Being Thankful

I love Thanksgiving. It is by far my favorite holiday. Why do I love it? Well, I love the colors and the food, but also, for me at least, it is a relatively stress free holiday. I also love that during this time of year people generally try to be more thankful. I have tried to teach the kids that we should be thankful all the time, but Thanksgiving is a special time set aside to make it a big part of your lifestyle. So I have decided to dedicate most of my blogs this month to those things that I am thankful for. There are so many obvious things that I am thankful for and I am sure that you will read about these in later posts, but during this month I also try to be thankful for those little things that you run across everyday and don't really express thanks for. I have also found that trying to find thankfulness in all things really helps me deal with stressful situations or calm down when I feel my level of patience beginning to wane. For example, today has been a particularly hard day with Benjamin. It started out with him asking, make that pleading, for candy at 9:00 this morning. Of course I said no. Every Mom knows that giving candy at 9:00 in the morning is restricted to emergencies only. I wasn't at that point yet. (By the way it was a fun size pack of M&Ms.) So after my initial "No, you may not have the candy", he continued pleading. His polite 'please' started sounding strained and his sweet smile was getting a pasted on look. After about 10 more go-arounds he finally conceded and went to put it up. Later on I walked into his room to turn a light off and on the floor was a very wet, gnarled M&M candy wrapper. He had successfully ripped the middle of the package open with his teeth and had sucked out each M&M. I found him behind the couch with chocolate all over his mouth. What do I have to be thankful for in this situation? Healthy teeth. At least my Benjamin has strong, healthy, beautiful teeth. Oh, and he is clearly a very ingenious child!