Yes and Hell Yes

Alastair earned his first paycheck today (not counting his turn in a WIC commercial in 2006).

He was at The Little Gym, starting to get slightly disruptive as his class moved over to the final station of the day, and definitely not listening to the teachers. Instead of running around like a lunatic, though, he decided to sit next to the main teacher, Miss Shayla, whereupon he proclaimed to the class, in a highly affected "adult" voice, "I'm Miss Shayla, and I'm going to tell you what we'll be doing at this station."

Bent over in laughter, Miss Shayla told him to go ahead and lead the class. He organized a pretty good routine (all normal stuff they've done a million times before), and class continued rather uneventfully.

Both teachers came out to tell me what a riot my kid can be, and after class was over, he was excited to tell me all about it, too. So I told him that he should ask if he gets a paycheck.

He ran right over to the counter and asked, perfectly seriously, "Do I get a paycheck?" Explosive laughter. And yes, they wrote him a paycheck. He clutched it all the way home, and talked about it all afternoon.

That's my boy: exhibiting a strong work ethic at age 4.