Fact or Fiction?

Jay was reading the kids stories tonight. He likes to tease the kids when he reads by substituting their names into the story. This has caused problems for me when reading books with lily pads, but that's beside the point. Tonight when Jay was reading Harry the Dirty Dog and he said "Oh look there's Lily and Ryan!" pointing to the picture of the children in the book. Ryan got very upset in that way he gets when he is playing with his daddy and he insisted, "They are not us!"
"How do you know?" Jay asked.
"Because that book is fiction and WE ARE NOT FICTION!" replied the oh so precocious Ryan.
I happened to be snapping pictures tonight and this is the moment following that declaration.

Spring, Spring, Beautiful Spring

I love spring. It just makes me happy. I love to sit outside and feel warm(this hasn't really happened yet, but I'm looking forward to it). I love the flowers blooming, the birds singing, the sun shining. It's just a great time of year. Things are coming to life again. Even just seeing neighbors outside and getting to say hi again is a treat. I can't wait to go to the local gardens to try to get some good pictures of the kids. Anyone want to come along?

Princess Joy Ride

I was looking through some old pictures and this one came up. I think this might be part of the reason 3 of her princesses have gotten broken. If I recall Jay saw this and LAUGHED. He said, "That's my girl! Take a picture of that!" And here you have it.

At least she has fun with them.

Dancing with the Stars

I'm watching the first episode of Dancing with the Stars thanks to the DVR. As a side note I just want to say that I love the DVR! I do not have so much love for the new season of Dancing with the Stars. I've always counted on Dancing with the Stars being a family show. Lily and I like to watch together. So I'm sitting here watching with Lily and 2 out of the first 4 contestants are horrible role models, not to mention all the language- Jacka** this and that. I am not happy. One contestant is glorifying her stay in prison and another is glorifying drug use and stupidity. I've stopped watching with Lily. I might watch the rest of the episode myself later to see if it gets any better, but if it doesn't I will be giving up Dancing with the Stars. It will be hard because I've loved it so much in the past and I really enjoy the dancing, but I'm not going to just let what they put on TV dictate what I will watch. You know what they say, "Garbage in, garbage out." I think I will contact ABC and let them know how I feel about this. I hope the other viewers will demand better quality as well.

Currency

I know I've said this many times before, but it's worth repeating. I have found Ryan's "currency", in other words what he values enough to use as a reward or punishment if necessary. His "currency" is currency. I've been finding new and interesting ways to use it to get him to behave the way I want. The latest in my arsenal of mommy weapons is the allowance chart. Ryan has certain responsibilities in our house. He sometimes fusses, complains or refuses to do these things. If he refuses he will get a warning and then punishment, but this is stressful for me and him. So I decided to make a chart. I listed all his responsibilities and made boxes for each day. I assigned a cash value to each one and added that to the second to last column. The last column is left blank and at the end of the week we will add all the checks(bonus math practice!) We started last Thursday and that means all the checks were finished yesterday. Today we will add up the amount he has earned. It's worked out pretty well for chores. We both need to work on a few things. I need to work on reminding him of things and he needs to work on remembering or checking the chart. This chart is going to be good for both of us because it will remind me to pay him at the end of the week and not just sporadically through the week.
I saved the best thing about this chart for last. I decided to add a "bonus" section at the bottom. It includes one off things or things that I want him to do, but are not really chores. One of those is putting away his clothes which he won't have the opportunity to do unless I've done laundry, so I didn't count those kinds of things in the total that Ryan *should* get every week. The best thing about this chart by far is this one little row that says, "no teasing Lily." This one is worth the most on the entire chart because I know it is hard for him and because I REALLY want it to work. One of his favorite things in the world to do is tease his sister. It drives me crazy. Every day there would be fussing, screaming, crying and someone would inevitably get hit(sometimes with an object). This past week has been wonderful. Each time Ryan starts getting close to teasing I remind him of the chart and he stops. Sometimes he will even ask me if something is teasing before he does it or if he did something that made Lily fuss. I've heard him many times say to himself or me, "I don't want to tease Lily." He got a check for every day this past week and it has been a such a different environment in our house. Our house used to be full of negative noise from the time Ryan came home from school until dinner and sometimes until bed time. Now it's not necessarily quiet, but the sounds are of playing, laughing, music and dancing. I can handle that kind of noise, I can even enjoy it most of the time.

This is what his chart looked like this week. He was sick for a couple days this week and I never reminded him to do the trash cans, but other than that he did really well.