Giving

Last night, Nick and I had the opportunity to take Gabe with us to deliver a complete Thanksgiving dinner (prepared by members of our church) to a family in need. We took it as an opportunity to teach him about giving to others. Don't know how much he actually understood, but I have always thought it's important to start teaching some things _before_ your kids are really old enough to understand, so that it will come more easily when they _are_ old enough.

Anyway, we had two boxes full of food, and when we got to the house, I took out a tub of butter for Gabe to carry so he'd have something to physically hand to the family as well. We knocked on the door and one of the little girls (maybe four or five years old) answered. Gabe handed her the butter and it was so sweet; I don't think the little girl understood, though; she took the butter and walked back inside, where she just set the tub of butter on the couch and resumed playing her video game.

But Gabe was so excited about the whole thing. We also had a few plates of cookies to deliver to some other families, and Gabe was very upset when there wasn't anyone home at one of the houses so we couldn't give them the cookies. He cried, "But we have to deliver the cookies!" and was very urgently insistent. He finally calmed down and let us buckle him back into his carseat when we told him we were going to another house to deliver some cookies there, too.

I realized last night, though, that I need to start teaching Gabe an important safety lesson about not entering other people's homes without Mommy and Daaddy; because every single house we went to, he just walked right in like he owned the place! A little frightening, since we didn't actually know a couple of the families.