In raising kids, it's the little things that I Did Right that I remember, even years later, with a sense of relief.
I am pleased that this year I snared conference times for all three elementary-school kids back-to-back on the same afternoon right after school.
Ridiculous, I know. But it will go down in my personal history as one of those things I actually got done correctly, when it would have been easy to just forget about it and take whatever we got. We could have ended up running over to the school three different times. Now we don't have to. A tiny, tiny thing, I know.
I will, also, always remember the years that I bought, by mail, ahead of time, light-up toys for the circus.
A kind person gives us circus tickets every year. The circus sells light-up wands and hats. ("Sells" is perhaps too mild a word here. The circus pushes, like a drug, light-up wands and hats.) The kids always beg for them.
I discovered that I can buy light-up toys at cheap online stores ahead of time, hide them, and pass them out at the circus, spending a fourth, or less, of what it would cost me to buy them at the circus. Not that we would buy them at the circus. What happens if I don't buy them ahead of time is that I end up saying No over and over, then feeling guilty for, oh, about forty years afterward.
I still remember the year a much-younger Alan cried because he so desperately wanted a stuffed smiley face at the circus. And I still feel bad because we didn't get it. I didn't feel bad at the time--I was just tired of the crying, and felt that we should stick to our guns because we said no toys, and he needed to learn, etc. etc. But now, now that any possibility of buying eight-year-old Alan a toy is gone forever because eight-year-old Alan himself is, of course, gone forever (Alan being seventeen now)--I feel bad about it. Why didn't I just buy him the dang toy and watch his little face break out in smiles? Why, why? (This is why grandparents spoil grandchildren.)
I am very pleased with myself the years I remember to get circus toys ahead of time.
Okay, so the toys aren't quite as fancy as the ones that you get at the circus. I'll try to forget that part. By the time I get to the nursing home, all I want to remember is what a great Mom I was. "And, Nurse, let me tell you about the year I got all three school conferences scheduled in the same hour . . . "
