Almost every night, before the girls start eating, Dylan, Summer and I  share our gratitude list. Ok, sometimes they’ve already started eating. Sometimes they’ve started eating and I suddenly realize that they forgot to wash their hands so I grab a wipe and madly start cleansing their hands while they shove pasta in their mouths.

And then we talk about our gratitude list. It goes like this…

“I’m grateful for the earth and air and all the trees because without trees we couldn’t breathe and then we would die,” Dylan shares. A bit dark but still a nice sentiment.

“I’m grateful for God and ice cream,” Summer chimes in. Interesting combo.

“I’m grateful for my two beautiful girls, my loving husband and all our blessings,” I say.

At which point Dylan groans and says, “But you ALWAYS say that.” Because apparently I’m so boring when it comes to gratitude. Clearly, I’ve got to make my gratitude list a bit fresher and more unpredictable.

We’ve been doing this for weeks and just today, Dylan asks, “What does grateful mean?” so I’m thinking she’s been missing the central message of this exercise.

I think I finally explained gratitude and why we focus on giving thanks on this holiday.

I really am a Thanksgiving girl because if you forget about the bloated feeling from eating too much food and awkward conversations with distant relatives and sitting in traffic on the Jersey turnpike… it’s all about gratitude. Which is just warm and fuzzy.

Unlike Christmas, you don’t have to worry about whether Uncle Jon liked that shirt you bought from JC Penney or maybe you should have gone with the belt and now that you think about it, did you leave the sales tag on?

Or whether you tipped the mailman enough so that he’ll actually keep delivering your mail.

Or whether your neck looks fat in your holiday photo.

No, at Thanksgiving you can just take a moment to think about all the stuff in your life that brings you joy and fulfillment and just makes you feel whole.

And if Dylan and Summer think of me as the boring mom who was always grateful for the two of them, well, I can definitely live with that.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Thank you for taking the time out of your very full lives to read the mama bird diaries. I am so very grateful. xo

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