Closest picture I could find on Google images to what my snake looked like (but mine was longer...or do I just remember it being longer??)
Once when I was younger (not sure how old, somewhere between 6 & 10, I guess) I got the best birthday present a kid could ever dream of! No, not a pony. I was told I could pick ANYTHING I wanted from Toys R Us. Any one item. Anything!
Side Rant: My parents must have been in a good mood to offer this because the only comparable offer I ever remember was when we were moving and sold our house when I was 7 and my brother was 5. To celebrate the sale going through my parents took my brother and I to THE DOLLAR STORE and let us pick the same "any one thing"! We were SO excited about it. I laugh now because it was the dollar store...maybe we didn't sell the house for as much as we had hoped. Either that or they were just smart. Maybe both.
Anyways, back to my original story. So I got to go to Toys R Us and pick any one thing. I remember walking in the store, looking up and seeing IT immediately. It was shining and glowing from where it hung on display up above and calling to me to pick it: IT was a giant stuffed snake! If memory serves me right, I think it was 20 feet long...but may have been longer. I didn't even want to look any further. I had to have the snake. So I got it. Best birthday ever!! I have fond memories of that snake. I put it in my room, of course, and I remember it taking over 2-3 of the walls in length, draped over my bed, over my dresser and down on the floor. My brother and I would put the snake on the stairs, head at the top and tail down at the bottom and attempt to slide down the body of the snake. Ahh, good times...
I guess what made me think of this is that Chloë has earned the chance to pick out a toy at the toy store with her reward sticker chart we have going on. I made the chart about a week ago a few days after my mom left. If you read my last post, you recall that Chloë spent a month sleeping in Myke and my closet in our room. Well, when my mom left we put her right back in her room and in her own bed without skipping a beat. The first night she woke us up to ask for help using the bathroom (which she can very well do on her own), then the second night she woke us up to ask for help getting a tissue to blow her nose. I needed an immediate stop to this. I definitely don't want to be woken up at 2am every night for things like this. I need to enjoy my nights of sleep before baby #4 comes along and throws the whole concept of sleeping at night into the toilet. Sooo, I decided to do a sticker chart for Chloë and each morning that she gets up in the morning and HASN'T woken us up the night before, she gets a sticker. I told her after 5 stickers she would get a to pick a toy at a toy store. I was thinking this would initially take awhile to reach. I'm sure it must be somewhat scary/intimidating to wake up in your dark room alone at night and go use the bathroom alone. Chloë's bedroom isn't even on the same level as ours so it's not like she has comfort in knowing mommy and daddy are just a room away or anything like that. But hey, that's her reality and always has been since she was 7 weeks old and we booted her downstairs a level to her own bedroom (tough love, huh?). Soooo, she ended up doing AMAZING with the sticker chart and hasn't called us down for help one night since we started it. She totally prides herself in her independence and loves to tell me how many times she got up to use the bathroom BY HERSELF at night. It's great!! She's already up to 8+ stickers and we owe her a toy. I wonder what she'll pick. Hopefully not a giant pink stuffed snake! Maybe I'll just take her to The Dollar Store :)
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