When your child comes up to you for the millionth time asking for you to come play, don’t you think you should stop working and do so?
Yeah, that’s what I try to tell myself. But, there is always that one more sentence I need to type, the dryer is done and ready for a transfer, the kitchen still has dirty dishes in the sink … my list goes one and on … always. She comes to me and asks this of me while politely pointing out that her baby brother is still asleep, so we could play without him interfering. It’s that moment when she turns around with the saddest look on her face after I tell her no … again … as she is realizing she has no one to play with that I decided enough was enough.
I put it all to the side and I turned to her and asked her what she would like to do. Her eyes lit up with excitement as she tried to rattle off all the things she has in mind for us to do.
She ran to her room and came back with her tea set, Guess Who and a ton of other stuff. I grabbed a blanket from the hall closet, set the kitchen chairs in the middle of the living room floor and made us a tent to play in. We had tea with her baby dolls, played Guess Who forever and just played and played. Soon, baby brother was up and ready to jump right ON TOP of the makeshift tent … collapsing it to the floor and giggling all the way down.
So, we moved the tent and commenced to flipping in circles. Yes, I did, too. Phew! I didn’t know you get even dizzier doing flips as you get older. It was funny watching them flip into each other. We both noticed that her baby brother loved doing flips and he never uses his hands!
Finally, they were exhausted, Daddy got home from work and I got back to work. Yeah, staying up a little later at night to finish my work is worth it just to see the smiles I get from just playing with my children.
