Life is hard.

We had a horrible night last night, mostly with Casper. The day started okay, but Mrs. B talked to mr. flea about Casper at pick-up time. She has not been filling out her daily calendar project since April 8, and she did not do the three works she agreed to do in her daily contract. (I know, 4 years old, but this is the routine at school.) Then on the drive to the YMCA Casper and Josie got into huge fight over identical cups of cheddar bunnies. mr. flea decided Casper was having a hard day and took her home with him. He called me at about 4:10 to touch base and I could hear Casper screaming in the background about the fact that there was no ice cream. We did a pick-up of me and the Dillo and went to Locopops (thin mint sadly a little disappointing) and then home. Played okay at the park (shirtless Casper), but then begging for treats before dinner, stealing from the sugar bowl under my eye, freaking out at dinner over her inability to perfectly roll spaghetti on a fork, freaking out over I don't know what when I put Dillo in the bath. We'd alternate 10 calm minutes, achieved by much effort, with 20 minutes of screaming freakout. We did get her in the bath, but then she wanted to watch a movie or a cartoon, or anything, and we said no because it was a school night. That freakout went on and off until she fell asleep, naked, in mr. flea's arms, in our bed.

At 11:30 she woke up screaming, woke the baby. I nursed him, couldn't get him back down, much tagging in and out by mr. flea and he got Casper to stop screaming after about 20 minutes and I got the baby to sleep, lying on my chest on the couch. He woke up at 4:30 and wouldn't go back to sleep after nursing (very jolly but AWAKE); I tagged out with mr. flea at 5:45 and got another 45 minutes falling off the edge of the bed with Casper pressed against me tight and whimpering in her sleep. Then Dillo started freaking out and came and got me (waking Casper, who, you guessed it, screamed) and I had to hold Dillo the entire time I got him and me ready to go.

This after the morning Casper had on Tuesday, this via mr. flea:
"just had the morning from hell with Casper. I had the kids ready to
go except shoes on Caspern at 8:40 AM. She wanted to change her
shirt. She couldn't decide on shoes. She didn't want to go to
school. She wouldn't put on her shoes. I lost my patience. I got
Dillo in the car then I had to drag Casper out of the house and
literally stuff her into the car. Dillo starts crying because Casper
is crying. She is hysterical and screaming at this point. We drive
to school unbuckled [only two blocks] screaming at the top of her lungs about it the
whole way and stop at the church next to school to try and calm down.
Which isn't happening so much, so I offer to take Dillo to school
first as I don't want her to go into school crying hysterically. This
calms her down some.

We drop Dillo off and it is around 9:25 AM by the time I get her back
and checked in at the school office. I get her down to her class room
and she doesn't want me to leave. So I stay and do her journal with
her. She did the day and date then we made up a sentence together.
She is wearing your broken watch and the letter of the day is "Q." So
we came up with, "My watch is quite." I wrote in her journal, "I
liked helping you with your journal." She is interested in "$" so I
showed her what one million dollars "$ 1,000,000.00" looks like.
Then I got her working on to her math assignment and managed to leave
at 10:00 AM. So I guess we recovered but man what a morning .... she
really took it out of me."

Casper and I talked some last night (in a quiet sobbing phase between the screaming) about whether she was afraid about us moving, and what she might be afraid of. She said she doesn't want to leave her friends, especially Stephen, who has red hair and likes Spiderman and Power Rangers. Mrs. B suggested she talk to the school counselor (she talked to her once before when she said she hated school; the counselor wrote us up a long note, and frankly she doesn't seem very bright.) I don't know how to help this poor bunny.

public schools

These are the public schools in Athens that are in the areas we're looking at houses (mostly, the areas clustered around UGA/downtown). The public schools are set up in a Zone system, so you can apply to any school in your zone, but people living within a half-mile of the school have priority. I have to call and ask some questions, since some addresses don;t fall within a half-mile of any zone. It's also unclear to me if the schools fill up, or have wait lists; the application process is in March and clearly we are coming in late.

Thanks to the GA Dept. of Education, I can get profiles of the schools. Here are some key (to me) stats for the schools (2006-2007) that are near where we're thinking about living:

*Oglethorpe: 453 kids, 95% econ. dis., AYP, ADEQ, 7% white, 52% black, 36% hispanic, has preK
*Chase: 226 kids, 94% econ dis., AYP, ADEQ, 4% white, 42% black, 50% hispanic, has preK
*Barrow: 369 kids, 26% econ dis., AYP, DIST, 68% white, 16% black, 7% asian, 5% hispanic, has preK
*Fourth: 335 kids, 94% econ. dis, AYP, NI-AYP, 3% white, 56% black, 39% hispanic, has preK
*Gaines: 520 kids, 90% econ. dis., no AYP, ADEQ-DNM, 7% white, 76% black, 13% hispanic
*Barnett Shoals: 570 kids, 67% econ. dis, no AYP, ADEQ_DNM, 29% white, 56% black, 5% hispanic
*Whit Davis: 573 kids, 48% econ. dis, AYP, ADEQ, 41% white, 46% black, 3% hispanic

Notice that the two schools that are mostly white kids and mostly not-poor kids are the most successful.