Thankful Tuesday: When your kid is proud of you.

• Small things that I’m finding in my daily life: pleasant elderly people out for afternoon walks, people at parks who smile and say hello, the squirrel we made friends with on our picnic yesterday.
• Brooksie’s new scary monster sound
• This conversation I overheard between my boys Saturday: 

August: Hi cuckoo Brooksie. (August is very into the word “cuckoo”)
Brooks: Hi cuckoo Augie. [Long pause] Hi cuckoo bwoder. (I just can’t handle the sweetness.)

• Passing a near stranger on the sidewalk whose face I recognized from church, stopping and introducing myself, and finding community in that thirty second window, before she was off to her kid’s piano lesson and I was off to pick mine up from school.
• For friends who will sit outside with my sleeping toddler in the stroller, while I run my oldest into school.
• For a Monday night “date night” at home with my husband before he is off for the east coast.
• A run (by myself!) Sunday afternoon.
• The way practicing Sabbath is opening up so much time to read aloud to August.
• August and I made it to school early yesterday with his brother asleep in the stroller. So we spent ten minutes together at the park next door, where one of the biggest spider web rope climbing things (what are you supposed to call those things?) stands bold in the middle of the playground. He has climbed to the top of a couple of those spider webs, but the one by his school is crazy tall. He assures me he’ll be ready when he’s in first grade. But yesterday, he really wanted me to try it. The park was fairly empty. I had on running pants and sneakers. I figured if I don’t do it now, when will I? So I climbed up that fifteen foot rope structure and turned to look down at my little boy, who had never beamed so big for me. “I’m so proud of you, Mommy!” he shouted from below. And when I climbed down, he ran to hug me. “You did a great job!” he said. I’m grateful I’m raising a generous boy who knows how to make his mom feel like a champ.
• For the hundred small little ways San Francisco is feeling like home.