Yes, today I gave the gift of life.  I spent half of the day cleaning and organizing the kids’ rooms, and two hours this evening at IKEA with 8 zillion other people, and I didn’t kill or maim anyone.  The thought crossed my mind, but I counted to 10 seven hundred and fifty-two times and kept my cool.  While I was cleaning Aliya’s room I told Adlani and Norah to put whatever they wanted to donate to the school yard sale out in the hall.  This is what I found when I ventured out of Aliya’s room:

I felt like I needed to give a “real” gift, so I bought a dozen pairs of socks for the preschool nurse.  She had socks and underwear on her wish list, so when I was putting up the wish list board I asked her what style of underwear she wore.  She hesitated and then caught on and cracked up…”They’re for the kids!!!”  Norah has come home with socks from the nurse twice, and I think she’s purposely going to school with no socks on so she can get some TLC (and socks!) from Nurse Barbara.  I guess this is more like repayment of a debt than an actual gift, but it’s my gift for Day 4 anyway.
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I feel like I didn’t give a “real” gift today, but I gave a few small ones so I’m not going to give up on the challenge.  I gave a gift to Adlani’s teachers and classmates by keeping him home from school after he coughed and hacked all night.  I’m sure they had probably all shared his germs already, but he seemed so miserable when he woke up that I thought he would sleep for a few hours after we took Aliya and Norah to school.  No such luck – no nap and no TV to distract him from driving me crazy.

If any of you are wondering when I actually work, since I’m always running over to school for something or working around a sick kid, I work almost every night from 9 until somewhere between midnight and 2 a.m., in addition to my daytime work.  This week I was asked to join a team which is headed by my boss’ boss’ boss’ boss, which was very flattering but means a couple months of extra work.  I’m looking forward to being a part of it and I’ll be traveling to Indianapolis in April for a few days to meet face-to-face.  

Aliya had her Sage presentation today so while I was there I hung one more photo on the board that I had forgotten to print yesterday.  Not a big gift, for sure, but every little thing feels like a big effort right now.  I’m officially overwhelmed.  Aliya did a great job with her presentation on cats, and I think she enjoyed learning how to do research and create her “product.”

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I got my new glasses from Ilana (her son is in Sage with Aliya), and I really like them but they’re going to take a little getting used to.  They definitely affect my depth perception – I feel really short when I’m wearing them.  It’s amazing how clear everything is though, and how blurry certain things are when I take off the glasses.  I told Ilana that I gave her a plug on my blog…I guess that’s a tiny gift.  I think Aliya likes my glasses – all afternoon she has been wearing the 3D glasses she got at the movie theater yesterday.  It’s nice to be revered (at least by one kid – keep reading). 

I took the kids to the library after school, and then we went to Dairy Queen where I tipped the drive-thru girl $2 even though she took forever to get to the window.  No matter…DQ is open so it must be SPRING!!!

I gave myself the gift of Zumba this evening, which probably doesn’t count but I’m glad I went.  I swear, my legs were burning at the end of the first song!  I was so tired out from the week that I laid down on the couch to vegetate and Norah was driving me absolutely crazy poking at me and hitting me with things.  I got mad at her and during the verbal exchange she yelled, “I WANT YOU TO DIE!!!”  I’m pretty sure that I didn’t say that about my mother until at least 5th grade, and I doubt that I said it to her face.  This kid is 3 1/2!  What the hell are we going to do with her when she’s 15??

Since all of my tiny gifts don’t feel like I’ve done enough, I’m going to donate some rice at freerice.org.  You can answer questions on a variety of topics – vocabulary, geography, foreign languages, multiplication tables, etc., and for each right answer 10 grains of rice are donated.  Not a lot per question, but it really adds up.  In February, 1,281,469,630 grains of rice were donated.  So go test your knowledge of famous paintings or chemical symbols and donate some rice!

It’s strange how taking on a challenge changes your focus.  When I woke up this morning, one of the first things I thought about was what gift to give today, right after I thought, “Why didn’t the alarm go off 25 minutes ago?” and “Hey!  There’s only one kid in my bed!”  I actually have quite a backlog of gifts I’ve promised, so I should be ok for the first third of the challenge or so.

A few weeks ago we had our annual Multicultural Night at school, which is a potluck dinner and celebration of another country/culture.  This year the country was Puerto Rico, and since we have so many families with ties to Puerto Rico it was very well-attended and a great time.  Our friend Eguie Castrillo put a band together and provided the music for the dancers, and we had a special presentation for our principal, Sra. Gonzalez, who is retiring this year.

My gift today was to finally put up the bulletin board of photos from Multicultural Night in the school lobby.  It was an early release day and we had Aliya’s parent-teacher conference, so in between I put up the photos.  The conference was short and sweet because Aliya’s a model student and is reading at a 3rd grade level (she’s in 2nd).  We may have to book a double time slot for Adlani’s conference.  😛

Here are a few of the photos from Multicultural Night:

I didn’t videotape Aliya when she was introducing one of the groups of dancers (above), so I recorded it later on at home in her pjs (below):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHnBXvH1SPc&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&border=1]

I found a link on the Year of Giving site to another site called 29Gifts.org.  The premise is simple…for 29 days in a row you commit to giving a gift each day.  It could be a gift of money, hand-me-downs, kind words, time, or even just a smile.  This is right up my alley, yet I hesitated.  Could I do it?  Could I find something to give each day?  Maybe I’m already giving something each day.  Or maybe I’m not as generous as I think I am.  Well, I guess it’s time to find out.

So mid-day today I decided to give it a go.  Today was easy – I had already spent two hours at school so I gave the gift of time.  In Adlani’s class I did guided reading with 7 kids, played Bingo with 3 kids, and helped in the A-B-C-dario center.  The kids are so proud of their reading and I loved having them read to me.  In Aliya’s class I helped make 21 dolls out of yarn.  It’s nice that she’s still excited to have me in her classroom…I know there will come a day when she doesn’t want to be seen with me.  🙁 

Then I went to the office for a couple of hours before I went to the eye doctor.  I hadn’t had my eyes checked since 1997, and I told the eye doctor that I have eyeball-phobia so I was hoping he’d go easy on me.  He was actually awesome.  He explained everything, and didn’t use eyedrops since I hate them.  He freaked me out a little when he pointed out that my pupils are not the same size, but he also said that 20% of adults have different-sized pupils.  It still seems a little weird.

The bottom line is that I need glasses.  I ended up with the first pair I tried on (see photo right), after trying on about 20 pairs.  I had gone into Optical Designs in Needham on Monday, because I went to pick up our lunch at a restaurant two doors down and it wasn’t ready so I had a little time to kill.  I had worked at a school event with a mom (Ilana) who told me that her family owns Optical Designs, so I stopped in to see her.  She wasn’t there but I’ve been feeling like my eyes were getting old and tired, so I made an appointment for today.  A couple of friends had raved about how great Ilana was at choosing frames, so I was so glad she was there to help me.  She has a gift for knowing what looks good on various face shapes, and I prefer to buy from local businesses that offer great service.  Win-Win!

This afternoon I spent 2+ hours of travel time and 2+ hours of meeting time to go to the UMass Law School in Dartmouth and meet with our law student.  The law clinic there is helping the local fire door inspectors set up a non-profit organization, and two of us are the liaisons between the rest of the inspectors and the lawyers.  It has been an interesting process and I’ve learned a lot, but I’m going to count it as a very large gift of my time.  On the bright side – the help we received from our law student and his supervising attorney was FREE!

So now I’m going to give myself a gift and go to bed early, since Norah snuck into my bed and kept me up last night by repeatedly kicking me in the head.  I’m beat!

I love to help people and I love learning about people, so those who know me (except the Mean Girl on Facebook) won’t be surprised that I really like this blog:  http://yearofgiving.wordpress.com/
Go check it out.  It’s a cool project.