Just Ignore Them

I feel bad for Makayla some days. She is bombarded with boy stuff all the time. Lightsabers, cars, Transformers, Spiderman, etc. She puts on her princess attire and the little men run screaming in the other direction.

Sometimes it's a game to her.

Sometimes it hurts her.

So she and I have a date everyday to be girlie. We dress up, dance around and watch a princess movie. Right now, The Little Mermaid is her favorite but Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella are near and dear to her heart.

We love it!

But there is still a problem.

Boys.

They hear the word "princess" and they avoid us like the plague.

Or do they?

Here is Bryce just passing through to grab a toy. Uh-huh.

What I love is when boys pretend to not watch the princess movie. I'll look out of the corner of my eye and see one of them peeking around the corner and the other peeking over the couch. If asked if they would like to come and join us, the vehemently deny watching said princess movie and run off.

Untitled from Rachel Witbeck on Vimeo.

Now we just ignore them when watching the princess collection...unless it's just too tempting to raz them about it. They are too easy to tease sometimes!

I love it!

Here's another video of Makayla loving her movie and in this case Bryce is actually hating it!

Untitled from Rachel Witbeck on Vimeo.

Bribes/Motivaton

I am not above bribes. I call it "motivation" and I "motivate" my children on a daily basis and usually it gets results. But Preston is a tricky one. He thinks about what I want done and what he gets in return and decides if it's really worth his time.

The bribes are starting to get bigger.

Preston has been dragging his feet with riding his bike without training wheels. The bike he's been riding he got for Easter when he was 3 years old. He looks pretty ridiculous riding it but he would not give it up.

So I "motivated".

On the Thursday before Easter, I presented my proposition to Preston. Just note that this was taking place on the walk home from school and there were several comments from Bryce but mostly they just involved calling Preston a baby so they weren't very useful to the negotiations.

Me: Hey Preston. You see that kid riding his bike?
Preston: Yeah.
Me: He doesn't have training wheels.
Preston: *sigh* Yeah.
Me: Don't you want to ride your bike like him?
Preston: But mom, he's older than me anyways. I'll ride it when I'm big like him. Does that sound good?
Me: How 'bout you and I make a deal.
Preston: *eyeing me suspiciously* What deal?
Me: Welllll, if you can ride your bike without training wheels before Easter I might be able to talk to the Easter bunny and get you a new bigger bike.
Preston: REALLY!!!!
Me: Yeah but you gotta be able to ride it really good without stopping. Do we have a deal?
Preston: *considering the deal and getting suggestions from Bryce* Oh alright.

Here he is the next day! No training wheels!

The cheering section.


Going along for the ride but will not even talk about taking the training wheels off.


And the Easter bunny came through with a new bike. Which he tried for all of 2 minutes and told me to tell the Easter bunny to take it back. Apparently he felt it was too big. At that point bribery was out of the question and threats of losing all bikes came to pass. He then learned how to ride his new big bike. We knew you could do it Preston! You did awesome bud! Way to go!

Spring

We thought our backyard was dead. Our house sat vacant for almost a year so the yard looked to be a total waste. I was thinking of all the time and money it would take to get it beautiful back there.

Then spring happened.


Or I think it's spring. It might be some hybrid between spring and summer. But I'm not even getting into that since I'm scared out of my pants thinking about how we're going to be cooked alive this summer.


But behold! Our yard is ALIVE!

This is our fig tree. Does anyone know what to do with a fig? I'm at a loss.