Sweet Tooth

Stellan was four weeks old yesterday. He’ll be a month old on Saturday. I am always amazed at how fast time goes after baby is born when the time at the end of pregnancy takes years off my life.

(He was sleeping on my black shirt covered by a super soft blanket made by a friend the other day and it looked perfect. My cell phone does less than perfect photos, however. It’s like one of those Pinterest fails that looked so much better in my head – but it’s the only new photo I have on my phone, and I’m sitting here typing this on my phone, baby asleep on me, and the current shot I’d get is far less angelic and significantly more revealing!)

We were over the stomach bug by Sunday, only to have Pierce and now Ellie start with round two of diarrhea. It would seem we’re not done yet.

A month or so ago, Liberty used her own money to buy the little five pack of dark chocolate bars at Aldi. I’d bought them for the kids for Christmas, and apparently they’d made an impact. Ruby decided she she needed to buy some too… But she lacked funds. She decided to make hot pads on her little loom and sell them for $1 each at co-op. She needed $2.08. She sold two hot pads, and yesterday when we were headed to get groceries, she was beside herself, so excited.

We pulled into Aldi before she announced she did not have enough to cover the tax.

I sat there, struggling with the answer. I don’t want to loan her money, especially not to buy candy. It totally sets a bad precedence for life. I knew how excited she was, and it was just eight cents, after all. I hated the thought of breaking her heart and making her wait until she’d come up with the eight cents. Finally I decided one bar of chocolate would belong to me. She could either work to buy it from me or darn it, I’d have an eight cent candy bar.

That agreed upon, I handed her a quarter and asked her to hop out of the van and get the cart from the lady in the car next to us who was nearly finished with it. The carts require a quarter in them to use them, and it pops back out when you return it, so the quarter was to pay the lady for her cart.

She gave Ruby the cart and told her to keep the quarter. Just like that, Ruby had her candy money. She marched into Aldi and bought herself the candy – but she chose the hazelnut variety instead. It’s a good thing she had that quarter, because that candy bar I’d nearly owned isn’t worth the eight cents to me. Blech.

I’m still not sure what she learned. Generosity? Let’s hope it was generosity. Because “depending on others to bail you out” wasn’t quite the lesson I was going for.

Ruby, generous soul that she is, wanted to buy a Kit Kat for her daddy not long ago. She was short then too, and desperate to buy it. I agreed to go in on it with her, appreciating her love to spoil her Daddy, but we were walking past the cart return at Aldi that day when a lady pulled her quarter out of her cart and handed the quarter to Ruby as we walked past. Suddenly, Ruby had what she needed all on her own.

Moral of the story: if Ruby’s ever short on cash and you find her hanging out in the Aldi parking lot…