All Under Control

I sent my daughter to a birthday party yesterday without a gift.  I know, bad mom!  It totally slipped my mind.  She was being driven to the party by another parent and I just totally forgot about a gift.  Thankfully before going to pick her up from the party it donned on me so I left a little early, made a pit stop at Wal-Mart and got a gift with all the fixings which I assembled in the parking lot all nicely into a gift bag complete with tissue paper and a card.  I ran into the party at the last minute for pick up and said "Curly, we forget to bring the gift".

My story seemed to go over without a hitch.  We grabbed the loot bag and all of the other goodies from the party and headed out.  When we got into the truck my daughter said "Mom, I thought you forgot to get a gift".

"I did.  But don't worry I always have everything under control.  I got it there before the party was over," I boasted.

"Ya, when the gift opening started I thought to myself shoot there is no gift here from me so I ran up to the birthday girl and said my gift was the shortest and sweetest....a hug." And she wrapped her arms around the child and gave her a genuinely nice birthday hug.

Another party attendee piped up and said "A hug?  That's all you're giving her".

"Listen kid.  What would you prefer, friendship or a gift?" my daughter said with complete confidence.  There were no more comments after that.

I laughed until I cried.  Here I was thinking I'm the one who has things under control.  That may be true but it doesn't come close to how well my 7 year old daughter has things under control.  What a cool kid I have!