Tickets
I have implemented a new system for Avery and TV. So far, it's working very well. She gets one ½-hour of TV in the morning as a freebie. After that, she has to earn three tickets to watch one ½-hour show. She earns tickets by doing chores around the house. At first I was going to have her earn tickets for small things she was doing right, like if she put her shoes on immediately after I asked her to do so vs. forcing me to ask her 20 times to do it. Then I thought about it and decided that I don't want to provide rewards for doing things she needs to be doing anyway. Instead, I've been asking, "Do you want to earn a ticket?" When she says yes, which she always does, I come up with a small chore to do, like tidying up her room, tidying up the living room, or feeding the dogs.
So far, she likes to do the chores, but better, she understands that if she doesn't have enough tickets, it won't do any good to keep asking to watch TV. She asks once, I ask if she has three tickets, she says no, I ask if she wants to earn, then she does a chore. It also worked very well with Elise and Nolan here this weekend. The girls could pool their tickets and could earn them together. Most of the time, they got so distracted doing the chore that they'd forget the goal was to earn a ticket.
I'm sure this, like all other little programs implemented, will lose its novelty in due time, but for now, woohoo!
Household maintenance season has begun
This season always reinforces what D and I have always known: we are not meant to live in a house. We are meant to live in a condo or townhome with very little exterior maintenance. That at least cuts back on all the crap you have to do.
This morning the guy is here servicing our A/C unit. I have been informed that we need to build a little wall around the A/C unit to keep the mud from washing into it when it rains really hard. This should be common sense, I know. However, I never go out there to even look at the darn thing, so how was I to know that mud was washing into it? Do other people constantly walk around their property looking for this stuff? The only outdoor space we truly use is our deck, so I am not surprised I didn't notice mud washing into our A/C unit.
We are also going to have our lights ripped out of the front yard. First, they look horrible. Second, while our lawn service guy was here getting our sprinkler system turned on, we discovered that our system out front is all screwed up. Partially because they didn't change very much when switching from grass to landscaping last year; and partially because it was messed up from the beginning. We have one sprinkler head that pops up and then sprays water directly onto a rock ... and nothing else. Another one has a head designed to spray 15' in either direction when it only needs to go 3' in one and maybe 4' in the other. And that's pushing it. The lights are also placed in such a manner that they're blocking sprinkler heads. Not to mention, they will always be a huge maintenance factor, which is something we weren't told. Argh. All I wanted was a few spotlights on trees! It just got blown out of proportion because they guy who did it was so bad at communication and didn't tell us what he was doing. I didn't care to follow up since the thing was dragging on so long.
Tomorrow, we have mulch being blown into the yard. That should be fairly easy since they do it all, but it seems something always comes to our attention about things that need to be done that we have failed to do.
Swimming with goggles
Today is Avery's first swim class with goggles. I'm curious to see how, or if, it changes things. She fully participates in classes, but she doesn't particularly like to get her head wet on command. I suspect it has more to do with her eyes than hesitation to go under water since she's always been very bold in that capacity. We'll see.
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