Thank You. Expectations.

So Julia was the one who was reluctant to write thank you notes.  And now she has written them and they're waiting on me to walk them to the mailbox.  She even designed and drew the cards.  And she did that before she kind of gave up on them and before I told her 'fine - don't do it if you don't want to', and before I then changed my mind and told her under no circumstances was she getting out of thanking people.

I gave up there for a little bit.  I told her I wanted the notes written.  She resisted.  I told her why.  I explained very nicely about etiquette and socially acceptable behavior.  Part of our conversation even followed a Today show segment on etiquette and manners - is it okay for me to skip my friend's party I accepted an invitation to because I really want to go to another party?  I truly expected her to choose to write the notes.  So I left it up to her and threw my hands up and gave in.  Do whatever you want.

And she chose the other way.

Then I saw some statistics on how many families write thank you notes.  And I realized that this was REALLY important to me and I shouldn't have given in.  And we revisited the issue.  She told me it was all my fault.  My fault she hadn't written them because I told her it was up to her. My fault she didn't remember who gave her what because I didn't pay attention when she opened her gifts.  My fault for just about anything that came out of my mouth.  But within 24 hours she had written the notes. 

And my apologies for the spoiler if you're going to receive one, but I was really happy with her and them.  I wasn't even home when she did them.  I was out running errands before she came home from school and when I got back, they were done. Just like that.

Big breath out.

Thank you
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