The Gift of Time

    

     This past Christmas my husband and I decided to try to push Christmas gifts to more "experience" based gifts instead of toys that they'll play with for a month then lose or toss into the black hole that is our toy box. One of the best ideas we found was "The Gift of Time". As parents of 3 young children ages 3, 4 and 9; we very rarely do something fun with just one of them one on one. Who has the time? During our search for AFFORDABLE experience based gift ideas I read a phrase that said something along the lines of "Instead of saying 'I don't have time' say 'It's not a priority' and see how that feels". This hit my husband and I right in the gut. How many times had we told our children "No babe, I'm making dinner, I don't have time" or "No, can't you see I'm folding laundry? I don't have time" or "Not right now I need to clean this toilet, I don't have time"? About 37 million would be my guess. I've read and shared the sentiment of "the laundry can wait but your babies will wake up one day older" and thought that's so true but kept living as if that somehow didn't apply to me.

Do not mishear me we snuggle our kids and spend time with them, we do stuff with them but somewhere in an effort to keep a spotless house or to look magazine ready for our day we de-prioritize one on one time with our children. Why? So on the off chance someone comes over unannounced we don't have 13 toys in the living room floor? So what? Would company be that appalled if they showed up and you have to quick kick a pile stuffed animals and Lego's to the corner? I doubt it and if they are perhaps you should reconsider the kind of company you keep. Your kids LIVE there, your house isn't a museum, it's a lived in space. It's not that serious.

     We put a lot of thought into our list and sort of tailored it to each child while keeping it similar enough to not make it super inconvenient for us as parents. Of course life is going to happen and even our best laid plans will be snagged from time to time. Adapt and overcome, folks! Make the commitment to do this and MAKE IT HAPPEN, hold yourself accountable because after all days slip by so fast and before you know it our babies won't want to spend time with us anymore. We were effected by the furlough in Dec/Jan so money was TIGHT. To accommodate we shifted our monthly activity around from the "outings" we had planned with each child to cooking a meal individually with each child. Occasionally we allow our kids to help cook but we rotate through the steps with each kid, making sure each gets to participate. This was different because only ONE child got to help ONE parent cook a meal from start to finish. All them, no competition with siblings or lectures on kindness and sharing; in fact siblings couldn't even come into the kitchen because if your kids are like mine there is a bunch of moaning and whining from the sidelines if you allow that. All of that extra noise not only distracts from the one on one attention with the child but is also super frustrating and that frustration spills over into our activity which defeats the purpose because kids aren't as oblivious as we like to pretend and they can feel that tension in us.

     Some of the ideas we came up with were scavenged from the Internet and others were based on what our kids and ourselves like to do. I love to craft and make stuff but my husband doesn't so we made sure to make our activities line up with that.

     Our ideas included:

• Build doll furniture
• Visit the ice cream shop
• Cooking a meal
• Scavenger hunt (ready made ones are easily found online)
• Flying kites
• Fishing
• Zoo
• Mani/Pedi (can easily be done at home)
• Thrifting
• Daddy dinner date
• Mommy dinner date
• Bake and decorate cookies (this one is great in December because they can double as little gifts for family and neighbors)
• Picnic in the park
• Living room sleepover (when everyone goes to bed me and the one child blow up the air mattress and have a sleepover complete with all the silly things sleepovers entail like junk food, movies and nail painting or games)
• Rock painting (Most cities including ours has a Facebook page for rock painting. The ones we use are Billings Rocks and Montana Rocks and it's where people paint rocks or write beautiful inscriptions on them and place them in various places around the state. When you find one you take a picture of it, post it to the Facebook page then either hide it again or keep it. My kids go absolutely bananas when they find one)

We made this bed from a dish rack and a purse I bought at Goodwill

This doll bed is made from cardboard e protectodgers and a tray I found at Goodwill

Mommy and Maddox on a Zoo date! 

     Be sure to look up local events online, there are always great ones listed on Facebook or Eventbrite and if all else fails good ol' Google will come through. Look up the schedule at your local library, ours has a ton of kid activities. Be creative, put in effort! These days fly by and memories are so, so, so important because you don't get another shot at this day with this child. Tomorrow they'll wake up one day older and we'll never get that time back.