Sophie's Quest for an "IPad"

 Aunt Jennifer watched the kids on Monday night while I went to Ladies Prayer Connection in her neighborhood (we move around to different houses each month). Grant had gotten a Vtech Innotab for his birthday (he calls it his Ipad) and Sophie loved playing with it. She asked if she could get one and as much as I want to go out and get it the next day, I knew we should make this a learning opportunity for her. Chad agreed. We tried to come up with a way to teach her that you have to work for things that you want and that you can't always just get what you want right away. Chad came up with this chart for her. She gets to move the magnet a square each time she does something good and back when she does something bad. She liked that it was shaped like an "S" for Sophie. He may have had that planned, I forgot to ask him.

The first thing she needed to do was go to bed in her bed and sleep there all night. Chad put her to bed and she was downstairs at our bedside about 20 minutes after we had fallen asleep. I think I gave in and just let her sleep on the couch. Needless to say, she did not get to make a move forward the next morning. After that first night, she has done much better. She had never been one to sleep with us (even as a baby), but she had gotten in a habit for the past month that she wanted me to hold her on the couch or she would get in the bed with us. We had to get her out of this routine b/c I'm not used to that and neither of us get good rest when it happens. Somehow she had gotten into this thing about telling us she would go to bed in 10 minutes or that it hadn't been 10 minutes when we would try again an hour later. So Chad decided it was time to teach her a little about time. He told her she would have to go to bed at 10:00 and showed her what that looked like on the digital clock. Of course she won't go a minute before, but it really has worked for her to see it and then go to bed. Saturday night I really wanted her to go to bed earlier, but Chad wouldn't let me change the clock...he is way too honest for that! I thought it was a good idea. Maybe we can work on changing it to 9:30 this week!

I don't know how long it is going to take Sophie to get the Ipad...at the rate we are going I'm thinking it could be her 4th birthday!

Love seeing the kids play well together. It is rare that Sutton actually sits still. He is really getting into coloring . Of course 2 minutes later they were fighting b/c he colored on her page, crayons went flying and Sophie was crying. It was good while it lasted:)