choose something else. He basically told me he wants me to sit and teach him math like his math teachers at school did and it's like, dude, I have no idea what this ish is that you're doing! I can brush up on it and relearn it and I am willing to do that, but he DOES NOT want that extra 45 minutes of school time added to each of his days. This isn't some group thing where all the kids can sit together and learn. This would be just me and him for a long time every day. He can be so manipulative sometimes that it makes me want to scream. I know he doesn't want to do that, and he knows I don't want to do it. Of course, he brought all this up in front of Principal Ben, who looks at me like, well, you don't want to get fired, do you? Fix it. Grrr...