"Order of Operations"

This week at school began with a phone call at my office at 9:10am. Katya's homeroom teacher called asked if Katya was going to be in school today. I said yes, because Beverly had called me 15 minutes before that saying she had dropped her off. The teacher said Katya was in class and neither was Lillie. Lillie is a Russian speaking girl that is being paired with Katya so she can translate teacher instructions. The teacher said she would look for them and call me back.
Evidently, the two girls switched homerooms before Katya's teacher thought they would.
Last evening was filled with homework (a first). We had our dear friend Yulia explain to her on Monday night that we would begin doing HW on Tuesday. My thought was that we would do her civics project which consisted of cutting out pictures from magazines and creating a collage.
The evening started right before dinner. Yulia called and explained the project. We had dinner and as soon as we were finished eating, Katya said "Katya e Papa" and pointed toward her room. This was her way of saying "okay Pop let's get started".
The collage project took about 3/4 hour and went well. THEN > > > >
Katya pulls out TWO math worksheets that we were supposed to do. Okay, I was cool with that, but was worried we would run too close to her bedtime.
We started with the first problem, AND GUESS WHAT? Yeah, I could NOT do it. Now I like math and it was one of the only subjects I did well in high school. We called Lillie, and she said she couldn't get the right answer either. I didn't feel too bad at that point, because maybe it was one of those rare times when there was a messed up problem.
We continued on, AND then ran into more problems I couldn't solve correctly. OK by now most of you are thinking I'm just plain old and don't understand "new" math. Well, you're right. I called my good friend who is a Math teacher and he told me we needed to solve the equations using the "order of operations". I NEVER was taught the "PEMDAS" order. If you don't know what PEMDAS is then you weren't taught it either.
Math took a lot longer than I hoped, because I knew she was watching the clock and bedtime was approaching. I couldn't explain to her the PEMDAS so I just showed her how to solve the problems by walking her through them. She kept telling me over and over "Katya No Sleep". At first I thought she meant that she wasn't going to be able to sleep because we would be working on math all night. Actually, what she meant was "this is taking so long that I deserve to stay up as late as I want". She is a night person and can stay up late in the evening without any sign of being tired.
Well, we did finish homework, and we had about 15 minutes before bedtime. She proceeded to look around my office for things to play with. DUCT TAPE & PACKING TAPE ! ! !
Her idea of evening fun was to tie me up and tape my mouth shut. She laughed and laughed, and then had a bowl of Lucky Charms. She really didn't settle down in bed until 10:30pm, but I was okay with that, because she had worked hard and even cried through some of the math.
G2G to work....