Take Your Time
One of the things that I hope most for my littles is that they have time.
I try, truly, to very often say "take your time," and mean it.
Maybe that means scrapping other schoolwork for the day, so that we can sit under a quilt and just read and read a story that we're lost in. Or maybe it means letting him bake the cookies himself even though it would be faster for me to intervene. Perhaps it's as simple as waiting to speak, not jumping in with the answer to his problem, but instead giving him that little bit of extra thinking time that he needs to figure it out on his own.
My time with them is so short. Their time to be a child is short too. And so, I am kind of miserly about how we spend it.
I guess I just hope that at the end of the day, when all of the minutes in October 8th, 2008 have been spent, that I feel like I've gotten some value out of my investment. I want to see that I haven't wasted too much of my precious time sitting in traffic, waiting in line, rushing here and there, disconnected from the people that I care about.
Strange isn't it? The sort of time paradox that mamas live in?You'd think that the way to buy yourself time would be to speed things up, get more done in less time, but it turns out to be just the opposite. It seems like the way to stretch out your day is to do less. Do just a few things, and do them well.
Today, our time was spent standing in the kitchen picking and washing a million pounds of basil that were given to us by one very generous Grandmother who happens to own a very green thumb.
One little man sat beside me and measured, poured and pulverized our green goodness into pesto (10 half pint jars, thank you very much). Another boy sat across from me reading aloud, to make our work more enjoyable.
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