Mom: Ferdinand you have a bucket load of homework, you have to take a shower, eat a snack, go to an event tonight, read and make 21 valentines.
We have to go grocery shopping before you get started.

Ferdinand: Why?

Mom: We’ll think about that later. Right now it’s all about the How.

Preheat the oven
shop
eat snack while you do your math
practice Spanish class dance
I’ll make the pumpkin, fig and cranberry muffins for the event plus the dough for chocolate chip biscotti for tomorrow’s lunch
shower
read 3 chapters
get dressed
event
questions on chapters
watch tv and make the valentines

We finished everything but the shower and 20 valentines. Ferdinand got totally into Jonny Test which put his rate of making valentines to 1 per hour. I got totally into the last episode of House of Cards; I burnt the biscotti that I baked off when I got home, twice.

In the am we launched into recovery. I shaved each biscotti down to a nub. Instead of lemon ginger herbal tea, Ferdinand had English Breakfast and I Mug o Coffee. I cut out enough valentines for his immediate group and he kept to the original valentine design of the one he did the night before. I passed the right color marker and called out the spelling. We shoved a box of 28 chocolate mints that he bought on sale at the drugstore into his backpack.

Done.

Lesson: keep the television separate