in the midst of a lot of stress and turmoil with maeven lately, i feel i must point out 2 really wonderful moments i had with her recently.
first, we were heading home and were in the parking lot where there’s a goodwill store and she BEGGED me to stop and shop for some new clothes for her cuz she REALLY needs new pants (she really does! she has outgrown nearly everything from last year). so i concede because i had been meaning to do that sometime soon anyway and now was as good a time as any. i just had hoped to not have to take tyren with me, but i thought i’d give it a try.
anyway, we get inside and maeven is positively GIDDY looking through the racks and keeps bringing me pants that she LOVES! (most of which wouldn’t fit her) and she’s just bouncy and giggly and just REALLY enjoying the shopping for new pants, at a thrift store. i love that!
thinking about it later i was particularly proud of the fact that she was so excited about getting “new” clothes that are not new. she doesn’t insist on brand new, trendy clothes because she’s just not been exposed to that. i’m not into anything trendy (actually i HATE trendy stuff…have always tended to go the opposite of trends, since i was a teen even)…and she’s not in school where all the values of other kids families would be bombarding her and conflicting with our family’s values…where value is placed on what you wear and how much money you spent on it. i’m not saying that that will never happen with her…she may progress to an age some day where she becomes aware of that sort of value system, but for now she’s happily oblivious.
we narrowed it down to 4 pair of pants and she was just ecstatic to try them on and we went to the dressing room where she proudly modeled each pair. she was just so cute!
and in between, when i was scouring the racks some more, i asked her to help with her brother (who i had strapped to a stroller to keep him close at hand) and she happily pushed him up and down the aisles and under racks (carwash!!) and played happily with him to keep him busy. it was a wonderful moment! she was my helper girl again. so nice to see the sweetness coming out. and so nice to see her appreciate used clothes and mommy taking the time to get her something new. it was just so heartwarming! 🙂 i love this little girl!! 🙂
the second moment happened that same day or the next, can’t remember which…when she came with me in the evening to go grocery shopping. left tyren home with daddy. she was such a helper! had her own list she wrote up and insisted on carrying a basket (would NOT let me put it under my cart even when it got heavy with fruit…but then finally conceded when she could no longer carry it, LOL!) she skipped around the store and helped me out tremendously for the whole trip. got a little wild at the end, but nothing too much and she calmed down again and just was really fun to be with. and very proud of being able to help me. i need more moments with her alone like that. making a mental note to set aside more mommy/maeven time (sans baby).
its nice to have had those moments being that we’ve been at odds so much lately. i won’t go into that now because i want this post to be about good stuff about maeven. 🙂 i need to remind myself of this sometimes.
i love that maeven seems to have an appreciation of the fact that we can’t buy lots of things (being a one-income family with the one income not particularly high)…she doesn’t usually ask for much…and when she does, its not big expensive things. she’s ecstatic just getting stickers! i attribute that to the way we are raising her…not having the money to spend on stuff left and right and also the fact that we very rarely watch commercial children’s programming (mostly only pbs or dvds/videos)…so she’s not bombarded with the advertising to kids that i know many kids get. plus i’ve trained her from the time she was very little that the commercials are trying to get her to want something…and we’ve played “what are they trying to get us to buy” game for years. she does watch shows like reality tv shows and such in the afternoon/evening that have commercials but those aren’t aimed at kids so they mostly aren’t items of interest to her. so she’s not saturated in the environment that i think really adds to the “gimme’s” not to say she never gets the gimme’s …she certainly does! but its not particularly common.
not only that but i’ve been trying to instill in her that giving our old and no longer used things away is something that is very special. she’s slowly coming around with that…she used to fight giving stuff away tooth and nail (even hated ME giving MY stuff away!) but now she will even come up to me and give me a piece of clothes or an old toy and ask to give it away. i usually have bags by the front door for putting give away stuff in and we are forever culling our stuff and she’s gotten better at parting with things. in fact, just before thanksgiving i told her we were going to go through our clothes to find clothes for our friends tiffiny and seren, because tiff had blogged that they were low on clothes and seren is a little younger than maeven so i thought we should offer her all the stuff that maeven had outgrown…and i even went through my closets (which needed culling anyway) and found some stuff for tiff. we always have tons of stuff that, for whatever reason, we just never wear…so we thought we’d share with someone we knew that needed it! and she actually got a little into finding stuff for seren…and has even found some more clothes after the fact to give to seren! (tiff, if you’re reading this, i got another bag i’m working on for seren that you can go through sometime. i’ll let ya know when its full) anyway, i’m trying very hard to instill giving to my kids (tyren’s a bit young still), so this has really made my heart glad to see maeven embracing this value.
there’s more i could go on and on about but i digress…my kids need me to get breakfast for them now. 🙂
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