Is there anything nicer than unprompted mannerly word? Reid sometimes, even often, needs to be prompted to say “please”. She has a beautiful smile that she often puts on when she says it. We refer to it as the “Stepford smile”. But my favourite is the unprompted “sank you!” Last night, Reid noticed Winnie-Pooh sitting on the dryer and grabbed him close for a big hug. I pointed out that Daddy had given Winnie-Pooh a bath and wasn’t he clean? Reid immediately said, “Sank you, Daddy!” She followed me into the closet, cataloguing the changes in Winnie-Pooh: “This ear clean. ‘Nother ear clean.” The ears were *really* dirty. The belly didn’t have a tide line where the shirt stopped. Reid’s smile grew bigger and bigger. She walked out of the closet and said again, “Sank you!” with such a big smile and sincere gratitude, I loved her more than ever.

We live to serve, of course, but being thanked is nice.