Trying Something New

I've mentioned before that I am not one of those parents who does crafts, who lets their child join in with daily chores or who comes up with endless amounts of imaginative play. In fact, if I had to categorise myself I'd probably say I'm a distracted and slightly lazy parent.

Today, though I tried something different and I said 'yes' more often.

Instead of one of us grown-ups going to Homebase during the lunchtime nap to avoid taking Monkey with us we went this morning as a three. Yes, it took an hour and a half and involved a pretend bath in one of the show bathrooms but that was quite fun.

Later, we said yes when Monkey asked if he could help Daddy wash the car.

Even if he didn't quite get our instruction to wash the car like he washes himself in the bath. Instead thinking we were telling him to wash himself like he does in the bath!

One total clothing change later I suggested we made cakes. I had a box of Thomas cupcake mix in the back of the cupboard so I stuck Monkey in his highchair and got him to put the cases in the tray while I whipped up the mix. The baker in me just couldn't let him do the batter into the cases bit but the cake mix box came with some stickers so we were both happy!

I then arranged a table in the kitchen and allowed him to do the icing all by himself. What a masterpiece!

After this there was a game of pulling the retractable washing line and letting it go x 5000! And we used one of the removals boxes as a boat for Monkey and his two teddy friends which kept him quiet for about ten minutes.

Surprisingly all of this came amongst one of the worst days for tantrums - I think he probably had about 20 altogether! But the photos show the good bits and it's the good bits I'll remember.

Not sure I could do this every weekend though - I was popping the headache pills at 5pm and am thinking 9pm looks like a very attractive bedtime tonight!