Simple Pleasures

One of the things that first drew me to Dh, those many (many, many, many) years ago was his ability to be who he was.  He had learned that he didn't need to please anyone else and that he wasn't going to change his interests or his clothing to suit someone else's opinion.  He isn't insensitive - he cares very much when he thinks that he might have hurt someone, but he has always been his own person and he doesn't apologize for that.  For me, who has always been so much of a people pleaser that I compromise myself far to often to fit in, it is a characteristic that I have admired very much.

I'm really excited that, at least at this stage, Pk seems to be following in his footsteps.  We see it in little things.  She loves passionately and when she loves something, it becomes almost an obsession.  I think she has seen every episode of Word World 200 times (hence why her reading is coming on so nicely), it's been Veggietale everything since she was about 18 months and Rudolph is the current fixation.  We are seeing signs of a move to "The Lion King", about which we have mixed feelings - ANYTHING other than Rudolph would be a nice relief but if you have been around here very long, you know how we feel about Disney.

I heard a nice little story today that confirmed it for me.  Back in November, when people started asking Pk what she wanted from Santa, she always came up with the same answer - a chocolate egg and some Rudolph toys.  The Rudolph toys were fairly easy to find as there seems to be a huge resurgence but the chocolate egg was a bit more of a challenge.  I wanted to find something special but, after an extensive search of local chocolate sources, the best I could do was a large kindersurprise egg.  Christmas morning, she got up to open her egg and was thrilled.  Given the sheer amount of Christmas junk that has come into this house, we hadn't opened it until today.  It was a big event.

The best part was the call I got this evening.  My friend had been volunteering in Pk's class and she called beacuse there was a story she thought I would want to hear.  I gather that before Christmas, Pk's teacher had her write a sentence about what she wanted for Christmas.  Obviously, she said a chocolate egg.  Today, her teacher had them use the sentence starter "I got a ..."  My friend said that Pk eagerly sat down to write and when the teacher when over to check on her, she very loudly announced, "I got a chocolate egg," with great pride.  

I love that she is pleased by the small things and, frankly, it's also nice that the things she wants are cheap, LOL.  I just hope that she keeps that strong sense of what gives her pleasure and her lack of apology for it.  I could learn a lot from her.