Smiles

Yesterday was an interesting day. I'm not sure why, but I noticed a few smiles. Now, I am sure these smiles happen everyday but yesterday they really caught my attention.

The first was Alex's smile. Alex tends to wake up on the wrong side of the bed every now and then. Yesterday was one of those days. He came up the stairs with a growl. Waiting at the top of the stairs to meet him was Ferby, our dog. Alex sat next to Ferby, look the dog right in the eyes and starred at him. After a second, Ferby licked Alex's face. It was so cute to see the smile stretch accross Alex's face. I had the thought This is why we have that dog!

The next smile I noticed was Lauren's. Lately, this smile has been very hard to come by! She has a binky in her mouth at all times! Yes, I know she's 3. I'm working on it! I have been trying hard to take that binky away during the day and yesterday I followed through on my plans and took it away. We had a fun game out and Abby was playing with Lauren. I saw smiles and laughs that I hadn't seen in a while from Lauren. It was so great to see her happy and see her face light up when Abby plays with her. It reminded me that the effort to extract the binky from her mouth is worth it! I also saw great smiles from Lauren at the pool when I was playing with her.

The last smile I noticed yesterday was Tyler's. Did I mention that this summer is getting a bit long for Tyler. He's struggling. I hear him cry because he's board and lonely more than I see him smile these days. Well, we went to the pool yesterday and he loved it! He has learned to swim and he loves doing it. He wanted me to come watch him swim so I packed Lauren over to where he was swimming and watched him. He swam over to me and started tickling my armpits! I don't know why that idea came to him but that was definately his plan the whole time. He wouldn't stop tickling no matter what I said. He thought it was hilarious! And as much as I hated him trying to tickle me (it hurt not tickled!) I LOVED the smile that stretched across his face each time I protested. He was happy and his beaming smile showed it.

It's so easy to miss those moments. Like I said before, they probably happen everyday and I just don't notice. I am grateful that I noticed yesterday though. I have thought over each of those moments and how peaceful and happy I felt right then.