15 Minutes of Better

One of my summer reads is called A Sane Woman's Guide To Raising A Large Family.  I love all Mary Ostyn's books and I'm sure we'd be fast friends if only we could meet in person.

One of the ideas in the books is doing something fun or sweet or great with your kids for just 15 minutes.  15 minutes of better.  Because it's unrealistic to think you can be a better mom all day every day....more present, more attentive, more fun, a better listener, a better everything.  But you CAN shoot for 15 minutes.  Everybody can do that right?

So I started asking myself some questions.  When this whole parenting gig is up what are the things that I will be happy I took the time to do?  What do I NOT wanna miss out on because I'm busy doing stuff that doesn't really matter and will only be undone later anyway?  What do I count as important relationship building activities?

Here's some of them....

tea times
read alouds
listen to all the stories with eye contact
play something
walks
games/puzzles

So this week Mally and I found ourselves almost alone and the babies were sleeping.  

We made some apple juice, broke out the animal crackers, and pulled out some pretty tea dishes.
We read a chapter from a girly book and sipped our "tea".  

The dishes stayed in the sink and the broom hung on the hook and it was all just fine.  

It was a great 15 minutes or so until our people starting coming home and our babies woke up.

I'm going to be looking for more of these opportunities!!