Everywhere you look, people are coughing and sneezing. And if you hang out with the preschool set, you’ll see that they’re not just coughing and sneezing, they’re also rubbing their faces with the sneezed-upon items. Maybe even putting them in their mouths.

We’ve all faced those moments we just wanted to bleach away…For me, it was the time Max pooped in the tub (I swore that whole act was just an urban myth!) or when I discovered Elle’s plastic milk container had spent the entire holiday break in the school’s Lost & Found.

Last week I wrote about random acts of kindness: mommy-style. That is, those spontaneous moments with your children that convince you that even though you don’t think your kid has eaten a vegetable in over a week, you may still be doing ok with this “parenting” thing.

The greatest moments of parenthood are those times where your kid will do something so spontaneously kind or wonderful that it makes those 9 months of pregnancy almost worth all those incessant trips to the bathroom.

Whether it’s an unprompted, “I love you, Mommy” or a burst of good manners when you were convinced your kid was spawned from the devil, those random acts of kindness--even if unbeknowst to the kid--are irreplaceable.