My Funny Valentine

Allie came home from school day with a sack full of valentines from her classmates. All of them had candy attached to them (that's feasible when there are only ten kids total in the class). After she walked through the door, she proceeded to empty the bag out onto the living room floor, rushing over to me with each handmade or store bought card she dumped out. "Look, Mom! Hezekiah gave me a Spider-Man card!" or "Look at this giant M&M heart!"

Then she pulled out a heart that had a Tootsie Roll Pop taped to it. She handed it to me. "Here, Mom, you can have this," and she also handed me the mini Tootsie Roll that had been taped to it as well but had fallen off. That was sweet, and I thanked her. But I have to admit it, I assumed her motive was to get rid of candy she probably didn't want.

After lunch, she ran back over to her loot, Sami tagging along behind. I walked over to them just as Allie said, "Here, Sam, you can have this!" handing Sami a fairly large bag of M&Ms that had come in the giant red plastic heart she had shown me earlier. Now, I know she likes M&Ms, so I had to find out what on earth was going on!

"Allie, why are you giving all your candy away?"

"I'm not."

"Okay, well, are you sharing it then?"

"Yeah... because you guys didn't get any Valentines candy, but I did."

I was stunned. My little Allie was being... thoughtful! I smiled and hugged her. And hugged and hugged her. I told her how sweet that was, and she returned the praise with the most angelic smile I've ever seen, covering my cheek with kisses.

Moments like that make being a mom so worth it.