Sometimes the house is a total mess, my feet and head are aching from two long and terribly busy days at work, and my daughter has been stuck at home in the house the whole time, and so I plan an “adventure day” where we just spend most of the day doing something really fun!
Yesterday we drove an hour and a half to a metropark where they have a farm center and were giving hay rides. It was a beautiful warm day, and I packed all of our food from home: cheese sandwiches, sauteed brussel sprouts (because when your kid likes brussel sprouts, you go with it!), fruit, crackers, and a fruit pouch. M does long car rides like a champ, reading books, playing with toys, and watching movies. She can now be trusted to operate the DVD player and discs by herself without taking it apart, which is so nice for me. She enjoys fiddling with the settings, getting it started, and pausing and stopping it all on her own, Miss Independent. Of course I’m old so it blows my mind that a two-year-old can operate this stuff, including my phone, as well as I can. She can do a touchpad on a lap top, as well, but it’s definitely not up to par yet and she finds it frustrating.
Anyway, we had fun looking at goats and ducks and being pulled in a wagon by draft horses. She met a little boy who got her involved in a hay fight, and another little boy who taught her how to have a snow ball fight. She’s definitely one of the boys! (Note the back of her pants covered in mud…)
After that, we went to a gymnastics open gym in the area that happens to be our very favorite gym. M was super excited to do gymnastics and it was so much better doing an open gym style. This one was all ages, even up to adult, instead of just toddlers, and it was actually perfect because M likes to imitate the big kids. She started really trying to do cartwheels among other things. She also stopped to help anyone who looked like they’d fallen or couldn’t climb out of a pit or whatever, regardless of their age or size! I’m so proud of her empathy and compassion, as teaching that has been a priority for me during these hitting/biting/kicking years. She also blew my mind by waiting patiently in line with the big kids to take her turn on the long trampoline ramp thingy. She caught on quick to the gym etiquette!
There was a little girl who was maybe four or five who wanted to play with M. M did play with her a bit, then wanted to jump on a trampoline. The little girl did everything she could to get M to stop jumping and play with her again. She even said to me, “I think you’re going to have to get her off.” I was like, “nope, she said no thank you. When she feels like getting off the trampoline she will, but that’s her choice.” I was proud of M for saying politely, “No, I want to jump on the trampoline right now” each time the girl demanded she get off. Girl can stand her ground, I love it! I hope she keeps that up through the teen years!
When we got home I made “chicken” at her request, and we snuggled up in the big chair and watched half of The Good Dinosaur (for the 20th time), messy house be damned. It was one of those days where I really felt I had the best kid ever, and felt like a good mom who could set limits and boundaries lovingly but also have a good time. I think we are just in a sweet spot right now with her age (half birthdays tend to be M’s rough periods), but I’m enjoying it a lot! I don’t want to only blog about the frustrations of motherhood or M’s weak spots in behavior all the time. I gotta get this good stuff down for posterity, too!
Mother of All Things 