Alice has a new found understanding of money since we started her on an allowance over the summer. So she was thrilled beyond belief to receive $10 in the mail from Grandma Cam and Don. I held the money hostage until she wrote the thank-you card, and then made her put half of it in her savings. But, the good news is, thanks to this windfall, she now has $20 in her "spending" envelope and is finally at her goal of saving $19 to spend at the gift shop at the Durham Museum of Life and Science. The story there is that one of the times I took her there over the summer, she picked out everything she wanted in the shop and it came to $19 total. So she has been very diligent in not spending her money and saving it for that. It's funny, of course, because she could have bought some of the things before reaching her goal, but for some reason she wants to buy everything all at once. The other funny thing is I don't think she remembers what she picked out, so when we go there again, whatever she chooses will probably end up being more or less than $19. But it seems like a good experience to just go through the discipline of not spending any money for 15 weeks.
Simon, meanwhile, has no concept of what money even is, so we had to quickly wrest his money from him and put it in a safe place, since he is in a phase where he likes to tear and shred paper, or crumple it up and claim it's a rocket ship, or write his name all over it in purple marker.... Further proof of how clueless he is is that a week later, I put the Halloween card in his room and he asked if the card was money.
