Play Time

Here are a few of the cards, we have more!

So I have been reflecting a lot lately on my time and how I use it throughout my day. Now that summer is here I have a lot more downtime in my week, with our only commitment on Wedesdays (Bible study). During the winter our weeks get so jampacked with activity that sometimes I only have one day at home. I don't like that. I have been hearing this quote from several different sources lately (hmmm...is Someone trying to tell me something?). Dallas Willard says to "Ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life." Wow. How do you do that? As I've been thinking about this (and reading an excellent book called Breathe, by Keri Wyatt Kent) one thing that has stood out to me is to create space in your day for rest, reflection, play, fun, enjoyment. Sometimes we get so caught up in the doing that we neglect the being. Of course this is different for everyone but for me it's leaving room for taking walks, looking at bugs and flowers, reading (even if it's a Land's End catalog!), or just a one minute break from the flurry of the day. And most importantly to me, I want to be present in my life and not just hurrying through my life. I want to know and practice the presence of God in my everyday routine and be available for my family instead of running down my list of what I've done and what I still have left to do.

Anyways, the whole point of this post is to share an idea I had that sort-of ties in with this. Sophia's at that age where she craves my attention. And I love playing with her but sometimes that is such a vague concept. We end up in the playroom just kind-of hanging out, or outside with her wandering around picking dandelions while I get distracted with weeding - hey maybe we should start working together! :)

So here's my idea for helping me to focus my attention on her, to not get caught up in my own agenda, to really be in the moment. I made a list of all the activities I could think of that we could do together. I cut out pictures of them from magazines and pasted them to index cards. If she asks me to play with her, or if I know I have about 15 minutes before I need to get dinner ready and want to spend time with her, then I get out these cards and let her choose one. If there's one that's not feasible (like ride bikes and it's pouring outside) at that time I just take it out of the stack. Sometimes we can live completely on the edge and choose one at random. :) Anyways, we've had fun with this so far and she absolutely love it. She even likes to sit down and just look through and organize the cards (she's a bit OCD - blame it on her daddy and grandpa). We also found a great purple index card holder at Wal-mart to store them in. So ... just thought I'd share. I'm not sure how or when this turned into a novel!!