Conversations with Nico

I love my five year old. He keeps me wondering and constantly re-thinking my parenting skills. Here's a recent conversation with Nico:

Caro: If you help me pull weeds for an hour, I'll give you two dollars.

Nico: Um, no, I want five dollars.

Caro: You don't get to choose how much money. This job is worth two dollars. If you want to dollars, you can pull weeds. If you don't pull weeds you don't get two dollars.

Nico: But mom, I really just want five dollars.

Caro: You can have two.

This continues for twenty minutes as I pull weeds and he watches. The conversation then turns around a bit:

Nico: How about ten minutes? I'll do it for ten minutes?

Caro: Sure, you can do it for ten minutes, but that will be 25 cents not two dollars.

Nico: But mom, I reall just want five dollars! (notice he didn't say two dollars)

What do I do? How do I teach him to work hard? Maybe I should focus on his great ability to stand up for his view point and not back down. Maybe he'll be an attorney like his daddy. I just want him to know he's got to work around here! The kid is awsome and gives hugs and kisses like no other, but when it's time to clean up, he goes upstairs and watches Christian clean up all the toys. I set a timer for five minutes. If the toys are not picked up in five minutes, what ever is left I throw away in the trash. I had to do this because it would take half a day for them to clean up their room. Well, what I have discovered is that Christian does all the cleaning because he's afraid of having his toys thrown away, while Nico watches because he figures Christian will pick them up anyway. Now, I've had to have Christian stop after 3 minutes and have Nico do the rest. Oh my, you'd think we just cut off his right arm the way he whines about it. But, he's so slow at doing it that Christian jumps in to help because he doesn't want his toys thrown away. Being a parent I should have all the answers, but I don't know how to get him to do things without the argument like the one above. He ALWAYS has a better suggestion or idea when it I ask him to do something:

Caro: Nico, get your shoes on, we're leaving
Nico: Where are we going
Caro: To the store and to run some errands
Nico: I don't like the store. I don't want to go
Caro: Too bad, you're going
Nico: But I don't want to go
Caro: I have stuff I need to get done, so you're coming with me.
Nico: Nah, let's go to walmart. I want to spend my two dollars.

EVERYTIME!!! Or, he wants to go to Chuck E Cheeses, Orem Utah, the Pool or stay home. The funny thing is, I NEVER let him stay. I make him go every time. You'd think he'd have figure it out by now. So, what is a mother to do? I just keep praying and trying to come up with creative ways to get him to do the things I say. Aaah, maybe someday!

My Spring Break

So the kids had spring break two weeks ago, but I got a great taste of my own spring break this week. I just finished two big project deadlines for my work and decided not to take on anything else this week, so I've had nothing to do! You know, I can honestly say I get so much more accomplished when I have a zillion things to do. I don't miss my crazy schedule, but I sure had a nice week of sitting around, baking, cooking, going to soccer games, driving to piano practice, running a bit and doing a little service here and there. It felt like a vacation. The best part about it-it was completely FREE! I did absolute NO shopping (this includes groceries-which by no we are in need of very badly) and the furthest I ventured was the local park for soccer games. Now as I'm sitting here and gearing up for a work conference I have to attend to tomorrow I realize I have missed my 941 filing deadline for Jamie's law firm, sending my tax return on the 15th (good news is we get a refund, so no fees for that), mailing a textbook back to my supervisor, making copies of our IDs for the refinancing and making the dentist appointments I've been meaning to get to all week. Most of this is no big deal (minus the 941 filing), what I do have to show for a week full of doing nothing is that I am now closer to coming up with a perfect whole wheat bread recipe. My friend Mary makes it amazing with the help of a food scale, but like I mentioned before-shopping was not on my list of things to do this week. I would love a fluffy and light whole wheat bread recipes if you have one. I think mine is off by the gluten just a bit, and I didn't want to purchase dough enhancer (which would mean going to the store). Anyway, if anyone has a good recipe-I would be so appreciative. Does anyone else HATE grocery shopping as much as I do???