Thankful, indeed.

Today was kind of a rough day for all of the inhabitants of chez Wasylik. Cranky, tired, hard time getting out the door in the morning, rough days at work, rough days at school. I made a conscious effort to change the mood at dinner. I declared tonight breakfast for dinner night, and Alex helped me to make waffles — he cracked a eggs (badly, but he’s improving, as are my shell-fishing-out skills) unwrapped the butter, counted tablespoons of buttermilk powder and sugar, and whisked the whole thing together as I did the adding. He even is able to ladle batter onto the waffle iron. Moods improved. We said grace, and Nate participated so nicely, he seems to really be trying to say “thank you for our food” and the rest of it, too. Moods improved even more.

But then, in response to the usual “so how was your day?” we all started grousing about our days a bit. In between grousing, Alex said something about dinner being yummy and something clicked in me. I said to Alex “we should all be so thankful and grateful that we get to have breakfast for dinner, and breakfast for breakfast, and that we have enough food to have three meals a day and not go hungry. There are many people in this country and in this world that aren’t so lucky.” He pondered this. Then I suggested: “I have an idea. On really bad days, it is good for us to remember that we are still pretty lucky. Why don’t we all go around the table and say something GOOD about today that we have to be thankful for?”

Daddy went first. He said he had TWO things he was thankful for today. Having a very pleasant run in with a high school classmate at the court house today, and having a family who loves him very much.

Alex went next. He said he had FOUR things he was thankful for. That alone blew me away. Then he marched through them: First, I love you guys. Second, I got to play a computer game at school today. Three, I watched a movie while I was waiting for the ball (background: for some reason when I picked them up today, Alex was sitting at the computer playing a Breakout-type game and they ALSO had the TV going in the computer nook…grrrrr!). Number four, I love you guys.

I melted. maybe it isn’t too out of the ordinary, but I was blown away by (a) the fact that he set up a four part structure for his “argument” and then followed it and (b) the fact that he came up with four things that were wonderful about his day and two of them was loving us. Even if two of those four things were the same — after all, you can’t have too much love, right?

Mommy had three, by the way: We had cheesecake to celebrate a co-worker’s birthday today, Nate is doing such a good job of communicating with us, and Alex just made my day with his list.

Oh, and as far as we can tell, Nate is grateful for choo choo trains.