Please tell us about your upbeat, optimistic, rewarding, humorous, profound, and/or proud experiences as a parent, being parented, babysitting, aunt or uncle'ing, grandparenting. Or something you witnessed from another family somewhere. Anything uplifting is welcome.

I hadn't noticed this thread till last night- I keep opening watched threads and not scrolling far enough on forums, I guess.

Maybe no one wants to crow about their kids and sound like a boasting Xmas letter.

It was fun to give my little ones different shape finger foods and let them arrange them into "faces" on their plates before eating them.

Thank you. I may have phrased badly. Definitely not seeking bragging. There is so much negativity associated with parenting lately, it could be refreshing to discuss more positive aspects. But if others don't find that interesting or have something they want to contribute, this will just fall down the page...
; )

Erika and Alex are 4 years apart. When I was pregnant with Alex, Erika would put her nerf ball up under her shirt so she'd look like me. Lol...she had it all down pat especially the way I stood with my hands resting on my pregnant belly.

I bet that was a hoot, gingin!
Christmas morning with your little kids makes for many dear memories.

One of my favorite songs: 'MAPA' lovingly summarizes my feeling of gratitude for my parents. I often play this song, as I reminisce growing up, and remembering my parents.

https://youtu.be/DDyr3DbTPtk?s...

I always remember the greeting cards my Mom sends me and she often addresses me as 'bunso' meaning my youngest one.

Growing up, we will know my Mom has reached the peak of her anger over something when she roll calls our complete given names, instead of our nicknames..ah..got to speed up look innocent but never look them in the eyes..just look down and wait for her temper to abate. 😀..worst part..since my Mom was also one of the youngest among her siblings, one must expect that soon our 'misdeeds' will be reported by my Mom to her elder sisters..so more I told you so moments to endure. My Mom had 9 siblings, and two of them are spinsters, so they were like additional stern elders hovering as parents for us and other cousins.

Usually on New Year's Day my cousins from my Father's side will have a reunion at our home. I certainly enjoy my Mom's hosting, she was a great cook. My Dad acts like a Santa handing out his post Christmas money envelopes to my cousins.

I have only had one white Xmas here, it was wonderful! Walking in the neighborhood with the kids on Xmas eve in the snow.
Generally, as snow isn't all that common/constant here, any snow event with the kids was fun and special.

I remember when my oldest son was about 4 we were driving to nursery school. He saw a crow in the road picking at some roadkill. He commented that it was nice that the bird was getting the bubblegum off the road.
Another time he and his little brother were being too quiet playing. They had emptied out an entire box of laundry detergent to make a dirt track for their Matchbox cars.

Oh, Robin

Many happy memories, particularly of our daughter, who was very bright and became a senior nurse at Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital.


When she was a toddler, but already had a good vocabulary, we had stair gates at the top and bottom of our stairs, on one occasion we accidentally left the top gate open. She stood at the top of the stairs and called out.



"You've left this gate open! I could fall down these stairs!"
Here she is at 54, on a visit to us last year, with the youngest of her four kids.

I think my daughter was 3 or closing in on 4...she was playing with her "besties". They were riding their bikes up and down my friends driveway. The trash truck came and the trashmen started to hustle the cans and one fell dumping allot of stuff all over the curb. So my daughter looked at the mess and said Mom, what dumb f---kin assholes. That was her Dads phrase not mine.

Ah yes...gotta watch what ya say around the younguns!!!

Gin never watched what I said but I always watched what I did. Children are little mimicks and I always wanted her to see things that were acceptable.

One day when my daughter was 2, a friend and I needed to replace the radiator in my car. I didn't want daughter to wander off while we were busy so I put her in the car with a few toys. A few mins later, I heard her yelling excitedly, "In my eye, just like mommy!" I looked around the hood to see what was going on and she was holding my open contacts lens case in 1 hand and pointing to her eye with the other hand, and said it again, "In my eye, just like mommy!" She was so smart, I did look in her eye but never found any contacts there, or anywhere else. It was so adorable, I didn't even care!

Another time when she was 5, we were in the car, stopped at a light. She suddenly said, "Mom, the lady next to us is brown." I said, "Yes, she is." She said, "We're pink." I said, "Yes, we are." After a minute or so, she asked, "Where are the black people and the white people?" I said, "I don't know, I've never seen any."

My son was always such a happy little guy too. He came running to me one day when he was 4 and climbed up and kid-whispered in my ear, that louder-than-regular-speech thing little kids do, which is already funny. He said, "I wanna tell you a sneekret!" I laughed so hard, I don't think I ever did hear the "sneekret", or don't remember it if he was able to tell me.

Our daughter when a teenager was taking a neighbour's three-year-old boy to the shops, in their push chair.
As they were passing a parked car, she saw there was a dog on the driver's seat, with its paws on the steering wheel, so it could look through the windscreen.
So she said to the kid. "Look! That doggie is driving that car!"
The kid replied, "No it's not!"
"Yes it is! Look!!
So the kid stood up in his push chair and looked.
Then said. "The little sod!"

Hmm.. I wondered if he'd been the subject of a conversation between his parents at some time.

I think I need more context about the term sod.

My son reminded me of taking all three to the indoor pool at our gym, no one else there, and playing wild and crazy with a beach ball, improvised pool volleyball game of some sort. You don't always remember what they remember.