patience

my little man has become just a little obsessed with LEGOs. and he is also a rule-follower. he now has almost every piece of a certain space-themed set of LEGOs. but he's missing one piece. a box of LEGOs that costs about $70. he saw it at Barnes and Noble the other night and was near tears as he discovered he was not, actually, going to walk out of the store with it. maybe we go the library too much. he seems to think a lot of stuff is free.

so jason and i took him home and started talking about what Christmas money he'd been given and how much of that we'd let him spend on that item, if he wanted. but the rest of the money, he'd have to work for.

this did not appeal to him. jason said, "but, buddy, this will be a great way for you to learn to have patience."

response: "i don't want patience. i want the LEGOs."

yup. i feel ya, son.

see... i want a camera. a new camera. a fancy-pants camera. a pretty pretty camera.

and i'm not very patient about it at all. pretty grouchy and selfish, most of the time.

so.

my son started working around the house to earn money for his LEGOs.

and i made a little bank for myself. yes, i did.

so what if, right now, it contains about 3% of the total cost of said fancy-pants camera? my son and i can learn some patience together.