August 30, 2004

• Statistics, Money and Teeth

  
  

  Well it's the final day of August.  I can blog tonight and improve my average from about one in 3 days to about one out of every 2.7 days.  I just love statistics. 

  
  

  August has been an amazing month.  I'm not sure where it's gone.  I've been in Colorado now for six weeks.  Wow.  I love my new home.  It's beautiful here.  I'm working now on the search for employment.  Any prayer you would care to offer on my behalf would be much appreciated. 

  
  

  We've had some illness in the house.  When there are seven kids and two moms, illness is a major problem.  We were rocking along there for a while.  But over the weekend, I got sick.  A sick me is a sad me.  I have not much tolerance for noise when I'm sick.  So I spent my time lying on the couch and giving orders.  It works on multiple levels for me to do that.  Chores get done, and busy kids are quiet(er) kids. 

  
  

  I've been paying for chores.  It's something that I've resisted doing, but I decided that I've been wrong.  It's not that I pay for any and all chores.  If it's a chore the kid does that primarily blesses himself, well, no pay for him.  But I've decided that a kid who will do a chore that benefits the group is deserving of a wage for his labor.  So when Tucker cleans the bathroom that we all share, I pay him 30 cents.  ( He also uses a dollar's worth of Scrubbing Bubbles every time he does this chore so it's costly in materials even if the labor is cheap. )  If Michael vacuums our living area, I pay him 50 cents.  If the kids help with laundry, it just depends on how much they do how much I pay. 

  
  

  Now my cousin, Eliza, is a wise woman.  She pays for chores as well.  But her kids have been much more consistent and motivated to do the chores on the list.  Here's her trick.  She operates a store.  She takes her kids shopping and allows them to choose something that they really really want.  Then that item comes home and goes into a closet.  When the kid has earned enough money to buy that item (including tax) the item is redeemed.  It's working fabulously.  So I decided that I would try this. 

  
  

  I picked up some small items, a few medium priced items, and one nice big $9.73 item.  The biggie is a Play Doh farm.  Oh, it is nice.  The barn doors are molds that create eggs and veggies and other farm-type items.  Both Michael and Tucker got a gleam in the eye when they saw that toy.  They started out in competition, "I'm going to buy that one!"  ... "Oh, no you won't, I'M going to buy that."  Well, they started to work.  Only after three days, they had earned a combined $2.35.  They took stock of their resources and their options.  They decided that if either of them were ever going to play with that toy, they were going to have to work together. 

  
  

  It took them almost three weeks to earn the money.  They didn't do chores every day.  And sometimes they didn't do a good enough job to be paid for it.  (The first day they thought they had it ALL worked out, Tucker was all ready to clean the bathroom three times until I told him that I would only pay once per day per chore.)  But finally, at the end of last week, they saved enough money to buy their toy. 

  
  

  That Play Doh farm is a treasure that they are treating better than any toy I have ever given them.  It's amazing. 

  
  

  ***

  
  

  In a related note, Michael has lost another tooth.  I'm starting to suspect a racket here because this kid has been losing teeth at the rate of two per week for the past three years!  Where all all these teeth coming from?  After he lost this most recent tooth, he prepared an argument for Ms. Tooth Fairy.  See, my kids put their teeth in an envelope to make them easier for the tooth fairy to find.  And they write on the outside of that envelope.  On the outside of this one, Michael wrote, "Dere Ms. Fary, you may notise that this is a relly relly big tooth.  So I think I should get relly relly big mony."  (Spelling is not his strong suit.  But you know, I think Ms. Tooth Fairy got the point because she brought him 2 whole dollars.  He was thrilled.  I was thrilled until I noticed that he was sitting there working to loosen up another relly relly big tooth.)

  • 10:32 pm
  • 10 Comments