Engage with my kids more, May, Dana

The plan was to engage with my kids, specifically my girls, in whatever activity they were involved in for at least 10 minutes a day.  Seemed easy enough to accomplish.  Who can't spare ten minutes?  And yet, well, I think I can only count a handful of times where I truly, meaningfully engaged.  Pathetic, right.  It's not that I haven't ever been playing with my kids, because we love to jump on the tramp and wrestle and play in the yard, but I wanted to introduce more imaginative play and that's something I don't usually make time for.  I'm not very creative.  We need some tea parties.  We need to play house, or doctor.  I've been reading a book, PiggyBack Rides and Slippery Slides.  It's about the importance of play and how parents are a key factor in making it happen-from creating the environment to encouraging imagination.  It's very motivating.  And it's reminded me that when my boys were younger they were always begging me to play cars, build Legos, or draw bugs for them.  And even though I felt the house nagging at me to clean, the boys would win and I'd play.  But with my girls (a five year gap between my boys 11 and 9, and the girls 4 and 2) I don't feel like I've given them as much time.  Maybe it's because four kids is a lot more work than two.  Maybe it's because homeschooling takes up half the day.  Or maybe it's just because my girls are more independent than my boys ever were.  Regardless, I feel like I'm missing out on some precious opportunities that I will regret when everyone is grown up.

Here's why I think I failed:  I was too vague with my goal.  Knowing my personality, I should have had a specific time set aside each day.  If I have it scheduled, it's more likely to happen.   I just wish I was more spontaneous.  And well, truthfully, it's proof that I've been too busy.  It was just a crazy month.  Helped my parents move out, had my youngest brother move in, sick kids for a week, and had to complete all our online school submissions for the year (big pain in the ...)

There were a few successes though.  I got an idea from the book about setting up a pretend post office.  One morning, I thought I'd pull together some supplies, get Asia started for a few minutes before turning my attention to the boys' lessons.  But as the boys saw what I was about, they begged to join in too.  Within a few minutes we were all writing letters, addressing envelopes-with a little instruction on where the return address goes and where to place the stamp (leftover Valentine's stickers) and delivering to our personal mailboxes (constructed a few months earlier during one of our history lessons).  Isaac was having so much fun, he wrote multiple letters to everyone in our family, and London, who hates to write, was totally engaged with writing his own letters which included asking for some privilege or another.  And the little girls played right along, Eve drawing her scribbles and Asia writing her A's.  It was probably only 20 minutes total, but It was one of those priceless moments where we were all engaged in something fun together, totally improvising as we went along and enjoying every minute of it.  That's what I want to create more of in our home.

Our homemade mailboxes that Isaac duct taped to the wall,
so he could deliver the mail.