Busy!

And wow – my first baby is now officially a FIRST GRADER. So weird. Jake graduated from kindergarten with flying colors and we are so proud of him. He was the youngest boy in his class – but still excelled in all areas and really impressed his teacher. And most importantly he was well behaved; Mrs. Flores said he was a pleasure to have in class. Music to a mothers’ ears. Next year will be a new adventure – sadly Jake’s school was forced to close because of budget cuts. He will be going to a different school in the fall – but he is excited and we know he will do well. Danny will also be starting pre-school in the fall and can’t wait to carry a backpack and pick out his own lunch box.

By far the best thing about budget cuts is all the free loot we’ve inherited! For about a week, Jake came home with board games, colored pencils, markers, and toys. Then – to top it all off, a few days before school got out they started putting these big metal carts out in the front of the school every afternoon that said “FREE BOOKS”. The library was being cleaned out and all the kids went nuts. It was like a feeding frenzy. I couldn’t even make my way through the crowds to snatch up a few. But the last day Brent and I were there early for Jake’s little graduation ceremony and checked him out about a half hour before school let out. JACKPOT! All the goods were out and nobody had picked them over yet. And this was the last day – so there was A LOT of stuff. And not just books – but tons of learning type toys and activities too.

Well… we couldn’t help but go a little crazy. It got to the point where we made a few separate piles so we wouldn’t look too conspicuous. We even hid about half the books in the bottom of the baby’s stroller. We got so much stuff I had to have Brent bring the van around to load up the back. Call us hogs if you want – but look at all the awesome stuff we got! Tons of hardback books – good ones too! Classics and lots of Newbery Award winners. Four containers full of all sorts of blocks and shape games, two big dry erase boards, a big clock to learn how to tell time, a scale, measuring tapes, puppets, etc. The boys haven’t stopped playing with everything since we brought it home.

But it’s onto summer now where we’ve started swim lessons for both boys and have implemented what could possibly be my BEST IDEA EVER. After a bad week where the boys were fighting a lot, complaining, whining, talking back, etc. we were trying to a figure out a way to motivate them and reward good behavior. This is what I came up with: Behavior Buckets. Each boys has a big clear bucket with a hole cut in the lid. They pick something ahead of time they want to earn – this time it’s a trip to the cheap movie theater to see Monsters vs. Aliens. Every time me or Brent catch them doing something good they get to put a ping pong ball in their bucket. If they do something bad – we take a ping pong ball out. Once their bucket is full – they get their reward.

The other thing we are loving about this system is that it has somehow improved Mom and Dad’s behavior too. We notice all the good things our kids do instead of constantly complaining about the bad. This equals a much happier house. It’s amazing the difference it makes when you set out to recognize the positive instead of punish the negative. Our buckets are half full instead of half empty.

Major parenting (and life?) lesson… learned.