Persistance

It may have taken close to three-and-a-half years to manifest itself, but it appears that my son has been (more or less) listening to me all along! It's astounding how full our days are, aside from the daily routine and schedule of eating, napping and playing. Most moms would probably agree that a large majority of the days are full of reminders and instructions and corrections and encouragement and positive reinforcements with our kids. Basically, we moms are glorified broken records. Advocates for manners, kindness, social skills, and overall tact. For example:

"How do you ask?" or, "what do you say?" or, "what's the magic word?" or, "why don't you try that again and ask me the correct way?", or "how can you say that in a kinder way?".

You get the idea.

Anyway, it first caught my attention today when we were in line to order a pretzel at Target. Ben sweetly conveyed to me that he was practically dying of hunger, and since I had packed very light snacks that were already consumed on the car ride over in a matter of 5 seconds, I found my Mama guilt caving to his request. Plus, pretzels are the second cheapest item on their menu, and I was even able to scrape up the grand total in loose change. Win-win.

So the food lady hands him his giant pretzel (just about the size of his head) and he ever so sweetly batted his gorgeous blue eyes, smiled and in his sing-song tone said, "thank you!"
Unprompted. By himself. This was huge, but I wasn't expecting this to repeat itself anytime soon.

And THEN! I prepare his lunch, and as he takes his plate and carries it from the kitchen to the dining table, he practically shrieks out, "Ohhhh, wow! Mom, this lunch is MY FAVORITE! Thanks so much!".
Again! Unprompted! But even still, I'm thinking....this is still a coincidence, and really he's just excited because we have KILLER leftover skirt steak and crispy garlic potatoes from dinner last night.

And then, as if to seal the deal, he blew my socks off one last time. Which, for more reasons than I care to even count, I desperately needed tonight. Maybe he sensed this and is beginning to catch on to the whole Take Care of Mommy concept. As I was tucking him in and saying goodnight, he suddently wrapped his little arms around my neck, let out a huge sigh and said, "Mommy? I love you. I love you so much." And then he adorned my face with kisses. It was like being attacked by a warm little puppy with love.

Gulp. Cue misty eyes.

And I started thinking...maybe all of this really is soaking in his little brain. Maybe I am actually getting through to him. Maybe I really am making a difference in my attempt to steer him the right way, and all of these constant reminders (or nagging....let's be honest...) have not been in vain. Tomorrow I'm sure he'll go back to bugging his sister to the point of tears and talking sassy to his mother and refusing to nap and tracking mud all over the recently vacuumed floors, but today felt like a mini success story. Our own little hurdle.

And honestly, even if I never have a moment like this again with him, today somehow made those 3.5 million daily reminders oh so very worth it.