Interruptions Galore

     If you have siblings, you know it is impossible to practice an instrument, speech, or anything else without interruptions.  Each one of us plays piano.  Katie, Nick, and Brigitte started when they were in second grade, while Natalie and I started in first.  We all have to practice piano as one of our chores.  Since we don't have a set time to practice, it's a race to the piano.  Once someone gets on, they have many interruptions.  Each one of us has something that we do to get one of our siblings off the piano.  

Katie: Katie can play for hours.  She just sits there on the bench and makes it so that the rest of us can't do our piano.  Her way of keeping everyone off the piano is to just keep playing.  However, in most cases, Katie doesn't make it to the piano first because she doesn't wake up early enough.  This makes it so that she has to come up with something to get us off.  Katie comes into our piano room, and tells whoever is on the piano that we are needed immediately by our mom or dad.  When we go, she gets on.  The rest of us picked up on this really quickly.  The problem is when our parents actually do need us, we don't listen to her.  It's like the story "The Boy Who Cried Wolf."  

Nick: Nick plays for the minimum time possible, so the rest of us don't have to try getting him off the piano.  However, Nick does a lot with his friends, and he can't do anything until his piano is done.  That means that he has to get us off the piano.  Nick plays lots of computer games and video games.  If you've ever heard the music for them, you'll understand how annoying it is because of the loudness and repetitiveness.  To get us off the piano, Nick gets on one of his computer games and turns the music all the way up.  We can barely hear ourselves play, so we leave, and he gets on.  

Natalie: Natalie is the crazy sibling of mine.  She does a lot of things to get us off the piano, but she has a favorite. Natalie comes in crawling so that we don't notice her.  Then, she quickly jumps into our laps and starts playing her pieces over us.  Natalie eventually pushes us off the bench with her bottom, and she continues to play her songs.   

Brigitte: Brigitte knows how to fake cry her way out of everything. The only thing she really can't cry her way out of is practicing the piano.  To get the rest of us off the piano, she goes to my dad or mom and cries until they tell her that she can play the piano before any of the rest of us do.   

My piano

Helping with Homework

     Homework... it's an awful thing that we all have to do.  You have math problems, essays, worksheets, reading, etc.  The list can go on forever.  Sometimes my siblings gets lazy and decide not to do their homework until last minute.  This laziness is a disease called procrastination.  I think that once in a while, we all procrastinate.
     My brother loves math.  He is in an advanced class, and he does really well.  Unfortunately, Nick doesn't like the homework problems that come along with it.  Every Sunday night, Nick comes to me and asks me to help him with ONE problem.  Then he turns in the homework to Canvas.  His math teacher allows them to redo the assignment until they get 100%.  Well, Nick usually misses three or four, and when he does, he comes crawling into my bedroom to "help" him with it.  I put help in quotes because help in his mind is doing it for him.  I don't put up with that.  I help him work it out, and sit with him until he gets 100% on all of his assignments.  Nick thanks me and then goes to bed. When my brother doesn't do his homework, he uses a dumb homework excuse. 

Homework

     Then there is my little sister Natalie. She doesn't procrastinate that much, but she gets stressed out a lot.  Every week on Tuesday, Natalie comes to me with 20 vocabulary words that she has a test on on Friday.  I help Natalie study by making her write the word and then say the definition.  The problem is, when she gets one wrong, she starts sobbing because she thinks she's going to fail her test because of one wrong answer during a study session.  Then, she gets so flustered that she gets all of the rest of the words wrong.  It takes forever to calm her down, and when you do, she has a mini panic attack.  Natalie finally finishes her panic attack, and she lets me help her finish the vocabulary words.  We go through this same problem every day, and on Friday, we go through the process a billion times.  Natalie repeats the study process until she repeats the definitions word for word.  On Friday, before school, we study some more.  Finally, on Friday afternoon, Natalie comes home from school smiling and telling me that she got 100%.  I think in my mind, "I told you so!"
     Brigitte is the youngest of the five kids in my family.  That means that she hasn't gone through as many years of school, and she has really easy homework.  It's hard for Brigitte, though.  She doesn't like math, and every day, she cries when she can't figure out a problem.  It doesn't help that everyone tells her that it is easy and she should figure it out.  My mom has me help her because apparently I'm good at math, and I try to be very patient. I don't tell her it's too easy because I know she's only in third grade.
     Luckily, I have an older sister.  I don't help her with her homework, she helps me with mine.  That is a plus of being a middle child.  You have older siblings that help you do things, but get the opportunity to serve others because of your younger siblings. 
   

The New Year

     New Years, in my opinion, is a time to make resolutions for yourself that you don’t

follow through on. Last year, I tried to not complain when my parents asked me to do chores, which didn’t happen. You have to make resolutions that are possible, and in my family no one creates ones that are possible.

     My little sister, Natalie, made a New Year’s resolution to not get scared at night and stay in her bed. That resolution failed on January 1, 2013. You see, my parents did not to tell my little sisters about the shooting in Connecticut. Unfortunately, my sisters know how to use this thing called the Internet, and were able to discover the misfortune on their own. Ever since they discovered that a man went into a school and shot children, they couldn’t go to the bathroomalone, fall asleep with the light off, or fall asleep at all. This also occurred on December 21, 2012, when the world was going to “end”. To make it so that they weren’t scared, I showed them Emma Louden’s blog post called, “We Are Not Going to Die (At Least Not on December 21)”.

     Back to January 1. It was time for Natalie to go to bed. After any vacation she usually gets nervous for the first day back and totally freaks out. This time, it was more than freaking out.Natalie was sobbing and sweating. I was the lucky one that had to go down to her room andcalm her down. I got there, and told her that Connecticut was really far away, and no one woulddo that here, blah blah blah. I then gave her my phone to text my older sister Katie with if she got too scared. Ten minutes later, Katie had 21 new text messages.

Here is how the conversation went:

1. Still scared Maddie get down here

(No Response)

2. Please Quick

3. Now

(No Response)

4. I’m so scared <3 Nat

5. Maddie please come quick

(No Response)

6. MADDIE

7. Can’t sleep

8. Maddie

9. Maddie

10. Maddie

11. Please come quick <3 Natalie

(No Response)

12. I’m tired, but I can’t sleep

13. Please

14. I’m crying and can’t stop

15. I’m sweating like crazy please please

(No Response)

16. Come

17. I don’t want to go to school

18. Bring tissues now now now now

19. Maddie, you said you would come. Will you get mom if she doesn’t get mad?

(No Response)

20. Please

21. Bring mom

Black- me
Blue- Natalie

     You may think that I’m a bad sister for not responding, but in all fairness Katie got the text messages, not me, and she didn’t tell me that she got them. Anyway, the next thing I know Ihad a sobbing sister standing at my bedroom door, and she was asking to sleep in my room. I let her, but on the first day of the new year, Natalie had failed her resolution. The next morning, Igot up for school, and stepped on her head. Whoops! I had forgotten that she had come in. My family is awful at New Year’s Resolutions.

Brigitte painted this on my computer for Natalie when she found out that Natalie had been scared.