Sticker Power

My third grade teacher, Mrs. Klotz, singlehandedly took my love of stickers to a whole new level. She would put the most colorful, most fragrant stickers on our papers. To this day I can not smell black licorice and not see in my mind's eye the round black and white sticker with little dancing beans which held that smell. I remember this pink and yellow swirl one which said, "Tutti Fruitti" on it. At eight years old, I thought the whole world should smell like that. I'm confident my entire class was more motivated to study our spelling lists because of Mrs. K's expansive sticker collection.

Turns out little man is also beheld by the power of stickers. For the past couple weeks they are a very pleasing reward for every "pee pee on the potty." Yesterday I decided to see if they would also help us through a tearful good-bye at preschool. Before we left I gave Hudson two smiley-face stickers --one for each hand-- for him to look at when he got sad at preschool. He seemed to understand the concept and was excited to have "Mama's happee face????" on his hands.

We arrived at preschool and there were no tears; albeit there was some screaming when I dragged him away from a Discovery Toys display OUTSIDE the classroom (Come on, people, work with me here!!!). But as I said good-bye to him and his bottom lip started to protrude, I directed his attention to his hands. He kissed me and did absolutely fantastic. The teacher raved about him after class.

Stickers are magic, I tell you!

Finally, let me switch just one letter for another and tell you about the magic stinkers we have at this house. Hudson is working towards doing a "number two" on the potty and last night "tooted" while on the trying, but nothing else. He informed Josh and I that stinkers need to be flushed too. So, that is exactly what he did.

For the record, we don't give out stickers for stinkers around here...unless they smell like Tutti Fruitti.