Friday, November 23, 2012

#23 - Season of Giving

As many of you know, we are in the midst of the Angel Tree season around here. I am very focused on that right now, because we had 18 "angels" (out of over 100) that didn't get "adopted" and so now I am using cash donations to shop for these 18 children. Needless to say, I was Black Friday shopping for three hours this morning! (I actually got all the gifts I was hoping for between Goody's, Rite Aid and Burke's Outlet!)

Anyway, we had a couple of girls ask for baby dolls and baby doll accessories. And I started thinking about this baby swing we got for Brianna last Christmas. She outgrew it very quickly, and while both kids do play with it from time to time, it's definitely not a toy they would miss. I was about to donate it to one of the Angel Tree children without even mentioning it to the kids, but I decided to have a conversation with Brianna about it because she is old enough to understand the concept of the Angel Tree, and I want to make sure she understands from a very early age how blessed our family is. So I had this conversation with her, about this baby swing. Of course the very first thing she said is, "Well, we do play with this all the time!" to which I rolled my eyes very generously. I explained to her that not all families can afford to buy toys for their children for Christmas, and so a little girl would really love to get this baby swing. She decided that yes, she wanted to give this toy away and I was really happy because, one, I didn't want to keep tripping over this toy that hardly ever gets played with, and two, I really want her to understand about helping others, having compassion, sharing, giving to the needy, and all those other characteristics at play here. She has already given some of her clothes and a winter coat, and I have not forced her with any of it. I really want her to want to give these items away.

All that to say, about 30 minutes later I went upstairs to get Hunter up from his nap. The very first thing that happened is he walked into the living room and I heard this:

Brianna: "Son, I need to have a talk with you. Okay?"
Hunter: "Uh huh?"
Brianna: "Is it okay to give that toy to a little girl? Is that okay?"
Hunter: "K."
Brianna: "But you won't get it back. Ever. Okay?"
Hunter: "K."
Brianna: (yelling to me in the laundry room) "Mommy, Hunter is okay with giving the swing to the little girl!"

I just thought it was cute, her little sit-down with him.

1 comment:

Cowboyup4christ said...

The Female of the species always want's the male to think it was his idea all along.