Jump In

Metaphorically speaking, this is an invitation – listen closely and you’ll hear it…”Jump in, dear reader, jump in”. Children bring an exuberance to our lives that we often ignore. I’m guilty of enticing my daughter outside just this past weekend with intention to rake the leaves into a pile and snap photos of the resulting mayhem. But as I search about for the rake, I begin to collect the toys off the lawn and this leads to gathering up the bigger things for packing away for the season, which leads to sweeping off the deck because, hey – now it’s empty, and this leads to, at most, a push on the swing for my daughter…but no great big leaf pile to blow apart with glee because mommy got too distracted by all the things I-want-to-get-done. Moment lost. We came inside then because we were starting to feel chilly (we’d been outside awhile!) and no leaf pile has been built in or around our home. I feel a little tap on the shoulder from the Guilty-Mommy Fairy and could really work this one into a full self-flagellation. My inner therapist is hard at work to keep me from wandering this road again. I’ve been down it enough since giving birth.

With that said, I think there is merit in reminding ourselves that we do need to pause and really be in the moment. Yes, I have been unusually busy and having even 30 minutes outside to tidy up and prep for the cooler weeks ahead was nice BUT that was not the reason I went outside in the first place! My daughter was quite content to amuse herself and sing songs along with me while we both tottered about outside BUT she would have been over the moon to land kerplunk into a waist high pile of leaves. I believe I lost my ‘moment’ and I implore you to not do the same. It’s what life is made of, these moments that come to mind when we are reflecting on happy times with our kids. When we might have actually created a memory for them to reflect on of their own.

Life is like this – my inner therapist won out in convincing me to not spend gobs of energy in the self-loathing department and rather look for (or create) the next moment to remember. It came today with the washable markers and the bath-time approaching disbursement of clothes. Without great detail, we’ll suffice it to say that it is a hoot to draw happy faces where happy faces are not normally seen and then jump into a mile high bubble bath to wash it all off. Too fun! My daughter was giggling like crazy and so was I and it was not lost on me that she, in fact, jumped into a pile of something – even though it was bubbles…