Gratuitous kid shot

Terrible photographically… but she had the cutest crinkly nosed smile going on so I had to post the photo. And yes, she is mid lollipop. She had a little friend over who barely spoke to me the whole time she was here because she is such a shy little one. The only time she did actually speak to me was to ask for a lollipop at the dairy… so this push-over obliged. Hannah got halfway through hers before wrapping it in paper and declaring she wanted to save it for later. So apparently her attention span doesn’t even last long enough for a lollipop. ha.

Han and her friend were treated to a trip to the movies on account of the kidlet working her way through her first sticker chart, or more accurately, my own attention span lasting long enough to remember we were using a sticker chart. We are now working on the next chart for which the reward is Rainbow’s End. Luckily I have learned from the first chart that I need to make the kid work a bit harder. So the sticker hand outs are less frequent and I jammed as many damn sticker circles as I could on that bit of A4. It’s a fine line between making the sticker chart economically feasible and then losing its ability to work as an incentive. Such a complicated process, this parenting business.

While I did make the tasks harder, I still maintain the authority to change the rules at my whim. And I did give her a sticker reward tonight for telling me my soup was yum. A reward for complimenting me? Why yes. It’s something I want to encourage.

I wish I could figure out a way for the sticker chart to influence the frequency that I hear “It’s not fairrrrrrrrrrrrrr. You always get to do what YOU want, and I NEVER get to do what I want!” Or today, when I asked her to do something for me: “It’s not fairrrrrrrrrrr. I ALWAYS do things for you, and you NEVER do things for me!” Uhhhh… let’s reflect back on the last 5.5 years hrmmm? Children are just delightful.

P.S. Dear friend-who-I-lunched-with-today, when I declared that being a mother was fulfilling and allowed you to feel like you were making a positive contribution to the world, clearly I was in some kind of sleep deprived delusion. For reality, see above. All I’m contributing to the world is a pain in the ass. A cute crinkly-nosed one, but a pain in the ass all the same.