Aladdin / Jafar Stickers

If you’ve been to our house recently, you’ll have noticed in the kitchen that there’s a pretty-rough looking Reward Chart blu-tac’d to the wall, along with a page of heavy-Aladdin-themed Avery labels that are beside it, also blu-tac’d up.

These are my take on Reward Charts for Jack, and are pretty much my top-quality (read: so-so) handy-work in Microsoft Word.

The Reward Chart itself is pretty much a grid, with the days of a week labelled down the left hand side, with about five or six boxes along for each day.  The basic premise is, that when he’s been good, he gets an ‘Aladdin’ sticker, and if (read: when!!) he’s been naughty, he gets a Jafar sticker.

I’ve made variation of the good/bad sticker, with some of the other characters too, as otherwise it could look a little odd on the chart.

Why Aladdin? Well, at the time of ‘production’ of the chart, Jack really liked watching the Aladdin movie and wouldn’t stop talking about it and asking questions about it.  So, I thought that I’d work on the good/bad theme in the film and see how this would work in practise.

To much of my surprise, and Claire’s too for that matter, Jack has been very receptive to it - We try to make a big thing about getting him an Aladdin (or Genie, Abu, Jasmine, Magic Carpet) sticker when he’s been good, and getting him to help stick it onto the chart, which usually results in a full-on palm-smack to ensure firm adhesion of the small Avery labels to the paper surface.  He also REALLY DOES NOT WANT a Jafar sticker (of three varieties – Jafar & Iago as above, ‘Old-man’ Jafar, or ‘Snake’ Jafar), to the point of when he’s being naughty or unruly, simply the mention of getting a Jafar sticker is enough to bring him around to our way of thinking. Sometimes even without a paddy first!!

In all, I had spent a hour or two on Google Images and found images that met my needs, whacked them into Paint.Net to crop and down-scale them to size and then used Microsoft Word to drum-up a labels document to match the sheets of A4 labels I had in the drawer and, hey presto!, instant stickers and Reward Chart!

It’s still early days with these stickers and the whole Reward Chart thing, as it’s more of a grown-up experiment on mind-controlling a three year old, but it’s fun when it works in either direction!!

School-boy Jack

Well, ‘school’ is a probably a little over-used in that title. ‘Pre-school’ may be more appropriate, but nonetheless, my boy has spent his first week at school!

He’s on a breaking-in session, whereby he attends the local primary school from 12:00 until 15:00 and gets to play, read, paint, cut-out stuff and basically do anything he likes, really! Much like home but without the mess. And the noise!!

The teacher at the school said Jack was ‘adorable’, to which Claire had to make sure that they were talking about the same child. This was confirmed by Jack physically being there, but I’m thinking it’s a common one-liner to new school kids’ parents to put them at ease. But, to be fair, they seem like good teachers there and look like they’ll keep him in line, as he does tend to get a little boisterous at times. Especially if another child has taken a train or truck off of him!

We’ve noticed that, over the past week, he’s been shattered at night times. To the point of falling asleep almost at tea times, which is really funny in one sense, but worrying in another, as we’re sure that he’ll be roaming about the house at 04:30 as a result of sleeping earlier.  We try to keep him awake, but he’s pretty much flaked out for the evening.

But he does seem to really like it there. Why wouldn’t he? The school was fantastic when they showed us around – filled with things to play with or to do, which really surprised Claire and I, as we didn’t get that impression from the nursery that he’s been going to, that we’ve been paying for!

I’m sure there’ll be more on this school topic for later – might have to add a ‘school’ category on the blog, methinks.

Oliver–3 months old!

Yes, it’s true – the little man is three months old, there or there-about.

He’s past the stage of crying all the time because of wind (or colic) and is a really smiley, happy little boy. (honest!)

He smiles a lot now, which really is a nice thing to see. 

Claire also found out a little while ago that he’s ticklish and laughs with a big wide-open mouth and the occasional chuckle! I tickle him now and then, as you do, and he’s getting easier to ‘get’ each time.  Tonight, for instance, I was blowing raspberries on his tummy and tickling him and he loved it, which is great as I’m seeing a totally different side to him; Claire has been saying for weeks that he’s a happy, bubbly little boy, but when I get home from work, around 1800ish, he’s been grumpy and crying lots.  Coming home to that each night makes it more difficult to imagine the happy child, but, as I said – finally – I’m seeing what she means,

He’s getting to be a big, strong boy too – he’s able to hold his neck up and look around, which is good. He’s starting to understand about rolling over, but still needs big brother Jack to yank on his leg to make the centre of gravity change position. After that, he’s find.

I’ve been playing on the bed with him, and rolling him sideways onto his tummy and then over again onto his back, which he seems to enjoy. I used to do this with Jack, too, which I guess was about the same sort of age.  I’d imagine that it’s a whole new world at that age, as he’s been either face up or face down in bed and that it! Now, he’s finding out that there’s a series of steps in between those poses.

He’s still not sleeping through the night entirely as yet though, much to mummy and daddy’s disappointment! In the past couple of nights (literally) he’s slept for four or five hours straight, which is the most he’s managed. Previously, it’s been as long as three hours and as little as thirty minutes, which sort of makes for a very long night.

But, we’ll see how it pans out. In terms of the holy-grail at the moment, it would be getting Oliver to sleep the entire night through. In his own bed. And not waking up until a decent hour!