Seeing improvement helps

My oldest little princess turned FIVE on Friday. Who knew that this time would go by so fast? Oh wait, everyone does and they tell you that. I should have listened better because it really does…it really does.

I will post some birthday pictures later probably along with Christmas pictures and all kinds of other catch-up posts. So beware, we may have a new post ever day this week. Yeah, that will be funny.

I have to tell you how proud I have been of Drea. We are certainly watching her turn into a sweet, little lady right in front of us. Our focus lately during our teachable moments has been on gratefulness and for good reason. We were seeing a lot of “gimme, gimme, gimme” attitude and not much thankfulness. I tend to get extremely concerned about this issue especially this time of year with the present extravaganza that is Christmas and a birthday two weeks later. So we were doing multiple exercises to encourage the behaviors we expect in our household.

On Friday, we took Drea out to dinner and ice cream for her birthday. I picked her up from daycare early and took her for a special trip to the library before dinner. We had a wonderful time doing all of these things and we kept noting how much she was thanking us and genuinely appreciative. The next day I was preparing for her party and she jumped on the computer and started "coloring" pages her favorite website. After printing many of her creations, she asked me to make a list of her party guests. Then she wrote each name on a drawing, folded it up, stuffed it in an envelope (and by "stuffed", I literally mean some of them look stuffed in the envelope.) and then wrote their name on the envelope also. She was so diligent about it. In fact, I kind of figured she would only make a few and then get interested in something else but that wasn't the case. We even made her stop for bedtime and she woke up to finish them in the morning. My brother was at my house on Saturday night and asked me if I told her to do that for everyone. I hadn't. I hadn't a thought about it in my head at all. I was so proud of her for thinking about her guests. She even stuffed all of their goody bags for the party and decided which color each person would like and instructed me to write their names on the bags because she wanted them to have the bag she put together for them. She was so excited for them to receive it. At the party Sunday she seemed more interested in her friends getting their envelopes than what she was getting. Well...at first...once the party got into full swing and her entertaining gene kicked in, some of the guests that got there later also received their envelope later.

This may not seem like much to some but to us all the little things all week helped me see the fruits of the lessons we have been teaching. I have seen her completely grateful for all that she has been given and has really learned how to express it. And maybe it's just due to the excitement of her birthday but I don't think so. We have struggled with the "more presents, more presents" thing for a while and to watch her seem happier to be near her family and friends during her brithday was a huge win for us. Her "thank yous" for simple acts we do for her has increased. Her general attitude seems to not be as much "give me" anymore.

We are very pleased with what we have seen lately and we do know that its no time to slack off now. We need to be persistent and continue to work on this. Andy and I tend to not be very consistent so my goal is to continue to work on this area even if we start a new focus.

Beware, we have so many posts to catch up on from the holidays, birthdays and winter fun that there might be quite a few back to back here this week.