Complimenting strangers.

How my kids act in public.

On a typical day this is how you will find my kids acting in public. Max is hitting Dexter in the head screaming "NO" while Dexter is pushing him back and stealing his toy. And yes they are both in pajamas out in public at 7pm because I was done parenting for the day. 98% of the time this is my kids.
 But there are these rare moments when they behave. Usually no one but me sees them and often I feel as if I am hallucinating. The other day though a phenomenon happened. After running 3 errands with both boys which were even boring for me I knew we had to run into the bank to close an account. I almost didn't do it. I thought "gosh this is about to be the worst trip in the world they are going to be holly terrors!!" But I knew it had to be done. So I cringed as I pulled into the parking spot and got the boys out.

They were surprisingly well behaved as we walked into the bank, sat down and waited our turn. I didn't even have to play my ridiculous I spy game. When you play I spy with a three year old it usually goes like this "I spy a red wall!" the red wall is usually right in front of us then I cheer loudly when he locates it. But not today, today he sat down and read a book next to me and max just quietly sat in our Boba carrier. When it was our turn it took over thirty minutes to get my account closed. the whole time Dexter just sat in a chair next to me smiling and Max just laid his head on me every now and then calling out "MOMMA!!" happily.  After our grueling boring thirty minutes of sitting we were then told to go over to the long teller line so I could withdraw the rest of my money. 

Before we left though the young guy that was helping me smiled at me and said "Your kids are very well behaved." 

WHAT? MY KIDS?! HAHAHAH. These monsters can tear apart a clean room in less time than a f4 tornado. 

But this time I just got to smile and soak that compliment in! YES my kids were well behaved. Neither of them were crying neither of them had any bloody body parts. Neither of them peed their pants. They were the definition of perfect. And oh how I loved someone else saying that to me. 

Then as we passed the grocery store on the way home I thought about how I still needed milk.. was it worth it!? we just ended our errands on such a good note... do I dare go in?

I did. 

As we got out I noticed there was one of those obnoxious race car buggy's you know those giant carts. The ones that you inevitably run into every end cap and human on every isle. You can't push it around with any sort of style or grace and have to laugh and say to every person "heh their new drivers!" yeah I got one of those cause their two seaters.. after getting two cookies I began to push no shove my cart towards the milk. I was playing silly games with the boys and I may have kissed them a few to many times. Then I heard it. My favorite words of all time. 

"You can really tell you love those boys"

You see there was no way this sweet old lady knew how much I love hearing those words. Or that it has been almost a year since someone has said that to me. I do really love my boys but I feel like it hardly ever shows. She also didn't know that I had received another rare compliment earlier. She didn't know how much these words meant to me. She didn't know I was going to hang on to that sentence hours later as my kids were throwing food at each other and my three year old was screaming "NO I ONLY WANT OATMEAL!!" and I thought I could no longer go on. There is no way to know what someone else is going through and how even a small compliment can change their day, their week, or just the way the feel about themselves for an hour.
It may seem silly but just those two compliments have made me feel like maybe I am getting my act together maybe I am finally starting to be a good mom again. Maybe I can handle my children.

So if you are ever out and you think a nice thought about someone maybe you should say it out loud. You never know how much they need to hear those words. I know I often need them and I am sure so do others.