Growing Independence and Ice Cream

When your child marches himself into the living room with his piggy bank, you perk up and pay attention. You also wonder what he wants to buy.

The other night Luke decided to dump out all of his money and starts getting it in order, asking me to count. “What are you going to buy?” I ask. “Ice cream!” he responds. Right away, this melted my heart. He had just missed the ice cream truck going by that night. He never asked if we would buy him the ice cream, just decided on his own that he would buy it and get ready for the following day. I love watching his independence grow little by little in all different ways.

He counted all the money and he decided that he would use one dollar and twenty something cents for the ice cream, put some back in his bank, and leave some out to play with. We put the ice cream money by the front door for the next day.

The following day Joshua came home early so we were able to have dinner a little earlier than normal, which was great. Luke then got the money and we all went outside to wait for the ice cream lady.

We waited…………. and waited,…………………. and waited. Seriously, we waited a LONG time.

I started to think that of course she would not come this day since we were all prepared and ahead of our normal schedule. Then, off in the distance, we finally heard the music. Luke was so excited.

He started waving down the van when it was about five houses from us. We all walked over to the take a look at the choices and let me tell you, I do not remember there being that many kinds of ice cream to choose from when I was a kid! I was thankful he only had a little over a dollar as this cut down on the selection.

He picked out his ice cream on his own, paid for it, and could not have been happier.