Nintendo has done it again

Yes, Nintendo has done it again - Tayne is now convinced that Pallas needs a Nintendo DS and that he will save his own money to buy her one. I can’t image where he got the idea he could save $129.95 on his non-existent income, perhaps it’s from playing these Nintendo games full of characters running around collecting gold coins from sewers, clouds, oceans, etc. as a means of getting rich. Needless to say, such a noble goal deserves a little help, so we’ve decided to start giving him an allowance -sort of. I guess you could consider it more tipping, than a salary or allowance, because he really doesn’t have a choice whether or not to complete whatever we are asking him to do - the tasks/chores are not optional -but we decided to offer him payment for excellence or hassle free completion (doing the task independently without constant reminders, or having a good attitude and/or prompt attention to the given task when asked to complete it). Hopefully it will teach him a few things like: 1) to recognize the difference between quality work and just completed work. 2)Even if you aren’t that into a task faking a good attitude and just getting it done and over with takes a lot less time and is more rewarding than complaining endlessly about the injustice and being forced to eventually complete it anyway. 3) Even when the pay is small, if you work hard for enough of it things start to add up. And believe me the pay is pretty small - we’ve talked him into accepting 50 cents per task (quite a fine negotiation down from the initial figure of $10 per task he felt his services were worth) that we deem payable (obviously we aren’t going to pay him to do everything) - and bottom line - he has the potential to earn about $15 a week. Another requirement we’ve placed on him is savings. So we don’t have to lug around endless supplies of quarters we’ve agreed to cash him out once a week and he is required to put at least 1 / 2 in the bank to save for long term projects - the only problem he could see with this arrangement was that he didn’t have a bank account, so Saturday it was off to the credit union to open a new account! He had a great time setting up his account. As Troy filled out the paperwork Tayne supplied the information such as birthday, address, phone number, and any time Troy came to a space that he could leave blank or skip Tayne would insist (much to the amusement of the bank officer), "Just draw a line through it!" -gee, it’s nice to know he’s learned something from doing the written portion of his school work (sigh!). Even though he had to leave his money in the bank, he came out of there pretty well off - not only did he get the receipt for his deposit (very important for his home bookkeeping as he is keeping a running total of cash in bank and cash on hand while saving for his goal) he got a free t-shirt as well. I was a little miffed about that because I’ve been banking at the same place for over 7 years and they’ve never offered me a free t-shirt, come to think of it I don’t even think my first box of checks were free. I wonder why these mini-customers get all the perks- not just the free t-shirts, they have huge bowls of suckers everywhere in there - it’s like little piles of rainbows at the teller windows and the tables where you fill out deposit slips -the kids don’t even have to ask for one,they are just there for the taking. Meanwhile,here I am stuck using a pen that’s attached to the counter with a chain. I guess adults are supposed to find fiscal solvency fun in itself. - Yay!?!

On a totally unrelated note - it occured to me that I don't think I ever took any pictures of Pallas' butterfly crib bumper after I finished it. Just Chillin' in her crib...
If you squint maybe you can see her in there!