It’s the little things that matter most

One little comment from Elizabeth yesterday totally made my day.

Let me start by saying that it’s posts like this that are the reason why I changed my blog to The Whole Bag of Chips; I wanted to be able to post anything and everything rather than just write about crafts or foods or kids and then nothing else, ever.

Today’s post is a kid post and it came about because of a totally random comment that Elizabeth made yesterday, that completely made my day.

A little background information: in the mornings our set routine goes like this- I make the coffee and the kids’ breakfasts at the same time that Don is making the kids’ lunches. God Bless him for taking on that task because it’s like being a short order cook: crunchy peanut butter or plain? Jelly or Fluff? Strawberry, grape or boysenberry? Do you like fruit snacks or fruit roll ups? Apple for fruit or orange? Are you sitting at the peanut free table today or not? Does this snack contain peanuts? Do you like granola bars? Which kind?….You see what I mean, I’m sure. With three kids who have a variety of tastes, you can’t really just bang out one lunch for all three and expect them all to like the exact same thing. Meanwhile, I’m sticking six waffles in the toaster, cutting up a piece of fruit for them to share, and I’m done.

Anyway, when he asked the “what do you want for lunch” question yesterday, Elizabeth asked him for turkey and cheese. He asked her if she wanted it in bread and she said no, that she wanted roll ups, the turkey wrapped around the cheese and rolled up. He did a few, put them into a tupperware and off they went.

Later that night, he asked her how her lunch was and she said it was great, and that it was great *because* it reminded her of when she was little and I used to make roll ups for them for lunch and cut them into little spirals to eat. I was shocked. I’d forgotten that I used to do that. It’s been a bunch of years that she’s been eating lunch at school already, so that had to be during the preschool/kindergarten years and maybe even before.

Besides the fact that I was amazed that she remembered the lunches I used to make, I was touched that something so little and so random was a special memory for her. As a mom, you know that it’s the little things during the day that mean a lot to you, but you never do know what memories you are creating specifically for your kids. You just hope you’re doing an okay job and you hope that the memories that they have are *not* the ones where you lose your mind and scream at them over something, but you don’t really ever know until they tell you. Sometimes as a mom, a Type-A kind of mom, I go over and above to try to create an experience that is fabulous so that they’ll always remember it (or so I hope) and think of how fabulous it was. But meanwhile, it’s not always those things, it might just be the little things.

I wonder if my mom knew way back then, what special memories she was creating for me?

As a kid, one of my memories from my mom is that whenever she baked a pie, she’d roll out her crust and she’d use what she needed for the pie but then she’d take the rest of the crust, cut it into strips (I assume) and sprinkle cinnamon and sugar onto the strips. Then she’d roll them up into spirals and bake them. I *loved* that treat and to this day I still think of them although I’ve never done that myself because I used boxed crusts that roll out to EXACTLY what you need for the pie- there’s never any extra.

The turkey and cheese roll ups remind me of that, and although for my mom it might have been a random thing that she did for us, I bet she didn’t realize back then that it was something I’d still be thinking of 40 years later.

It took Elizabeth’s random comment yesterday to remind me that it’s the little things that matter and to reassure me that at least some of the time, I’m getting something right along the way.

Tags: cooking with kids, kids, making memories, motherhood, parenting, picky eaters, school lunches, turkey roll-ups