Prioritizing pretend play in childhood—and beyond:

It’s a cold Saturday, my husband’s at work, and my two children and I are holed up in the house.

We break out the play food that the girls’ aunt made for them. I’m blown away by these handcrafted, wool-felted pieces—pepper rings, pepperoni, a burger, jelly, bread, buns, pizza sauce, two kinds of cheese, bologna, pizza crusts, watermelon, a dill pickle, bow-tie pasta, a fried egg, lettuce, tomato, mustard, ketchup, and many more items surround us as we sit cross-legged together on the living room floor.

The baby especially likes playing with the tinier foods—the little black olives and mushroom slices for the pizza are her favorites. She says “nom, nom, nom” as she holds them close to her lips, and pretends to chew.

My oldest daughter loves watching cooking shows. She carries spatulas, pots and bowls from the kitchen into the living room and mixes and creates, along with her favorite TV chefs.

She now expertly crafts watermelon sandwiches and double-decker pizza slices. She giggles and looks out of the corner of her eye for my reaction when she places her current obsession—yellow mustard—onto the play pizza as well.

Then we pick up, and we have a real-life snack. Snow appears through the window in spurts. I’m hoping that my husband will be home soon, so I’m hesitant to leave even though the girls are clearly needing a change of scenery.

Instead, I get a wild idea to break out the dress-up clothes that I bought for my oldest daughter probably two years ago—before the baby was even here with us.

One morning, when my daughter was in school, I dashed from a yoga class to JC Penney. I’d never been in the store before, so I quickly hunted for the little-girls Disney section; my daughter’s school pick-up time fastly approaching.

I bought four dresses and three pairs of shoes. Glitter was all over my yoga pants as I piled this giant, puffy bag into the passenger seat of my Jetta and excitedly drove over to get her.

This Saturday, I found them at the top of her closet with the tags still on. She never got into playing princess dress-up. I stealthily look through this bag of clothing, trying to peek at the sizes and not get her interested in something that likely will no longer fit. I silently praise my earlier intelligent purchase—all of these dresses were too big at the time, but now they are exactly her size, or just small enough to still squeeze into.

I take the dresses out into the other room, and my girls’ faces light up. My oldest reaches out in awe for the Rapunzel dress. She immediately starts taking off her outfit so she can step into this sparkly choice. Her ecstatic expression makes my heart pound. The baby, however, is incredibly upset that nothing is in her size. She begins to cry.

I dash back into the bedroom, and then into the kitchen, and then I finally find her Halloween pumpkin costume haphazardly thrown onto the dining room buffet, from the last time she had wanted to randomly wear it. She wipes fat tears from her tiny cheeks, and grins hugely, reaching for the orange costume.

My husband didn’t arrive home from work for another few hours. In that span of time, we had changed into almost all of the dresses, and the girls had, at one point, added hats. I couldn’t find the shoes.

By the time he walked in the back door, it was as hushed and as quiet as possible, because the baby had gone down for a nap, and my oldest was watching Tangled in her Rapunzel dress. (She would turn away from the television to say, “Thank you, Mommy,” every now and then.)

He walks into the house and ooo’s and aaaah’s with complete sincerity at our daughter in her dress-up clothes. He goes to the one place that I hadn’t looked, and brings out three pairs of sequin-covered shoes to an exuberant, beaming child.

She alternately wears two pairs that miraculously still fit.

At the end of this day, not much was different from most others.

There were moments when I felt my temper rising, and I walked into another room to take a few breaths. There were poopy diapers, goldfish crackers on the carpet and smoothie mustaches. There were two little people showing me how ginormous their personalities already are through creativity, imagination and semi-contained attempts to show dominance.

Serving watermelon sandwiches and bow-tie pasta with black olives, in a green Princess Merida dress, might not get me nominated for any best-mother awards, but I felt like our cozy, artistic day was an indescribable success.

At school, they will learn to perfect letter writing, and how to read and count. They will get their feelings hurt, and they will ask if classmates can come over to play. They will be taught, above almost all else, that life is filled with different kinds of people and experiences.

At home, we work on learning, too—but later, as I sit down with my husband once the girls have gone to bed, I tell him that imagination is something I want to encourage my girls to never lose.

My husband is a scientist—that’s his day job. I’m a writer. Creative ingenuity is paramount in many careers, and we discuss this over dark chocolate squares and wine, while football lights up the TV behind us instead of Brave.

I feel like a great mom because I spent my weekend afternoon playing with my children—I marvel at how invigorated and alive I am for simply immersing myself into the minds of two tiny kids.

The post The Importance of Playing Like a Kid. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

It’s easy to move through parenthood with a mental “to-do” list.

To do: get child to school; feed, clothe, and bathe.

To-do: pay bills, go for allergy shots, buy wine, get some sleep, exercise—in short, function through life while also finding time to make love and go to the zoo.

Still, I have a feeling that I, like many, will eventually—at least in some small part—relate to that old “Cat’s In The Cradle” theme, where I—and possibly even my children—will lament the time not spent not checking things off of my list.

Because life is not a to-do list. Alternately, the things that we all generally want more of are simple: more love, more time, more peace of mind. These items, though, aren’t found on grocery store shelves—which is exactly why the “best things in life are free” saying is oh-so true.

Regardless, there’s a reason why we spend time putting the dishes away, and going to work and paying bills: it’s called the responsibility of being a grown-up, and this responsibility magnifies greatly after having children.

Today I almost unrolled my yoga mat for 20 minutes of Pilates. I debated, too, getting out my laptop to write. I had just put the baby down for a nap and her big sister was happy watching a show. In that instant of hesitation, however, I closed the hard grey plastic of my laptop, I didn’t give my sage green yoga mat another glance—and I asked my daughter to go outside.

We took the baby monitor, her stuffed bunny and a favorite book onto the front porch. We sat in next-to-each-other chairs and watched cars go by on the road at the bottom of our hill. We sat and sang “Wheels on the Bus” (about 49 times) and we read Biscuit (about a dozen), and then she curled up onto my lap and we sat together in my white rocker, watching cars and making up songs.

We sat out there for well over an hour, but it seemed like 30 minutes.

At one point, this realization hit me square in the chest—where her head currently rested—that I almost missed this to get some work done, or to exercise, or to fulfill my “busy” mind.

Don’t get me wrong—we need to work. We also need to move our bodies. Moreover, we do these things as healthy, shining examples for our children, although they often seem and feel more self-indulgent.

The memories I retain from my own childhood are both firm and fragile—that foggy time I held my twin sister’s hand through our crib slats, or the hazy moment I played catch with my dad on the front lawn to break in my brand-new mitt. Our trips to Disney World were great, but it’s these ordinary moments cuddled up in rocking chairs that we latch onto, because children love—but don’t necessarily internally idolize—the grand gestures that we make as parents.

What I remember most firmly from my childhood is the way that people made me feel—do we make our kids feel loved?

Tomorrow, I might choose to unroll my yoga mat, because my body really needs the physical release.

I might write or take a “mommy timeout”—and I will try not to feel guilt over this, because self-care is paramount for our health and for the health of our relationships, including those that we foster with our children—but when my daughter wants to crawl in my lap with her Biscuit book yet again, and I’m torn between catching up on my email or Facebook or writing—anything that could possibly be saved for later—I’ll choose her as often as I’m able.

“And the cats in the cradle and the silver spoon…”

It’s a common refrain for a reason—we are moving through life as life demands: work, eat, pay bills, sleep.

I told my dad yesterday when he was visiting that on Fridays, when my daughter doesn’t have preschool, I’ve taken to napping the baby in the morning like usual and going into the playroom with my oldest for her current favorite activity, the coveted childhood tea party.

There, she makes me chocolate soup to the tune of my “ooo’s” and “aaah’s.” She shows me how she waits patiently when the food needs to be warmed up in the oven, or that she likes to squeeze a wooden lemon into her play Earl Grey. (I’m a coffee whore FYI.)

She uses words—like “Earl Grey”—that I didn’t even know she knew, and she shows me that she’s observing me as I go about my real-life activities—my real “to-do” list.

I feel I know my child better by slowing myself down and forcing myself to pay attention—to be present—when what would have been simplest would be rushing along through my “to-do’s”.”

I feel I know myself more.

And, at times like these when I want to skim over a tea party or mentally get ahead of my own day, I take a few slow inhales and exhales—like I’m showing her—and I stay here—with one more read through of a book so worn that I can barely turn its pages.

There are many, many times within my day when I perform a chore that I care for infinitely less than my child—that’s called life. There are many other instances when it’s my choice to hop on Facebook or color with my child or insert something super-productive or lazily-interesting here. 

Sometimes, I just plop down in the middle of my living room floor between my two children. It’s interesting to see how they react. Usually they both run and collapse into my lap—because, as much as kids need hot food and clean sheets and money for school supplies, they need love.

Love is easy to forget about, if we don’t place it high up on that to-do list—and love is free and pretty to think about, but it’s, unfortunately, not always the easiest choice.

The post Throwing Away “To-Do Lists” to Make Memories. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

The feel of tender, young grass between her squeezed-tightly fingertips was primal.

The tug, uprooting them, connected her with a fiery anger that she didn’t know her belly housed.

Then, momentarily afterward, she’d feel regret that these vivid, green shoots, with blackened, dirty ends, were now clenched inside her small fists.

Many years later, she watched this collection of emotions play out on another youthful face—her four-year-old daughter—as this new set of miniature hands sunk into the lush green surrounding their pale thighs, touching at the knees.

I ask her not to pull the grass out, and her face falls instantly.

I mentally slap myself and softly ask, “It feels good to pull on the grass, doesn’t it?” She nods silently, and I verbally take back my earlier reprimand.

So much of my life has been a similar pattern, I’ll think later after an argument with my husband.

So much of my life has been this space between managing my reactions with the authenticity of internal need and awareness of this reaction upon others; coupled with the guilt after—the guilt of either not reacting firmly enough for my own needs or, more often, being too harsh. (And then stifling this guilt later, too, when it’s more destructive than productive—more another unnecessary reaction.)

I wonder, as I sit in the backyard underneath the open sky and a canopy of trees with my daughter, what it would feel like to sink my hands into the grass and yank without abandon, but I can’t actually do it—I’m grown.

And I tuck inside the flesh of my delicate mommyheart the secreted hope that the pale, milky thigh gently touching mine stays exactly as she is—for at least one more summer.

Photos: Author’s own.

The post For at Least One More Summer: A Love Note from Mother to Daughter. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.