Another gift-giving occasion

My children are so spoiled.

I'm a gift-giver. I love giving gifts to people. And my children are often the recipients of those gifts. As I said, they're spoiled.

On actual gift-giving occasions, I always have a little something -- never anything big, but at least a little something -- ready and waiting near the breakfast dishes when they wake. It's not anything I really do consciously any more. It's just part of our family rhythm.

I never realized that they had noticed.

Since today was Valentine's Day, I should have had a little something for them this morning. Our recent bouts with illness combined with my post-Christmas gift closet clean out made my gift stash non-existent, and I didn't have a thing for them this morning.

It drove Spyder crazy. All day.

I took him aside and explained to him why things were a little bit different this year, as I hadn't had the energy or the opportunity to plan the gifts out like I normally do. His brain understood, but his heart was still sad. And I felt awful.

I don't buy their gifts when they are with me, and since they're almost always with me, I have to plan those shopping trips. Once I realized my mistake this morning, Skeeter and I had planned that I would go out after dinner and get a little something for them to have in the morning. But since it was obviously bothering Spyder more than I thought it would, I revised the plan as I left.

For this Valentine's Day, they got their gifts at bedtime rather than at breakfast. And since I had their gifts waiting on their pillows at bedtime, Sass and Spyder both got bedtime-appropriate gifts that they actually needed -- new pajamas. And since I got fun and funky pajamas for them, they loved them.

Lame? Probably.

But to them, it helped regain the pulse of our family rhythm that had been out-of-sync all day.