The other day after preschool, Ella played outside the school with a few of her classmates. It was a nice spring day. The cherry trees were in bloom and the dandelions were everywhere. One little boy named Brady picked a dandelion and hide it behind his back for a little bit while chasing Ella around the field. Finally, he decided it was the time to give her his prize. He handed her the flower. And my heart skipped a beat...I had just witnessed my little girl get her first flower from a boy!!! Okay so maybe it meant more to me than it did to either of them, but it was one of the sweetest gestures that I have seen in a long time. Ella was very calm and collected, she said thank you and brought the flower over to me to hold. And off to play they went. So as they continued playing Brady started pulling stems off the cherry trees and giving them to Ella. It was kind of a game, how many flowers could he get for her. She started telling him which ones to pick for her. Now picture this, Ella is very tall for 4. Brady is an average size boy, but not yet 4. Ella has him jumping and streching and reaching to the point of exhaustion to get the flowers for her (all of which are well within her reach!) As a mom of a young boy, I can say that Brady likely had no idea the joy he was bringing to Ella each time he gave her a flower stem. He could just as well have been giving her blades of grass. But for Ella, this was a big deal. Ella is a girly girl. She dreams of being a princess. At 4 she is already talking about her wedding. She asks if she can wear my wedding dress and loves all things frilly, poofy, glittery and posh. To Ella, Brady was giving her flowers and they were going to get "MAwRIED" (with a slight 4 year old speech impediment) Thankfully Ella did not express this sentiment until we were home. I think Bradys mom might not have understood, being that she is the mom of 2 young boys. Once home Ellas asked if I could take her picture with her flowers from Brady. (see above) Then she asked to put them in a vase, and she took them right up to her room so that she could see them all night long. (oh my goodness, can you imagine her as a teenager???) She brought them downstairs at dinnertime so that they could be our centerpiece for the table and then back up they went to her bedroom at bedtime. She talked about Brady and his flowers all weekend.
