We’ll worry about portion control later.

We’ve been talking about finding joy in the little things in my little corner of the blogosphere lately. Tonight, I found joy in a (seemingly, to anyone else) small thing. But this small thing happened to make my night.

If you’ll cast your minds back, waaaaaaaay back to the beginning of September, you’ll remember my sweet little Gracie was just starting kindergarten. I was all verklempt and full of new energy and love and happiness. Everything was chocolate milk and rainbows – even making Gracie’s lunches. (Guess where this is going.) Oh, I still love enjoy like making Gracie’s lunch with her each night. We get to talk and it’s nice to have something the two of us can do together. Something that can become a constant as she grows older and makes her way through each grade and maybe wants to go do other things than talk with her mom.

But, if I’m being honest, there are nights when I dread The Making of the Lunch. Verily, some nights The Making of the Lunch sucks. (That’s right – I said it. I said it with bad words.) I have been exhausted this week dealing with largely unbloggable matters that have drained my emotional abilities to deal well with stuff like eating, sleeping, and making lunches. Okay, fine, I’m exaggerating, but I’m still kind of tired by the end of the day, okay? Man. Anyway, I walked out of the girls’ bedroom from tucking Bee into bed and walked into the kitchen to investigate some suspicious noises I had heard while reading bedtime stories. I thought Gracie might be getting out her three choices for snacks (something she sometimes prepares for my approval or veto). I was surprised to find her opening a brown bag and preparing to put her lunch in it. Her entire lunch (except the turkey – she forgot her rolled-up lunch meat she usually takes in a baggy). She had gotten out some crackers, a bag of fruit snacks, loaded enough Cheetos in a baggie to feed half her class, and even buttered a slice of bread! That means she got the loaf of bread down from the dish rack, opened the twistie-tie, got out a piece of bread, somehow reached up to the third shelf in the fridge and negotiated the full butter tub from behind some Sam Adams and the corningware full of shepherd’s pie, got a butter knife and buttered the bread.   !  This from the girl who still asks me to button her pajama top! True, I didn’t look inside the folded bread because I was afraid of how much butter I would find…

I was speechless. I still am. She even got out a napkin and wrote the “Dear Gracie,” and “Love, Mom” with room in between for me to write her a note. Such a small act of kindness as packing her own lunch moved me almost to tears.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a round of Uno or three I’ve got to play with my favorite five-year-old before I send her off to bed. What – you didn’t think I was letting her get out of bonding with Mom, did you?

*This post was pre-blogged Tuesday night in the interest of extra Wednesday morning alarm snoozes.

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Tags: children, kindergarten, parenting, school lunch