Small But Profound Gifts

There were a couple of events yesterday that surprised me and both of them happened to involve my children.

On the way home from picking the kids up at school, I was flipping through the iPod and subjecting them to some of my favourite songs. About 3 miles from home, the entire car (including the children from my carpool) were belting out the Police's "Roxanne". Everyone was in a great mood.

After that song, I put on another and told the kids to listen because I thought the guy's voice was just amazing. Thirty seconds into it, I'm tapped on the shoulder and told, "Olivia's crying". Now, this is not unusual. It is the end of the day, she is exhausted and there are times that the four children hack each other off. I also had the music on loud enough to make ears bleed so I thought perhaps the tears might be a result of some sort of physical discomfort.

I lowered the volume and said, "Livvy, what's wrong, honey?"

She looked at me with giant tears spilling down her face and bawled, "I love this song!" There she was boo hooing away and I thought that I must have heard her incorrectly. I said, "You don't like this song?" She shook her head and said, "No mama. I like this song." I asked her why she was crying and she said it was because the song made her heart sad.

Oh.My.God. She's bloody brilliant. And she has exceptional taste in music.

This was the song: "I Am The Highway" by Audioslave.



The second thing happened as we sat down to dinner. Dylan and Olivia were trying really hard to be kind to each other and it was just a hair shy of nirvana for me. Most of the time, this is the witching hour in my house and it is all I can do to survive it on a daily basis. Yesterday was freaky in an Invasion of the Body Snatchers kind of way.

So we're chatting with each other and then all of the sudden Olivia pipes up and asks Dylan if he remembers when Dad spanked him over the spaghetti. Of course, this gets my attention and Dylan tells me that a few weeks ago while visiting their father, Olivia was full and dumped the remainder of her spaghetti in the garbage. My ex walks back into the kitchen and starts screaming about the pasta and how he was going to tan her hide for throwing it out, etc, etc and my sweet, sweet boy did the unthinkable. He took the fall for his baby sister.

He told his father that he was the one that threw out the leftovers and apparently my ex spanked him until he couldn't sit down. After he finished with the story, I asked Olivia if it was true. She said yes. Then, she slipped out of her chair, went over to where Dylan was sitting, hugged him and told him that she loved him. I was flabbergasted. It was all very Norman Rockwell and I wanted to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming.

You know those times when that full to the brim feeling of love for your children washes over you and threatens to lay you right out? Yup...

Serious note to self: sitting down as a family to dinner is no longer optional.