WHITE BELTS ALL AROUND, BUT NOT A GREEN TIP TO SPARE

Okay, so I caved. And we finally, after 3 years of their begging (hey, I can hold out when I want to) let them join karate.

Well, it's supposedly on a trial basis, one month free, sign here in blood please, and then once you're in there's no getting out type of deals. I mean, geez, between Comcast, AT&T, and now the dojo, I really just have more "family" than I could ever possibly handle -- and I'm Mexican, so that's saying a lot.

But the first class went well. Even our ubersquirrely boy began to settle down a bit (yes, only in the last 2 minutes of the 45-minute session, but, hey, it's a start). And Saia, who we thought for sure was going to take to this like second skin, was surprisingly very self-conscious and shy.

But they did a lot of running around -- ALOT of running around -- and learned a few moves, and yes-sir'd and shook hands and bowed to just about everyone and their mother, and so left their first day feeling pretty awesome and totally excited about coming back.

That is, until we talked to them about the rules.

I don't know if this is how it works everywhere, but here they earn various colored tips in addition to their belt levels. There's a set of 7 home and school rules that they are required to follow without question. Any breach and their parents get to remove a tip. They then have to explain to one of their masters what happened, and then they're given a week to rectify the situation. If they haven't earned back all their tips by belt-testing time, regardless of whether or not they're ready skill-wise, they don't get to test.

So, first class was on Monday. They earned their white belts on Wednesday. Saia received a negative behavior report from her teacher on Thursday for "interrupting and offering her unsolicited advice to the teacher" (yes, I know, no comments from the peanut gallery, please), and lost her first green tip tonight. :(

And she was just devastated. Had been working on her shuffle-shuffle-step-out-punch all week. And is now thoroughly embarrassed at the thought of having to explain to her master why she lost a green tip. Which, yes, I do understand, is the point of it all. But, yeesh, my poor baby girl.

So, we spoke with her together to try to find out what was going on with her. If she was having problems at school, or if she was just being her of-late-typical smart alecky self (which we were already working on). She's always been the one to temper HIM. HE'S the wild thing. HE'S the handful. HE'S the reason we expect to meet the principal within the first two weeks of school. But she's developed this devilish little attitude over the past few weeks, which is just about unbearable at this point. And I'm fairly certain it has to do with her pissing and jockeying for position amongst all the other alphas in her class. Which I get, and expect will level out soon. But the teacher?!?!? She can't be taking on a teacher!!! (At least not until high school, anyway. And by then, we'll have a really good therapist. And probably an attorney...or two.)

So, as far as we can discern, there doesn't seem to be anything specific causing her to be such a disrespectful brat. Which, truly, is almost worse. But she lost her computer privileges for the week, and has to write lines, in addition to giving her teacher a formal apology on Monday, and we wrote down on a calendar how long she had to make some significant improvements in her behavior.

But on Saturday (and, boy, she's counting the days), she's going to have to face her master. And then we'll see...we'll just see if this is gonna be worth the time, the money, and, most painfully, the having to sit there for an hour-and-a-half every week and listen to the incessant empty mommy chatter from all the other hens.