We do not talk a lot about 'boyfriends' and 'girlfriends' in our house. While it is cute to a point, to me it falls into a category of rushing my children into things too grown up for them. I am mindful of what a gift it is to let our children be their age. As Jon Acuff once wrote: "You can fast forward childhood, but you cannot rewind it."
With all that being said, I have to tell this story on R. While P & K are quite content to play with whomever, regardless of gender, R is a boys' boy all the way. He is energetic, rough, intense and very much into 'boy games.' For this reason, R never talks about girls from school unless it is to tell me something they did that 'anow-wed' him.
In the last couple of days, however, I have been hearing a lot about Gracie. He even went so far as to say that Gracie was "de on-wee gurl I like to play wiff at school...besides K."
This morning he was very much on a mission...something about taking a dollar to Tristan (his best friend) and a dollar to Gracie. Because it was in the midst of our usual hectic morning routine I didn't ask a lot of questions. When I saw him emptying his piggy bank I finally slowed down to ask some questions. He explained that he really wanted to take them each a dollar so they could go to the dollar store with it.
"Did they ask you to do that?"
"No," he replied as he stuffed a dollar in his pocket.
"Did you ask them to go for you?"
"No," as he stuffed the other dollar in his pocket.
"So, why are you sending them a dollar?"
"Because I really just want them to be able to pick out a toy that they would like to have."
What to do with that? I didn't want to start a money exchange at school, but it is so tender--and frankly, a bit outside his nature. I decided to go with it and see if his teacher shut it down.
Because it is reader day, carline/dropoff was crazy. R got to his teacher before I did. When I walked into the room she had the two crinkled dollar bills in her hand and asked, "What is all this about exactly?"
When I explained it all to her she smiled and said, "That's very generous, R." She then put them each in a ziploc with the recipients' names on them and placed them in their cubbies.
Gracie's mother is a teacher at our school, so I stopped by her room to fill her in and hopefully alleviate some confusion. As I explained she grinned and asked, "Does that make Gracie his Valentine?"
I think it might. :-)
7 comments:
Oh the memories this brings back! My now 28 yr old daughter, mother of my precious grandsons had an admirer in the first grade. One day she brought home a note that had a dollar bill in it along with 3 questions, Do you like me, Do you love me, Will you kiss me on the playground? Well, you can imagine I had a FIT! I immediately told her that girls DO NOT accept money from boys and on and on and then she began to cry. I took a breath and asked her why she was crying and she told me she thought I was mad at her. I told her "no honey, I'm not mad at you for anything!" We took the note and money to the boy's parents and when I explained that I had said little girls do not accept money from boys, the young lad's daddy (who is a very funny man!) said, "oh I agree, and we told R that there will absolutely not be any wedding till at least 4th grade!" : ) To this day, that story brings much delight to my hubby and I! Your children are precious and I so enjoy your blog. I found it recently and went back to read some of the history and there are some similarities to my daughter's
life. Happy Valentines Day!
What a sweet heart R has!
That is so sweet. Sweet that Gracie may indeed be his Valentine, and sweet because he thought of others enough to do something for them. Such sweet kids.
What a precious story! :)
That is so sweet!
I won't tell Sadie :-)
No worries. He is still planning to marry Sadie. :-)
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