Kindness Day

Our Thanksgiving was absolutely wonderful.  5 straight days with the boys was just the pick me up I needed.  And by pick me up, I mean in the emotional/fulfilling sense, because Lord knows they completely wear me out!!

Before I get to Thanksgiving, I want to talk about the Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving.  You see, it’s very important to me that my boys learn the importance of being kind and giving back to their community.  With all the negativity in the world today, I’m a big believer in treating others as we’d like to be treated.  One of my greatest memories from high school is leading the food and gift drive for Student Council.  In addition to collecting canned goods, we collected enough money to provide a few families with Christmas gifts.  I imagined them opening all the wrapped gifts on Christmas and it brought me such joy.  My hope for the boys is that they’ll too be find joy in giving.  That they’ll be generous and compassionate individuals who want to help others.

With that said, I took Wednesday off and declared it Kindness Day and we set out on a mission to spread cheer throughout our community.  We started with our neighbors and brought over a plate of cookies.  We mailed a card to W’s friend in Georgia and we also left cookies and a Target gift card in the mailbox for our mail carrier.  Then, it was off to our favorite Starbucks.  We went through the drive thru and paid for coffee for the person behind us.  Our favorite barista happened to be manning the drive thru and we left him a tip.  Next, it was off to Target.  W helped me pick 4 cars in the parking lot and we taped Target gift cards to their windows with a note wishing them a wonderful day.  Then, we headed out to the fire station to drop off more cookies.  Scratch that.  We headed to 4 different fire stations.  The first 3 stations didn’t answer their doors??  The fourth fire station was the city’s headquarters and there was a receptionist.  At first she was confused that I wasn’t there to see anyone in particular, but I explained that we were just dropping off cookies as a kind gesture and she returned with a hat and goody bag for W. J  After that, we met up with A for lunch.  We ended Kindness Day with A bringing treats to doggy day care and W and I bringing flowers to my mom’s 80+ year old neighbor.  We had so much fun and I can’t wait to do it again!!

I should also mention that W has not been kind to his brother lately.  So I hoped that all of the spreading kindness would rub off on him.  He did have a good weekend, but was back to hitting and pushing this morning.  I suppose he IS nearing three years old and the hitting and pushing comes with the territory, but I’m ready for this phase to be over.  I know what you're thinking... they're little boys and they're siblings... this phase will NEVER be over.  I get that.  But I'm at least hoping that W will come to me when he gets frustrated or needs help instead of hitting as an immediate reaction.