Family Update: Part Cameron

I keep reminding myself that Einstein didn't do so well in school, either. Cameron is my dreamer. He spends his time at school inventing things and then coming home and scavenging for cardboard boxes and using all my Scotch tape. He might be sending me to my grave sooner than I was meant to be there, but he brings me joy, too. Cameron will always take the trash out for me, unless it's dark outside. And he never complains about emptying the dishwasher. I can never find my dishes when he's done, but at least they're put away somewhere.

Cameron is a bit of an artist, in addition to being an inventor. He spends a lot of time with crayons, markers, pencils and paint. He is forever wanting me to hang his work in the house. And he's beginning to develop a talent for abstract art, so his requests might be granted someday soon. All we need is for him to stop adding so much color that everything eventually turns brown.

There was one piece of Cameron's recent work that had very distinct color. It happened in the bathroom.

Yes, we're going there. Again.

Cameron emerged from the bathroom and hollered, "Mom! You'll never guess what happened to me!!"

"What?" was my disinterested response.

"I pooped, and there's colors in it! Red, and yellow and blue. What does it mean??"

I had no idea what it meant and told him to go flush. He refused to flush until I came to look at it. I dragged myself into the bathroom to inspect his deposit, and the specimen was completely covered with Cameron's standard roll and a half of toilet paper. (He's always afraid he'll get poop on his fingers, so he uses lots of protection.) Cameron fully expected me to push the paper aside and determine if the red in his poop was blood. I felt pretty certain that if blue and yellow were also involved, then blood was not a likely culprit. I told him to chew his food better and let me know if it happened again. That child's bathroom issues are never-ending.

Cameron is doing fairly well with his glasses. He only forgets them about once a week anymore, and doesn't have the total melt-downs over a spec of dust on the lenses anymore. There is one issue that I can't figure how to help him overcome. He's decided that it's easier to push his glasses into position with his face than to use his hand to slide them up his nose. The result is that he twists his nose and stretches his mouth is such a way that his face takes on the look of someone who's been institutionalized and drools puddles into his pants all day long. I can't, no matter how much I harass him for this, get him to stop the face contorting and use his finger to push them up. Looking on the bright side, maybe if he appears a bit challenged, his teacher will go easy on him at school.

And speaking of school, I've decided that neither Cameron nor I can survive another year of the same frustration that we've both been experiencing this year, so I will be homeschooling Cameron for one year next year. Hopefully I'll be able to teach him some solid study skills, test taking skills, encourage him, help him figure out how to deal with his focus issues, and most importantly, learn to understand him better. I wish I could throw in some instruction of organizational skills, but my desk is piled with 8 inches of paper and junk that keeps sliding off with cries of "Avalanche!" from the children. No one has died yet. So unless I chicken out at the last minute and send him to public school, he'll spend 4th grade at home, and then hopefully enter 5th grade in public school with some killer confidence and the learning tools required to stay out of the doghouse at home.