Pretend

Last night Olivia crawled around on her hands and knees and pretended to be a dog.

Now, for parents of typical kids, this probably doesn't seem like that big a deal.

Heck, Alyssa was a horse from the time she was two until she was about six years old. She galloped through the house constantly for years. O doesn't have any pants to inherit from A from size 4 to 6 because Alyssa wore holes in every single pair of pants she owned at those ages.

But Olivia? While she'll come up to me and declare, "I'm a mermaid." she isn't much to actually act like one. She's just doing what she sees her sister do.

So last night, when she was crawling around the floor barking the cutest bark ever barked, my heart melted into a giant puddle of goo.

It was seriously the cutest thing EVER.

This is not to say that Alyssa's horse stage wasn't cute. It was adorable. It got old after the third year, but it was always cute, always endearing. I love her imagination, always have.

But there was somthing in Olivia's tentative little barks, her 'panting' each time she came up to me and 'begged' me to pet her, it was just...wonderful. Knowing that there are parents out there with kids that have 5p- who are told their kids will never do this, will never interact, never find joy in little things like pretending to be a puppy named Flower. That breaks my heart.

And it makes me realize how lucky we are.

This leads me to my July challenge.

My friend Page and I (her blog is over there on the right side of my blog, Life Unprecidented) have challenged each other to find one thing on each day of July for which we are grateful.

See, we've both been a little hard on ourselves lately. We've both had a bit of an attitude. And we know that we are the only ones who can change that.

We need to change our perspective. We need to stop seeing only the negative. In the words of another of my AMAZING friends, Lauren, we need to fake it until we make it.

So...join me?

Even if it's just a post script at the end of a normal, even negative post, post each day one thing that makes you happy, or one thing for which you are grateful. One positive thing that happened to you or occurred to you that day. If we fake it, we will make it.