You Can Have Your Hour Back

This no screens during the week is working out well for my son.   He definitely looks forward to the weekend, but he's not realized he's lost a good bit in the way of screen time privileges for the week overall, which is a good thing, because he's an annoying little negotiator, even when he has no chance of swaying our decision about something.   The annoying part is he doesn't give up easily.

This afternoon after school on the way home he was calculating how many hours it would be until he could have screens again.  He was doing some nice math calculations, figuring out how many hours to subtract for time sleeping, then the hours he'd be in school tomorrow.  He removed time in the morning due to travel to school and then there was breakfast.   He got to the answer the longer way around than if he'd done the calculation in reverse, figuring up hours of "leisure time" he'd have to find something else to do with himself other than screens, but it was a good exercise and took most of the ride home.

Tonight he asked me if I could warm him up some soup as he sat in the chair at the bar.  I watched him go through a conversation with Alexa to select which episode of Dora the Explorer he wanted to watch.   Dora has suddenly become interesting to the children again even though she's a bit too young for them on account of the new movie that's come out with a much older Dora.  A movie they haven't seen.

I finished making his soup, served him, took some compost down to the way back yard and upon returning to the kitchen informed him he had lost an hour of screen time tomorrow because he knew he wasn't allowed screens today and he knew it.

He was upset.   He cried.  Or maybe he wailed.   He was pretty upset but didn't even try to say he'd forgotten because he knew I wasn't going to buy it.  About three minutes later I told him, "Okay, I'll give you a chance to earn your hour back.   You know those white ear pods I wear in my ears when I'm on the phone?   Well, one has gone missing and I can't find it.  If you find it for me, you get your hour back."

He perked up and told me he was excellent at finding things.  He launched into the, "where was the last time you used them?" line of questioning.  I told him I had been sitting on the bed when I was talking to the pharmacy.   I typically only have one earbud in, but in this case, I had two.   I later used only one for a call about an hour later, but when I went to put the lone airpod in, the other one was missing from the case that was charging on my nightstand.

I had looked all around.   Those little airpods are expensive and easy to lose and I don't want to lose them.   So far, I've never misplaced one because I always put them right back after making a call.   I had looked through the trash can because I'd been going through some things while on the last call.   I'd looked on the bed, under the laptop, iPad, phone, other iPad and phone I'd been setting up for someone else, checked in the dog's cage, looked at the dog to see if she looked like she'd chewed something expensive.  I looked in the car, in the kitchen and anywhere else I thought I might have set it down without thinking.

My son, upon hearing I was on the bed when I'd last used the missing airpod, raced into the bedroom and not three seconds later yelled out, "see, I told you I was good at finding things!"   He rounded the corner to the kitchen holding the airpod up high with a huge grin on his face.   "Where was it," I asked him?  "Under the bed" he proudly exclaimed.  I had looked under the bed, but I don't have eight-year-old eyes apparently.   I took the airpod from his outstretched hand and said, "You can have your hour back."   I was glad to give it to him.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Presidential Hair Product Misunderstanding:  My children were getting out of the tub this evening and I was going over the things we needed to do before going up to bed to read more of the story we started last night.   I was explaining to my daughter I wasn't going to dry her hair tonight and I was going to see how this new product, Morocco Argan oil, would do on her hair instead.  My daughter asked me four times what I was saying.   After the third time I explained it was from Morocco and it was an oil from there.   My son yelled out from the tub, "Barack Obama oil?"   We all laughed at that, including my son.   And that will forevermore be what we call that hair product in our family now.