I wish someone told me the first time around as a parent how
little is less with kids. I suppose it
was comforting knowing I had every gadget available for any situation. And, of course, Liam had to have every baby
toy imaginable. Somehow I must have
thought that toy was going to keep him occupied and playing peacefully while I
kept house – boy was I wrong!
I know
better now. A little tale from the
Friedman house happenings the other evening demonstrates this.
I was giving Liam his nightly bath
and left him to play for a few minutes while I changed Marlo. Mid diaper change, Liam is calling me to look
at something. I go back into the
bathroom and find him standing with a poop the size of a football in his hands,
saying “Gross Mommy!” Indeed,
gross! (Although Liam is potty trained,
sometimes an occasional tub accident will occur. I think there is something about the buoyancy
and the urge to go that don’t compute.)
I used to allow Liam to have an
entire bucket full of bath toys. A tub
accident like this would have been a disaster if the ol’ bucket of toys was in
there. Luckily, I have taken the
minimalist approach for tub time. Liam
is allowed two toys. Check out his
current toys – an old nasal aspirator and a purple, porous octopus sand scoop.
In addition to playing with his two
toys, he plays with the wall fish. (Highly recommend for kids' bathrooms!) He
cleans them and talks to them. It is
quite an ordeal to clean them all since the tiles are covered with them. When bath time is over, there are two toys to
put away instead of fifteen, and if an accident occurs in the tub, there are
only two toys destroyed!
Something that really surprised me
was that he seemed to have just as good of a time in the tub with two toys as
he did with an entire bucket full. The
difference – he is challenged to use a bit more of his imagination! Any other parenting minimalist approaches/ideas out there? Do share!
(Oh, and I am in the midst of redesigning my blog so there might be a few changes to layout!)
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