The Messier the Better

I mentioned in an earlier post about an article I read about laughter. It got me thinking about my childhood. My younger sister and I had quite the imaginations. We played with our neighborhood friends all the time. I vividly remember playing pretend. We would run, laugh, dream, and pretend for hours.

That led me to thinking about my own children. Sometime during my pregnancy with Ainsley I brought in the tv to help occupy Isaac, while I would lie on the couch in misery. Nine months later it was still just easier to let him watch tv while I cleaned, cooked, or even just took a shower.

I feel horrible about how much tv I have allowed him to watch. Now don't get me wrong, we enjoy watching movies together as a family, but there is nothing wrong with leaving the tv off and letting my children just be children.

After reading the previously mentioned article I decided to help Isaac expand his imagination. We recently purchased a new washing machine and decided for FHE we would build him a house together out of the box it came in. We spent an hour decorating Isaac's very own patchwork house.

We used lots paper and lots of glue to decorate the outside. So incredibly messy, but so much fun. Usually at our house any activity we do together creates tornado like destruction of our home. A theme that is quite frequent in our home is the messier the better. I am all about playing in the mud, and jumping in the puddles.

Isaac loves his "new house" and I discovered today that it has become his own little treasure chest. I found my camera, some toys, newspaper, a cookbook, toothbrush, a shirt of Ainsley's, a diaper, and a coaster all hiding in his "new house"! His imagination, it seems, is not what was lacking, it just wasn't allowed to be expressed as often as should have been.