12 Random Acts of Kindness

     




     Mya just turned one, and in order to celebrate her birthday we of course had a party...but I also decided that I wanted to start a wonderful birthday tradition for her from her first birthday on. In celebration of the 12 months that she has been alive we went out into the world together (with my hubby Terry too) and we did 12 random acts of kindness for others. And the intention is that every year to follow we will add one extra random act of kindess (so next year we'll do 13 acts). It'll be fun as she gets older since she'll actually be able to participate a bit more and in turn I hope that we can teach her to care for others and be kind to everyone. Here are the 12 random acts of kindness that we did together: 

1) left a treat with a thank you note for our mailman (and he even wrote us back to thank us!)

2) smiled at everyone who we passed on the street that day 

3) brought my mom and her nurse partner tea when they were on the night shift together at the hospital (you can never go wrong when bringing nurses Timmy's!) 

Oh..and I guess you could count 'bringing Nana joy by being able to show off her grandbaby to her nurse friends!' as an act as well!

4) we let someone go ahead of us in line at Walmart (even though he had a cart full of stuff and I only had a few items..and a cranky baby by this point!). The man was very appreciative though!

5) dropped off cookies to our neighbours, just because.

6) went through the Tim Horton's drivethru and ordered a large coffee for the car behind me. It took me about 3 tries to explain to the lady behind the microphone what I was trying to do though...she kept saying, "but what are you wanting to do? you really aren't getting anything for yourself?". She finally let me do it though, and I'm sure the lady behind me was thrilled when she pulled up to the window! 

 

7) called my grandma (who lives over an hour away) just to say hi. I know I really need to call more often, and she was so happy to hear from me.  

8) filled up a huge garbage bag full of clothes that I cleared from my closet and brought it to a charity shop.

9) told the cashier at the grocery store 'thank you' and let her know how much I appreciated her help bagging my groceries. I always think that cashiers don't get enough respect and kindness from customers...everyone's in a rush to get out of the grocery store and it's not always an easy job that they're doing. The cashier gave me a huge smile and said 'thank you for being so kind to me'. Gave me goosebumps. 

10) taped a bag of exact change to a pop machine so that someone could get a free drink that day. And funny enough, I watched so many people stop to take a look at it, but noone actually took it! I still wonder if or when someone actually got that free pop. 

Clearly Mya was REALLY excited about this one...she was a bit tuckered out from all the running around!

 11) went for a walk (when it just happened to be garbage day) and moved all of the empty garbage/recycling bins off of the sidewalk that were thrown by the garbage man (instead of just walking past them like I sometimes do). I'm sure mothers with strollers and people in wheelchairs will thank me! 

12) went out shopping for onesies for my sister who just had a baby and desperately needed more (and who obviously was exhausted and didn't want to leave the house if she didn't have to with my little nephew). 

I can't wait until Mya is older and she actually understands what we're doing with this little tradition. Even next year will be that much more fun since she'll be 2!