Being happy isn’t hard according to The Candy Newspaper

As another school year ends I’m taking note of the little things that will not be the same next year. Our oldest will start kindergarten and his younger brother will continue speech classes at the same elementary school. We’re doing our errands, dropping them off here and there and I realize that this is the most time I will ever spend with them. That is much more of a blessing than a curse and I need to remind myself of that from time to time.

Last week Charlie took a supermarket circular to class. It was the one from before Easter, so it featured candy, lots of candy and some Easter baskets. I made a half hearted attempt at getting it from his 3 year old child fists, but thought better of it.

He always greets the carpool line helper with a huge grin. It’s not a smile, because most of the time the helper is a woman and smiling would be too over the top. A grin, a big sly grin is what gets the helpers talking about him the most.

When the greeter helped him get out of the carpool line that day he eagerly showed her the candy newspaper. He also showed all his teachers the candy pictures that he wanted from Walgreens, they built some vocabulary around it and he returned to the car four hours later with a much more crinkled up candy newspaper.

Jake wants to be the first one dropped off at pre-school.  What a five year old wants, they sometimes get, but when they get it they respond with the most earnest smile. Today as we passed his pre-school he looked at the car pool line and in the most sincere, slightly subdued voice said, “this is my special day”.

He was so genuinely happy that there were no other cars in the car pool line. It was sincere, not hyper or uncontrollable, just happy. He smiled until we got to the drop off point, unbuckled his belt and went to the door.  On his way out he said ‘see ya dad’, jumped out of the car, held his teacher’s hand and went to class where he could bask in the glory of being the first one there.

The other day I was asked what I wanted my children to be. My basic answer was ‘happy’. It’s not naïve for a parent to think that. I’ve met a couple parents who are intent on their child going to this or that school and playing a certain sport. However, at the end of the day I hope that those parents are just doing that for show.

Happy isn’t so hard to be.  All it takes is not being angry, jealous or spiteful and those three things take effort.

Both of ours are trying new things that are challenging them.  Jake is starting to learn math.  “It’s very challenging”, is literally how he describes it. I have no idea why he speaks that way……  Charlie’s speech is getting much better.  We can understand what he’s trying to say, even though the exact pronunciation is off.

They’re both happy.  Mom and dad are too.