Stopping to Enjoy Parenting is My Personal Challenge
My five-year-old is wonderfully creative. She is always into one craft or another. At school, she has been making a set of paper bag puppets. Pictured are me as a mermaid bride (left) and her father as, well, a bearded bag (right). She made the puppet of me a week ago, then brought the puppet of her father home and staged a wedding. As staged paper bag puppet weddings go, it was adorable and spectacular. My favorite part was that I carried a wand instead of a bouquet.
Enjoying my kids is a battle, which is surprising because they are all three brilliant people brimming with talent and personal wisdom. I mean, look at this cat . . . err, girl:
Those ears she's wearing? She talked me into buying those for her because she wanted to wear them to school the day her friend was absent due to surgery. Her friend has the same headband and wears it near daily. My daughter said, "If I wear cat ears, it will be like [my friend] is with us. Everyone will be thinking of her while she's having surgery."
Since I spend a fair amount of time trying to get my kids to perform acts of kindness, I couldn't very well say no. Sure, Kid 3 could have made her own ears at home, but these were a small expense and they were an exact replica of her friend's.
When her friend was well and back at school, they wore their headbands on the same day and swapped. Kid 3 said, "And you can't tell whether it's mine or hers!" First an act of caring, then an act of sharing.
I'm very glad cuteness overwhelms being overwhelmed. It would be such a shame if I missed these moments of selflessness by my darlings. An example is when I am so defensive I can't be hugged. But not today! Today my 12 year old gave me "the longest hug I've ever given!" He was delighted with himself, and I was delighted to receive it.
And my middle sweetheart is upstairs right now recording a tutorial for Minecraft. She runs her own server and Discord. When she saw me putting my Discord server together, she walked me through the creation of a custom URL. The thought would never have occurred to me as I'm not terribly good with" technical," but she was right that I should set that up and even checked back in the next day to make sure all was working, and without ever asking to be invited to the server. She knows it's part of my non-profit and for adults. She's happy to help me get it running without being in the mix.
What a cool collection of kiddos! Truly.