Success!

I promised I would keep you posted, so here is my first update for my new project (if you have no idea what I'm talking about, read the post before this, Childhood Reclaimed).

First day was such a success, it felt like a conformation of what I am trying to do. I took out 3 books, ranging from easy peasy board book to a book that has about 4-5 sentences per page. I guess I was feeling optimistic. To start, I just sat and read the board book to a captive audience of one (Vlad of course...he couldn't run away even if he wanted to). This seemed to peak Rascal's interest so he wandered over and climbed into my lap. So I pulled out the slightly harder second book. We start reading and I sense Diva Girl is looking over, so I turn the book so she can see it as well. Then...miracle of miracles...she skips over and snuggles up next to me. And it happened. I read a book to all three of my children for the very first time. Yes, I cried.

The Book! Yay!

That afternoon we read all three books together. Diva Girl got pretty hyper excited and kept pinching my arms, so I have some bruises, but I will take excited pinching for reading! In the back of my mind I wondered how long this has been a possibility, how long my kids have just been waiting for me to do this with them. But I decided to not go down the guilt path. I did try to do this last month but this time around I had a completely different approach and it happened to work. The thing that truly amazes me is that the kids have just started pulling out books and flipping through them more, and Rascal has hit me with a book, which I think is his was of asking me to read to him. Or at least that is how I'm going to take it.

The Cat in the Hat

Your Kind of Mommy

Day two was almost as much of a success as day one! We finger painted and it was a crazy half hour of prep, painting, and clean up. The kids seemed to be in disbelief that we were doing this on the kitchen table! They have an easel that we paint on, which is great, but I wanted to embrace the spirit of the challenge and go outside of my comfort zone. In the end we ended up with two happy kids, six painted hands, and one big masterpiece.

We used a LOT of wipes!

I loved seeing their different styles of art. Diva Girl is my cautious one, she doesn't like to mix her colors. But she loves to get paint on her hand and do her handprint over and over again.

Rascal wants to use every color there is and mix them together and gets paint EVERYWHERE!









So, there we go...2 days into the challenge and I am feeling so very glad I've done it. If you want to, please join in! I'd love to have some friends join me in the journey and keep me posted on how they are doing. Just 1 hour a day, 1 activity during that hour....no tv, no cell phone, no computer. Just kids being kids with their Mama.