First grade homework is hard!

It's especially hard on the parents who have to sit right there and listen to the incessant whining.

"I can't dooooo this!"

"This is sooooo hard!"

"I don't liiiiike this!"

"Help meeeee!"

OK, that last one was me.

What is this massive, mind-numbing, brain-crushing burden placed on my poor hapless child?

Letters. Forming her letters properly, according to the sheet that has the preferred writing style we were given on the first day of school.

Caitlin, as you may know, can read like mad. She can spell like mad, too, due to all of the reading. However, her handwriting leaves a lot to be desired. Of course, my handwriting does too, but that's neither here nor there. You can afford to have crappy handwriting once you are old enough that you are no longer graded on it!

She does the typical first grader mixing of upper and lowercase letters in words. CAitliN, gRaSSHopPER, that sort of thing. The purpose behind the homework is to make her concentrate on her handwriting and to get her letters to look like...letters. Her capital "D"s at the moment look more like water droplets. Yet somehow, working on the few letters she has to do this week (They get a week to turn in homework!) was torture. Sheer, unimaginable torture.

Eric had to leave the room. I was thrown to the Whiner and had to sink or swim. Since I'm not particularly ambulatory at the moment, I had to keep my cool. I made her break out her dictionary when she complained that she couldn't think of any words that started with D (or G, or K, or...). This involved yet more whining as she had to carry the incredibly heavy dictionary all the way down from her room! and into the dining room. The dictionary is not much bigger than some of her collections of books, so I had no sympathy. Hours pass. Much whining occurs, but the homework is almost complete. She has to draw several pictures of words that start with the letter and then write the letter out repeatedly on the lines at the bottom of the page.

Eventually the torture ends and we all get to eat dinner without threatening our firstborn with Imminent Doom of Some Currently Appropriate Variety.

Caitlin turns back into Delightful Daughter instead of Whining Wonder, eats her dinner and gets to pick a pile of cherry tomatoes. Most of them don't survive to become part of tomorrow's lunch but nevermind -- there are hundreds more waiting outside.

I had no idea homework could be this hard. Just you wait until we get to math! Then Eric will be on his own, I'll be hiding in another room with my fingers in my ears.