Pocket Money for Babies

Hi friends. I'm back again on the weekend to share with you a little tradition we have started lately in our household. Our Miss A has started 'earning' pocket money. I know it seems a little young, but here's what we've been doing: 

My husband loathes carrying around change with him, emptying his pockets at the first opportunity. The gold coins normally get fished out to use as coffee money, but the silver ones keep piling up higher and higher. I decided to convert this into something that would invest into our child and future children. The deal is that baby gets five cents for every book that we read together. It's simple, and inexpensive (at this stage I suppose). Most days, we spend 10 minutes at least reading together, and then pop somewhere from 20c - 50c into the piggybank. Some days, we don't do any reading at all. Still, that piggy is getting quite fat (it's one my husband used as a child btw). 

And this little one? She just loves books. She loves to sit on my lap and turn the pages, feeling every little fabric insert, pointing at the pictures. And it's a delight to watch her. Sometimes I read in front of our floor to ceiling mirror, just for the pleasure of seeing her face light up with each new page. 

The idea is that when the piggy bank is full, we will take a trip to the bank to cash it in. We then get to take the money to .... the bookstore to pick out a new book! I hope this is a nice little tradition we can continue for years to come, although the going rate for book reading might have to change ;-) While I remember reading many, many books as a child, I don't remember ever getting to pick out a new one for myself. I think that would have been a special moment. 

By the way, how sweet are those flowers? It's a bush that we pruned back to almost nothing during winter and it surprised us with those balls of sunshine when Spring came. The baby loves to munch on them!