It's Day 16 and today I want to mention something I don't believe I have ever mentioned before... our Wonder Boy is innately thrifty!
He was never the type of kiddo to ask for everything under the sun as we strolled the isles of the Toy Store at Christmas or reach for a special treat at the grocery check out. In fact, we have to cajole and coerce just to get him to give us ideas for Christmas and birthday gifts! It is seriously rare when he asks for something specific at the grocery store or wants to go out to eat. He just doesn't put a lot of thought into those kinds of things.
We have had to be very careful to not let him know how much something costs - if he perceives it as being excessive, then he will start making excuses for why the funds should not be spent. Summer camps come to mind. We were blessed to be able to send him to a couple of really great camps over the years. He especially enjoyed STEM camp and Mathematical Problem Solving camp. But we were very careful for him to not know the full cost of attendance because, regardless of the educational value, he would have been most uncomfortable with the price tag. And since we wanted him to focus on the educational side of things, we never disclosed the financial side.
The end result of this behavior is that when he DOES make some kind of request, we almost never answer in the negative. Case in point today - this little gadget has a hefty price tag by most standards, but the Boy had a need for class and researched the most reliable version of this thing and then you could see him physically tense up as he made the request. It is a LITTLE hard to justify this particular model, but .... it DOES have an educational value and, again, he so rarely requests anything that it is just hard to say 'no', so we didn't!
In our look back to 2016, we get to see a fun side of the Boy! This was just a particularly good day, a little family time tossing around a frisbee in the hours just before sunset. Wonder Boy was keeping Wonder Dad and I in stitches with his antics as he would chase down the frisbee. He caught it between his legs and behind his back. He acted like a punch-drunk clown when he missed or when his return toss went sailing over Wonder Dad's head. I carry the ring of our laughter to carry me through my darkest days. It was THAT good. Not some big event or major milestone. Just the perfect way to pass the time with my two favorite people on the planet!
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