Time to play

This morning I shipped files to our printer. It took longer and was more stressful than I anticipated due to needing a full color hard copy that I had to wait for. But I was still done before noon.

All this past week most of my interactions with the kids have been variants of “please go away, I need to work.” Some of the variations were considerably less nice. I knew I owed them some time and attention. I volunteered to take them swimming. This news was greeted with great joy and also the question “will you be getting in the water? It is more fun when you get in.” This plea was not to be ignored. I promised to fully immerse myself in the swimming experience.

The schedule was rearranged when we received an invitation to join relatives to see a matinée of Wall E. It was a great movie pick for us. All of the kids sat still for the entire film, even Gleek. This ranks as a minor miracle. I’d been prepared to haul her out of the film if she was disturbing others. The movie is fun and sweet and I want to see it again because I don’t think I caught all of the depth that is there. Also I want to figure out how they tell a story where the protagonist has a vocabulary of less than 10 words.

Then came the swimming. We got into the pool. Some people are jump-in-the-pool people. I’m a get-wet-slowly person. The kids all jumped right in and began splashing around. Then they noticed that I was not all the way wet yet, so they began to pester me. “You promised mom!” I took the plunge and got all the way wet. That was when swimming started to be fun. I stopped worrying about getting splashed or feeling cold. Instead I splashed and dunked my kids. I took Patch for a spin on his floating tube. I made bridges for Gleek to dive under. I dunked Link when he tried to climb on my back. A good time was had by all, including me.

I need to really immerse myself in activities and play with my kids more often. That would be good.