I finally cried

Yesterday finally made me cry......I made it through the tax forms, 1099's and 1096 forms I had to fill out. Not without quite a bit of frustration, but I made it. In the midst of doing tax stuff, my mom called to remind me that I was about to be another year older.... thanks mom. All that really reminded me of is that my 7 year old's b-day is also coming up and all he really wants is a Nintendo DS. I can't justify that amount of money on a birthday gift at the moment so that makes me feel kind of bad. My day just kind of continued down that path. Pretty much everything that could go wrong did, and I still haven't come up with a way to keep this family alive in this economy. Still hadn't cried though....... until

I was just sitting down at the computer to surf a little and maybe write something when the kids came through the door off the school bus. It's always a bit chaotic for a few minutes while they tell me about the latest catastrophe at the lunch table or how one kid or another ended up doing time in the "take a break" chair. My littlest was quieter than usual yesterday. He's normally going 90 miles a minute, both in movement and in voice. Yesterday he kind of wandered off to his room without saying much. About 5 minutes later he was back with a question....

"Momma, one of my classmate's house burned down last night. Would it be ok if I gave him some of my toys since his all burned in the fire?" He took me back to his room and showed me what he had picked out to give this kid. I told him that I was proud of him and that it was very nice that he was thinking about someone else. Of course he could give whatever he'd like to to his friend.

New toys have been pretty scarce around here for the past couple years. As we've watched the construction economy bottom out, we've had to learn how to make every dollar stretch as far as we can. Even that may not be enough in the end. Bottom line is that my son knows he won't be getting replacement toys for the ones he's giving away. More than that though, he can look around and see that he still has "some" and this kid has "none" and to this 6 year old.... that's all he needs to know.

Then I came back out to my office and I cried. How am I so lucky to have this "little man" in my life? As big people we all seem to think it's our job to teach these little people and show them the ways of the world..... know what I think? Maybe they already know and what we're actually showing them isn't such a great thing. Maybe the rest of us should learn from them for a change.

I'm proud of you Trev!