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Thanks to your votes, Greetings from Waldo won the Nickelodeon's Parents' Pick best local blog in Kansas City.



It is back-to-school season. Richie and I had his pre-conference today, and he was very shy.

His teacher asked, "Do you like science?"

"No."

"Do you like reading?"

"No."

"Do you know how to read?"

"No."

I was like, Wait to put your best foot forward, son. Good thing you're not on a job interview. I also wanted the teacher to ask if he liked joking around. Then she would have seen his can-do attitude.

His teacher told him they were going to learn about money and have little shops in the classroom where they could spend their money.

Now his eyes lit up.

"Will there be slushies?" he asked.

"Maybe we could have a slushy store," his teacher said, jotting it down on her paper. "Do you know how to make slushies?"

"No. But I know how to make Shirley Temples."

"How?"

"You pour in some cherry juice. Then you pour in some Sprite." He raised is eyebrows as if to say, Nailed it.

People used to ask me, before Richie's birthday, "What is he into?" and I would say, "He just really likes talking." He would have a friend over, and while the friend played with Richie's toys, Richie would lean over the couch and talk for hours on end. Now, I think Richie has found a new area that peaks his interest: buying and selling cherry flavored drinks.

He's already got the buying part down. The boys get allowance for their chores now. Johnny usually saves up for something big, like Madden 2010. Richie, on the other hand, earmarks his entire allowance for the pool snack bar. Slushies are priced at an outrageous $2. (When I worked at a snack bar, snow cones, which have the same ingredients, cost 40 cents. This is what's wrong with our economy today. Well, one of the things. Maybe not the biggest.)

Anyway, Richie brought $6 one day. He bought his friends a round of slushies. My friend was with him and tried to give him money for her son's slushy, but he waved her off. Then he thought about it. She asked if he would at least take a dollar, and he was like, "Oh, all right." With the dollar, he bought a candy bar.

On the way home, I asked, "Do you like buying slushies for all your friends?"

"I don't want to say I like it, but I don't want to say I don't like it," he said.

He said that he liked doing it if he brought enough money, but most the time he was only going to bring $2.25, enough for one frosty malt.

Richie has the prices on the menu memorized. Actually, they all do, even J.J., who tells me he wants $2 out of his piggy bank for a slushy. Two kids Richie's size were standing behind him the other day, and one held a $20 bill. The kid asked me, "Is this enough for two slushies?" Richie turned around and said, "Slushies don't cost $20. They cost $2.00! The most expensive thing on the menu is $3.25! It's dippin' dots." Then he looked at me like, Can you believe these guys don't have the prices on the menu memorized?)

I think he's going to love selling Shirley Temples. Especially when he gets to say, "Drinks are on the house!" every once in a while.