A good dinner

Our youngest, 3-year-old Thomas, is our most difficult child because he is very willful and has an extremely short fuse; my sister-in-law has 6 children, and even she says that he's the hardest she's dealt with, so I know he's a special case. In every activity with us, he has at least one fit where he screams or throws a tantrum or actually throws something. He is getting much better with us (or vice versa) because there are times that we can pay direct attention to him and go through the steps of "please..." and then "I need you to..." and then a time-out, and he'll often come around. But it is incredibly frustrating to deal with someone who is constantly contrary.

So it was very surprising and rewarding last night that he came and sat down with us for dinner, and furthermore he didn't complain one time as we ate! When I asked him to move over to make room for someone, he said "OK" and did it right then. He talked to us calmly and said "only a little" as we gave him his salad, and he didn't yell or push away his plate when I put on the second fork-full. He ate all his dinner; he's an interesting one because he usually likes all his vegetables (and prefers them to meat), but he doesn't often eat everything like that.

I found myself pleasantly surprised that we had such a nice time together, and even now it is so gratifying that dinner last night was so... normal. Many good memories are emotional moments in unique situations; this one will be a treasure not because it was so remarkable but because it was such a departure from all our previous experience.

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I realize that I did not praise Thomas for his behavior. How many times do we have a normal interaction with someone and fail to recognize that blessing in the moment, much less fail to express appreciation for it? Yesterday at work, Gordon was remarking on how much pain we've had in the past when making large-scale improvements to our product, and now we reap the benefits and consider our current situation as normal but we hardly recall how much work it took to get to this point. Yes, I feel lucky right now to have the everyday life that I do.