The value of a dollar.

A few weeks ago BirdMan decided to climb on the toilet paper holder in order to look the window. Of course, the holder ripped out of the wall and crashed to the ground. This was one of those fancy toilet paper holders that has porcelain trim and it all broke in too many pieces to count.

BirdMan was very sad and was told he'd have to earn some money to pay for it. They've also been told that they'll need to earn some money to pay for the Christmas presents they are buying for their siblings. The warm weather over the weekend gave us an opportunity for them to learn about earning money.

They stacked firewood. Hard, sweaty work for an hour and they each earned $10. They were thrilled with their money but had a new appreciation of how hard it is to earn money for what you want.

Fast forward to Sunday night. GooseyGirl and I go to the grocery and stop by the pet store to look for a Christmas present for her brothers. This new pet store had a beautiful, quiet, well-behaved Amazon parrot. The price, $1500 and then you have to buy the cage, the toys and the vet bills.

We came home and GooseyGirl told BirdMan all about the parrot. BirdMan got more and more excited with each revelation. You could literally watch the sunshine spread from his eyes to his entire body as she described the beautiful parrot. More than anything in the world, this boy wants a pet bird. He checks out books about it, he writes about it, he talks about it, he dreams about it. He wants a bird.

Then GooseyGirl told him the price. It was like someone had hit BirdMan in the head! He reeled back and said, "Oh, no, that will take me FOREVER!" Suddenly that bird looked like a TON of firewood to BirdMan.

But I secretly smiled. The leap was made in his mind for the first time between hard work, money and objects of desire. It clicked.

All was going well until BirdMan said, "Momma, we'll just use that MASTER card to get me a bird!"

Ahhhh.... two steps forward, one step back....