This was a total of 45 minutes hearing and being shown evidence of how smart, hard working, well behaved, sweet, nice, good and funny my children are.

Yaaaaay!

If you're not in a pollen-filled zone, line dry until almost completely dry, then toss in the dryer for a quick fluff to get the best of both worlds.

I don't use fabric softener. The residue can be irritating, and I wash a lot of toddler clothing and diapers. Which means I use hippie laundry soap. No optical brighteners for me!

Clearly there's a time limit on parent-teacher conferences, because otherwise it would have been multiple hours of hearing how awesome your kids are!

ION, my friend's website that got mentioned in Wired a couple months ago just got namechecked in The Times. [link] That counts as "arriving," right?

Those are my favorite conferences ever. I love telling parents great things about their kidlets.

My DH has a fanatical devotion to Oxyclean. He LOVES it and despite being a sceptical person in most areas of life, feels that extra spponful you add to your washload has a magical ability to make all clothes cleaner. I don't notice a difference, except maybe on gym clothes.

Woe. The towels were NOT done washing, the washer had just stopped, still full of water, for no apparent reason. I hope the reboot fixes it.

It's possible that dryer sheets have advanced since I learned not to use them, but I am ascared to mess with the absorbency of my towels. Hence the liquid fabric softener (Ecover, hippie fabric softener, btw), which should, if anything, improve absorbency along with softness.

Assuming the washing machine drains and rinses and all that good stuff.

Eta: Aw, FluffyBunny!Cindy is making me happy

I wash a lot of toddler clothing and diapers. Which means I use hippie laundry soap

I was just coming here to say this. Although I am running out so I may have to suck it up and go back to Cheer.

I am so NOT surprised that Cindy's kids are awesome.

I soaked some horribly stained stuff in OxyClean the other day, and it was amazing. I was pretty sure I was going to have to throw the stuff out.

And covered with pollen.

And ash, if there's a fire nearby.

And mud, if there's a dog...or maybe that's just one particular dog.

This was a total of 45 minutes hearing and being shown evidence of how smart, hard working, well behaved, sweet, nice, good and funny my children are.

Our parent/teacher conference was yesterday. Emmett is smart, not particularly hard working, somewhat behaved, fairly sweet (when talking about the baby), nice enough, pretty good and very funny. The gist was: should be an A student but really cruising along at a B+ pace.

Very "clever" (teacher's word) and "sneaky" (parent's word). Emmett's behavior and goodness is basically predicated on going right up to within a hair's width of what's allowed without going over the line. But he always knows where the line is.

Our task is to get him to internalize his motivations. Right now he's very carrot ("What do I get for doing this?") and stick ("Will I get in trouble if I don't do this?"). We need him to care enough about his work to research subjects that are assigned instead of whatever catches his fancy (i.e., baseball, U.S. Presidents, state capitals), check his work for sloppy errors that all indicate that he rushes through his homework at a breakneck pace and study for tests instead of presuming that classwork and homework is enough. Also, he needs to think more about benefiting the group as a whole instead of What's Best For Emmett.

Fairly subtle, but mostly good. Ultimately, Emmett isn't motivated by good grades and test scores at all. He can sort of blithely do all his stuff and be Very Good and that's about all the attention he wants to give it. He's not a perfectionist - in fact he's sort of the opposite. Careless and indifferent and sliding by on innate smarts and charm.

Still, had the highest reading score in the class on the state tests.