Today's lesson: budgeting

* Today I tried teaching Nixon about money and budgeting. It was a fail, but not really on his part.
   There was a large yard sale very local to us, that was all geek stuff: GI Joes, Transformers, Star Wars, video games, comic books...just amazing years of collection. We gave Nixon $5 for the yard sale, it was his to spend on whatever he liked. He saw an old GI Joe Cobra 4-wheeler, and went searching for a red guy to ride it. It had to be red because the 4-wheeler was red. Later he found a Bumblebee transformer that he liked. Those 3 totalled his $5 and he was good with that.
   He spent the rest of the time playing with all three toys, and making his awesome robot sounds and "pew, pew" sounds. The guy selling everything came over and started talking to Nixon (and us). He ended up just giving Nixon the toys he'd picked out! He even grabbed another Transformer and gave him that one as well.
   We paid for everything else we'd picked out and all said our "Thank you"'s. Seriously, this guy was just looking to know that his collection was going to be appreciated and enjoyed and while he is selling to raise money for his family, you could tell it was more about seeing the joy his collection was bringing to other people.
   He is a wonderful guy and Nixon is very happy because of this man's generosity.

* Nixon is picking up on sarcasm, almost a little too well. He keeps saying "I love you Daddy" but the way he says it sounds like he just told us to eff off! As long as we're not getting complaints that he's doing this at school, we're good with it. He's gotta be allowed to develop his own sense of self and there's no safer place than at home.

Bacon?!? Hell yeah I bought him a bacon print tie! I know he'll rock that mo'fo too!

* Nixon has wonderful manners. I can not complain about his "please", "excuse me" when we're out and about. But he's not so good at looking and talking to people when we sit down and eat out. He doesn't talk directly to the server, he speaks super softly and he gets annoyed with Mac or myself if we tell him he needs to speak louder.
  This morning at Denny's he got so annoyed he huffed his annoyance, grabbed his menu, opened it up and pointed to the smoothie choices. "Here! This one...please" he said as he pointed to the strawberry banana smoothie. I resisted the urge to ask her to "hold the attitude" haha

* There's something about Nixon when he gets super excited about something. I bought him a simple dry erase board to help him practice writing him letters and numbers on. He immediately wanted to start using it! Sat down at his table and wrote 4 lines of "words". I read an "F", "T", "S" and "I". I was most impressed with the "s" because it was the most legible.
    The dry erase board? It might have been a Star Wars Angry Birds one. Okay, it IS a Star Wars Angry Birds dry erase board. It hardly matters though because I'll use what ever it takes to get Nixon excited to start trying to write on his own. Learning is not learning when he thinks its a punishment....

* Nixon also got a new tie today. It's a bacon print tie. He loves it! It was a dollar at Target.

"...best surprise ever!"

* Nixon and I had a date this morning. I set my alarm for 8:50am and at 9am we were watching My Little Pony in bed together, for our mommy & me date. He was so excited last night when I told him we'd have a date in the morning to watch My Little Pony together.

* Mac and I bought Nixon a used bike. (Yes he has one already, but it's a little too big for him and has hand breaks so too much going on for him) Nixon didn't see me put it in the back of my car, when we got home I opened the trunk and he saw it and said "Mommy, this is the best surprise you and Daddy gave to me ever!"
  He working on the peddling but he'll get it. We lowered the seat and he liked it better as soon as the seat was lowered.

* After our rough last 2 days, Nixon fell asleep in my arms tonight...watching Star Wars: Ep.3
I even got to carry him to bed, cradled in my arms, with his head lying on my shoulder. All was right and forgiven at that moment in time.