My kid never ceases to amaze me.  He says the funniest stuff (“Daddy, I’m not going to like you today.  Today I’m going to only like mommy.”).  He does funnny things like dancing “the robot.”  The amazing part, however, is his willingness to give stuff away.  Sure, he’ll never give away his Thomas the Tank Engine® crap, but he is still willing to part with items that belong to him.  I, being the proud poppa that I am, want to toot his little train whilstle for him becauase he won’t toot his own.

For or the last week or so we started to prepare our boy for giving some of his new and used things away.  Surprisingly he was on board with the idea from day one.  We told him he was going to give some of his clothes, shoes, bedding, and toys to The Salvation Army, a long time charity of ours.  (The kid can say pterodactyl with no problem, but if you ask him to say Salvation Army you get a word that may just mean something in Kazakhstan.)  Anyway, he helped his mother bag up all of his donations into what ended up being seven garbage bags and a car seat, then we crammed into our little blue Hyundai and trudged for an hour to our destination.  Once there my little man marched a bag of blankets and bumpers into the warehouse and handed it over with a huge, adorable smile.  The staff was very friendly to him, which we liked a lot.  Afterwards we talked about all of the people that his donation would help and he was so proud. 

Before he went to bed he asked about all of the kids that would be wearing his clothes and playing with his toys.  In response he got a fantastic story about happy children and loving parents.  He went to bed smiling.  It was a really good day and a great lesson was learned by all of us.  I can’t wait until Christmas.Â