A Mini-Lecture on Gratitude

Today after CBS, I was going to be the nice mom. The cool mom. The mom who's house should be declared a federal disaster zone and so she decided that it would be more pleasant to take the girls out to lunch than to face the mess.

So I took them to a local deli where we ate their favorite flatbread sitting at an outside table. Since they shared their dinner without complaint, we stopped at the ice cream place where I let them pick out their own special orders. After they ate, we walked outside to the fountain where I hoped they would run around a play for a few minutes before we headed home.

Instead...

K wanted me to take her home, let her change into shorts, and bring her back.

L wanted K to play with her.

K begged for coins to throw in the fountain in spite of the fact that I *always* tell her prayers are free and never let them throw in money.

L wanted someone to play with her.

K complained that she wanted to go wading/swimming/anything with water and why wouldn't I let her because it was warm (like lower 70s) today!

L sat on the steps and cried because no one would play with her.

They both just sat near me being grumpy, so I got up to leave. That caused them both to whine loudly that they wanted to stay and L threw a temper tantrum, refused to follow me, and made all the other moms ask if she was with me.

When I finally got both of them in the car, I gave a very short, but intense, lecture, including recent relevant examples, on the principle of gratitude and would they please try to simply be grateful about what they got and what they got to do instead of launching into complaints about the things they *didn't* get or do. Both of them burst into tears and all was silence and sniffles on the way home.

So I am going to practice what I preach.

I am going to be grateful that I have 2 beautiful girls with normally sunny dispositions that are playing nicely together right now.

I am going to be grateful that I have a nice home and enough stuff to make it messy more often than not.

I am going to be grateful for the beautiful weather that lets me open the windows and enjoy the breeze.

I am going to be grateful for my cleaning music - TFK's Phenomenon album (who would probably be horrified that a middle-age, overweight mom calls their high-energy Christian heavy metal "cleaning music").

I am going to be grateful that I have the physical ability to lift, sweep, climb stairs, wipe surfaces, and command a cleaning crew of two little girls.

And hopefully, in a little while, I will be grateful for the clean home that our efforts have produced.