Simple pleasures

Carys has been asking to go to the park, on average, about 50 times a day, 7 days a week. She's so patient and sweet about it because she doesn't get mad when I say we can't go. Instead, when I say "no, not today", she says "we'll go tomorrow". It breaks my heart. It really does. And, at night, when I lay in bed and go through the day's events, I can hear her sweet voice saying "aller au parc?" and then my voice saying "non, bébé, pas aujourd'hui". Then I get mad at myself for depriving her of that simple pleasure. And then I get mad for letting life's meaningless tasks get in the way of spending a 1/2 hour or so at the park. Really, would it be the end of the world if I stopped de-cluttering for an hour out of my day? Probably not.

It's not always like this, but we had to spend the whole weekend prepping our house for showings. It was unfortunate because, of course, it was a gorgeous day out Sunday. But, we had to paint and clean and store stuff in the garage and clean some more. We felt very badly about not spending any time outdoors with Carys, but she seemed quite content to just play with "stuff" and lining them up as seen here. Just another one of her simple pleasures.



I did manage to spend a bit of time outside on the deck with her- this is another one of her simple pleasures- and when I got up to go and check on Paisley, Carys says "maman aller pas dans la maison". It was so pitiful. She just wanted me to stay outside with her. It was so heartbreaking? I wish we could, sometimes, press pause and forget about what *needs* to get done and just sit and play.

This kid loves the park more than anything in the world. It's one of her biggest and probably most important small pleasures, much like drinking coffee on Saturday mornings is for us. We thought about buying her a play structure but figured it would take away from the small pleasure of going to the "real" park. So today, I just had to go- and it was totally impromptu. I asked her if she wanted to go and she smiled and jumped and immediately began to take off her pyjamas. Instead of walking, I drove there. It's a 2 minute car ride but our time was limited. I had a house to de-clutter.

Rocks really do rock her world and just another one of her many simple pleasures.


And when we got there, the wind was blowing so hard that it was taking Paisley's breath away so I knew it wasn't going to be a long stay at the park-even shorter than what I had originally anticipated. But she played on the swing and the slide and picked up some rocks and wood chips. When I told her it was time to go, she didn't fuss or cry or whine or throw a tantrum. I didn't have to bribe her to get her to leave. I took her out of the swing and she followed me to the car where she continued to collect more rocks. And then she said: "demain, on va aller au parc".

This is the smile and laughter that made my day- and, also, made the trip to the park soooo worth it.




I'm so glad we got out today and put the de-cluttering on hold. It did get done afterall.