The kids have been enjoying the lemonade stand — when we are able to set it up. We’ve had some unusually cool and wet weather this summer, so we were rained out several weekends and drastically reduced the kids’ income stream from the lemonade stand. The standard chores are too “boring” at the moment, so they consistently ask if they can clean something for extra income. Not that it matters — they love playing with water to scrub the deck without any incentive!
With the money he earned, Caden bought slip n slide. The kids have had fun playing on it — once they discovered the advantage of spreading it with dish soap before sliding. Caden’s poor stomach was scratched and bruised for several days after their first attempt. Otherwise it has been a fun purchase though!
Caden has essentially been in semi-private lessons at gymnastics all summer! Coach Tom is trying to get a new batch of boys in pre-team, and there are just a handful of boys who are active during the summer. In Caden’s pre-team class there is one other boy and the first week it was just him! In his regular boys class, there is also one other gymnast, so Caden is getting a LOT of time on the equipment. Since Coach Tom coaches both classes, the only real difference is the length of the session and how many apparatus they use.
We’ve been working on being polite regardless of the situation. Lately Caden started plugging ears when he didn’t want to hear what someone said or while ignoring someone. Since this often overlapped with me telling him to do something that he didn’t want to hear, this quickly became a problem. It is better already, but these things do take time to hash out.
Caden has had a lot of fun making spirographs. He likes making complicated patterns with a lot of overlapping loops. He would really like to sell them, but thus far Kamy is his only customer. Kamy buys them for 1-10 cents each, depending on how “fancy” they are. I am not sure how I feel about them buying things from the other, but I can’t really pinpoint why. Mixing finances with family relationships can make things tricky and I’m not sure that is the precedent we want to set.
Caden is doing so great at reading! He loves the Elephant and Piggie books and is branching out into early Dr. Seuss books and level 1 readers. He really wants to learn how to read so that he can read like Kamy. He is already lobbying to get to stay up later at night to read and he said he wants to buy a Kindle so he can read in his room after bedtime! With is birthday coming up in a few months, I think we can safely say that is a viable option. School is going well too and Caden is about a quarter of the way through first grade math.
