I am beyond excited that the weather is getting nicer. Because I am a mediocre parent and not very creative in activity development, I consider my main job to be to find ways to tire out my children before they tire me out. It's like a race but there is no finish line. You just run until one of you collapses.
During the winter, I lose. I am incapable of finding enough things for my kids to do so that they simply pass out from exhaustion. Sara has, on more than one occasion, come home to find me passed out, face down on the floor with both girls crawling over me, sticking pencils in my ears, pulling the glasses off of my face and stuffing hand-crushed poptarts and slices of cheese sticks down the back of my pants.
In the cold months, I concede victory to my adversaries.
The spring and summer, however, are mine!
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| These guys don't even argue with me! |
With the warm weather comes one of my favorite phrases to use with my kids: "You want to chew the arm off the couch? How about we go outside?"
Harper loves going outside. She loves having the window open and feeling the wind in her hair. When we go for car rides, she yells for us to "winnow! Down!"
In the winter, we made the mistake of replying with "Sorry, sweetie. We have to leave the window up or it will snow in the car!" so of course, she then wanted it to snow in the car.
With beautiful weather, will come lowered car windows until the wind becomes too much, at which point we will play the "winnow up! Winnow down!" game for hours.
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| Harper's role model |
Yesterday, I took the girls for a walk on the street behind our house. It is a thru-street, but it's only used by people who have driveways along it and it reminds me of the asphalt play-place of my childhood, the community driveway. This was a block and a half long driveway that only fed into the backs of houses and 99% safe for us to ride our bikes, roller skates, skateboards, etc. I spent a large portion of my childhood wearing trenches into the pavement going back and forth.
Normally on walks, we take the double stroller but since we were in a contained area with minimal traffic, I let both girls walk on their own.
They had a great time, with Brynn toddling along and Harper running ahead, only to turn around and yell "C'mon, Bin!"
Walks are going to quickly move back into the realm of regular activities. I like being outside since it's time that I'm not using the TV as a babysitter. Also, being outside is pretty great when I'm in charge of where we go.
Being outside in the sun saps energy from children. They run for hours without even realizing that they have. If you or I went to the gym and ran on a treadmill for as long as small children run outside, we would be in amazing shape and be dead.
Parenting Tip: Take your kids outside!
Secondary Tip: Let them eat some dirt. That's for another post.
