"Horrible" Mommy Moment

On Monday, Peter came right in from school, sat right down, opened up his backpack, pulled out his books and started to do his homework.

Without me telling him. 

There was no reminding, no nagging, no cajoling on my part and no bartering, no whining and no griping on his part.  He just came in and did it.

I was so happy, so proud.  45 minutes later, I gave a big sigh of relief.  Peter's homework was done for the night!

As I was waiting in the carpool line to pick the kids up on Tuesday, I wondered if the same thing would happen that afternoon.

I didn't have to wait much longer for my answer.

Peter got into the car and immediately started in.  "My teacher is making me redo my math homework from yesterday.  She said it was HORRIBLE!  I can't believe I have to redo that plus all of my other homework."

And so the 15 minute ride home went.  Lots of complaining, lots of griping and lots of unhappiness.

And the whole way home, I was beating myself up. 

In my excitement that Peter did all of his homework without any prompting from me, I FORGOT TO CHECK HIS MATH!

I usually glance over Peter's math to make sure he's done it all and I will randomly check several of them.   I don't typically check all of the problems because he usually has them all correct. 

But Monday's assignment was 8 word problems.  I normally check all of his word problems because he tends to get tripped up on some of them.

But on Monday, I forgot to check the homework.

He missed 4 out of 8 problems.  His teacher was right, that is horrible.

That's a 50%!  That's an F!  That's failing.

So Peter redid those 4 problems and all of the rest of his homework. 

And I checked it all.

And I will check it all tonight. And tomorrow night.  And the next night. And the next night.  Because I don't need any more "horrible" Mommy moments.