51

Movies & Books

The final count for 2010 is in: I saw 51 movies in the theater in 2010.  D didn't see quite so many because a few of those I saw with friends.  I do love me some movies!

I think I'll start keeping track of book stats the same way I do with movies, but I don't feel like setting that up just yet.  I already keep track of the books I read in GoodReads, which I'll continue, but I like to know percentages and numbers of things. 

I'm also going to start a movie tracker for Avery.  So far, she's really enjoyed movies in the theater (not exactly surprising), so that will undoubtedly continue to be a family activity. 

Avery's Sleeping

As if by some sort of divine miracle, Avery is now regularly sleeping in her bed all the way through the night.  Not only that, but she's also going to sleep at a more reasonable time with less prodding from us.  We're not in a land of perfection, or anything close to it, but I'll take it. 

In terms of going to sleep, we allow her to sleep on the floor at the top of the stairs if she so chooses.  We also only chide her to go to sleep a minimal number of times, so what time she actually goes to sleep is really more of her choice.  Typically, she sits up there and reads a few books to her babies, changes her jammies 2 or 3 times, etc.  Eventually, she decides to go to sleep.  The time she falls asleep, though, has shifted into what I deem an acceptable range versus some of the ridiculous times that were happening a month or two ago (8-8:30). 

She's also resumed her napping, though we refer to that time as Quiet Time.   It's her choice if she wants to nap, but 9 times out of 10, she decides to nap.  Since she so loves jammies, she almost always chooses to change into jammies for nap time.  Since I so love to nap, often we'll nap together in my bed.  It's a nice routine.

Thankfully, she can still skip naps if our schedule requires it. The cranky amps up a bit, but it's fairly minimal at this point, so it's not much of an issue.

Her sleeping prize is now received after seven nights where she sleeps in her own bed/floor for the entire night.   At seven, she gets $2.  We've explained that she can spend it right away on anything she wants, or she can save it to buy a bigger toy or something.  Right now, she's saying she wants to save it to buy a toy.  She doesn't know what toy, but the word "bigger" caught her fancy.  We'll see what she actually decides to do when she gets the $2.  I have no idea if others will consider $2 to be way too much for such a reward, but it feels about right to me, so we're going with it. 

Why seven you ask?  Because that's how many columns fit across the chart we made.  It is a random determination, but now that I think about it, it's also one week.  So $2 per week does not seem an insane amount of money for a sleeping reward/prize.  Or does it?  We're not changing it since we've already told her it's $2, but feel free to comment if you think it's too much so I can ponder other points of view for monetary rewards in the future. 

Whining

Avery's whining is out of control.  The problem isn't so much that she whines to get what she wants, but rather that she gets into a mood where everything she says comes out in a whiny voice.  I asked Christie and Amber (jokingly) if it would be wrong to flick her every time she whines.  The joke did, however, get me thinking that I needed to do something about this.  Plus, Amber said she knows a girl who had a normal speaking voice in preschool, but somewhere along the line, her normal voice was replaced with a constant whiny voice no matter what she is talking about.  That scared the crapola out of me.

So, yesterday I implemented a new rule: every time she asks or says something in a whiny voice, she's losing a toy for a period of time (not sure how much time yet).  I was rather pleased to see an immediate effort on her part to limit her use of the whiny voice.

To further emphasize the point, I told her a story of a girl named Avery.  In the story, Avery loses her Rapunzel dress due to excessive whining.  She has to earn that dress back by not whining for an entire day.  This morning, Avery recounted it to me and didn't whine once this morning.  Here's to this method continuing to work.

Published

My friend from HS recently had her first novel published!  I find it very cool to think that I am friends (albeit friends that correspond with each other much) with a published author.  I dutifully purchased a copy of the book.  As someone who reads almost all non-fiction, I don't think it's my cup of tea in terms of content, but I'll read it nonetheless.