Dylan's Amazing Day

This picture is from a couple weeks ago when I ran in the rain with the kids. Dylan looks so cute running in his soccer uniform and bare feet. There's me in the background with Preston in my arms - geeky rolled up pants and all.  I was trying not to drag my long pants in the rain, but I look pretty ridiculous. Oh well, it was a bad day, remember? I had to find something to make me happy and these two boys were the focus of my happiness. Anyway, this was the most recent picture of Dylan I could find with his soccer uniform on so I'm posting it even though it's unrelated to my post. I gotta break out the pics for my mom. :)

Today was a normal day, but for Dylan, it was fairly eventful. Last night, we purchased a little "responsibility chart" for him.  I was trying to come up with something fantastic, but kept getting frustrated.  I didn't want a dry erase board because I knew he'd write all over it, I didn't want paper and stickers because then I have to keep replacing them. We were at Barnes and Noble after family night.  We told Dylan we had a surprise after family night, which was an ice cream cone and he was pretty sad.  He said he thought it would be going to Barnes and Noble to play with the trains.  So we got our ice cream cone and then went to play with the trains.  That's where I found the chart.  It's magnetic and has quite a few responsibilities to choose from.  You choose 7 to put as goals for the week and then they put magnets on the days they accomplish them.  Dylan's pretty good at picking up when we ask him to, but our goal is to get him to recognize what he needs to do without being asked all the time. We'll see how it goes.  We also want to teach him about money...tithing, savings, spending money...all that stuff while he's young.  Both of us think most kids have too much and don't understand delayed gratification.  So hopefully this will help with some of that.  The little toys and treats he wants will have to be earned.  Sorry, this is long.  My point is that he did really well with the chart.  He was so excited about it.  Preston was playing with all the magnets so we hung it on his door where Preston can't reach, but Dylan can (sort of - sometimes he needs a stool, but he knows how to get that out).  Anyway, so he's excited and was very helpful today. It was very obvious what he was expected to do.  We chose "No Teasing" as one of his goals this week and he tried to convince me several times that we should replace it with "Getting dressed".  Smart kid.  Since he is pretty good at getting dressed  himself already, we're working on other things.  I kind of wish you could choose more than 7 because half of them are things he should be doing, but it's good to keep the focus simple for young kids.  Anyway, yeah to us having some sort of a plan for chores and allowance.  Oh, and we're giving him a nickel for each completed chore.  That makes for a maximum of $2.45 a week (I'd actually do less - I'm cheap and he's young - but a penny is only $0.49 a week).  We wanted it to be manageable for us and for him.  The last thing we need is him earning all this money he gets to spend.  It's the principle, not the actual money that matters right now.  

The second cool thing for Dylan today was preschool.  I've talked about her before, but honestly, I just love his teacher.  She is so well organized and just great with the kids.  Every day has a theme and the themes correspond with what letter they are learning.  Today was dinosaur day!  Now you know why it was such a great day for Dylan.  He even wore his dinosaur shirt for the occasion.  Dylan loves to be a helper and likes knowing about things.  His teacher was so cute.  Since he is the only true dinosaur lover in the class (he brought his dinosaur encyclopedia for show and tell) she had him help her learn the names of the dinosaurs they were using for the different activities.  Marcos picked him up today and said the kids were all going up to him and asking him questions about different dinosaurs.  So cute!  He got to help two baby dinosaurs (that happen to glow in the dark) "hatch" out of their eggs, brought home a dinosaur finger puppet, and has another coloring sheet of a dinosaur to complete.  Tuesday is library day and he even checked out a dinosaur book today.  Go dinosaur day!

The third very cool thing was his soccer game.  Since Saturday was so rainy, the other team asked if we would reschedule and play the game on Tuesday.  We got the message late, which is why we showed up anyway on Saturday, but we went today to play the game.  Dylan finally seemed to "get" the game.  For any of you who have 4-year-olds in soccer, some get it and some don't.  Dylan either didn't get it or didn't want to get it.  He was more interested in chasing kids around like a dragon, head butting them like a dinosaur (since he knows he can't push) or just day dreaming in general.  Today, he actually kicked the ball from one end to the other several times.  And although most of the times, one of the other members of his team scored, he was a big part of the goals.  And during the last quarter, he scored his first goal!  It was so cute to see how excited he was.  He really does like to win and be the best...he's so competitive (wonder where he got it with such mellow parents - not!)  Anyway, I think half his battle has been having a couple kids on the team that were clearly better and a little more experienced.  They both have older siblings they have watched for years, which seems to help.  So for him to finally have the desire to run fast, kick hard and then actually score was monumental.  Hopefully that will help his fragile little self-esteem know how good he actually is and not be so frustrated all the time. Hurray to Dylan!  It was a proud parent moment for sure.  Yes, we want to see him play well, but just to see him happy and running and proud of himself when he ran back to his coach was huge!