Jingle Bells at 6 am

My Monday through Friday always starts with a phone call around 6 a.m. Our son, Ethan, begins his day chatting with his mama… though really it’s more me listening to him smack on breakfast and chatting with his housemates, with an occasional “hey Mama” tossed in.

One morning he started complaining that several channels on his TV were already showing Christmas movies. He announced, very seriously, that this “ain’t right. They are skipping right over the Thanksgiving movies!”

After a couple days of this very passionate debate, he finally settled down and accepted the tragic truth: there really aren’t any Thanksgiving movies. Once he moved on, I decided to help the channels on his TV get in the Christmas spirit anyway. So I started singing, “Dashing through the snow, in a one-horse open sleigh…”—and yes, please read that in your best Bing Crosby voice, because that’s exactly how I do it.

For the record, I’m prone to breaking into Bing-style Christmas crooning at random points throughout the year. Ethan is used to it. He complains every time, but he always laughs.

He kept begging me to cut it out, but I was committed at this point—and honestly, it did cover up the sound of him smacking through breakfast. Eventually I heard him get up to rinse his bowl at the sink.

And then… what did I hear?

Ethan humming.

And then singing to himself: “Jingle bells, jingle bells…”

He wandered back to the phone like nothing happened. I pounced: “I got you! You were singing!” He tried denying it—apparently he thought leaving the phone on the table made him stealthy—but I heard it loud and clear. Made my whole morning. I could hear the smile in his voice. Love that kid.

What silly things do you do to make someone smile? If you haven’t attempted such a feat in a while, put it on your to-do list today.