When Playing with your Kids feels like blah

When Playing with your kids Feels like Blah

                I am sure all of us mothers, or most of us, have the moments where we just don’t want to play with the kids.  We don’t want to do anymore trains, dolls, legos, barbies, blocks.  We know that doing these things can help grow our relationship and can help us to see the world from our kid’s perspective, but we’re just not feeling it!  Am I wrong?  Well, I had one of those days a few weeks back.  Things in the house were mostly caught up. It was a lazy morning with just Brooke and William.  They wanted me to play kitchen with them.  My first thought was, “blah”.  But then I decided to make a conscious effort.  I was going to play with them and I was going to like it, dang it!

                So, I played and while I played, I noticed all these super cute things about my kids.  Little characteristics and actions and sounds that I would have missed out on if I had been busy doing other “more important” things.

William “w sitting” and pushing his little fire truck he loves so much, saying “wee o, wee o” in his little boy voice that won’t always be a little boy voice.  His messy bed head, a dirty blond head, needing a hair cut.  His tan line on his chubby foot from his summer sandals.  His little shoulders hunched over his activity, so snuggly and juicy that I could just hug him forever.  His voice saying “stuck” and “oh” and discovering the world and the joy that can be found in a little truck.  The scratch on his face from a run in with Brooke during a tantrum and his cherubic chin and his elbow dimples and his chubby hands, such a symbol of his toddlerhood.  His belly button pokes out over the top of his diaper.  A clean diaper bum is something I will always miss seeing when the kids have grown.  Not the mess inside the diaper, but the diaper bum.

And Brooke, the leader of the pack for now, sitting in her pink underwears because she just doesn’t like to get dressed.  Her little girl chest that she calls, “peachies” because who doesn’t want to be a big girl when you are five years old!  Her glittery toenails peeking out underneath her crossed legs.  Then I notice that she and I are sitting the same way and I smile.  Her big old lips, don’t know where they come from, but she has them and they are talking to William, to me, to anyone who will listen.  The bruises on her legs from so much summer playing and adventures outside.  Her raven hair hanging down in her face, which she pushes back over and over again. I try to put a clip in her hair to keep it back and she replies, “I like it this way.” 

And this is what I discovered on the morning I didn’t feel like playing with toys.  I discovered that there really is beauty in the routine and in the simplicity of playing.  There is something to be said in closing out the world and noticing the details in your children.  The details that won’t be there forever, because they will eventually grow.  And the dimpled elbows and the pouty lips and the diaper bums will be exchanged for other things.  And I will be so grateful that I paused and played and wrote this down.