Just Do It

When the futility of the play task your child asks you to engage in does nothing to excite you and you worry about either the mess or the waste of materials, do it anyway.  Because that little person just wants mommy to play with her.

We were sitting out front in the driveway yesterday when the five year old asked me to help her.  Her current creative endeavor is to grind perfectly good sidewalk chalk into powder and then use it to make her own paint.  She wanted me to grind some pretty chalk colors into dusk while she scooped it into buckets.  I cringed inside because I had zero interest in decimating perfectly good sidewalk chalk into dust.  But I realized, "Don't make this about any perceived waste, your girl wants you to engage with her in this project.  Just do it.  And happily."

And so I sat on the driveway and fastidiously rubbed down lilac, turquoise and coral pink powders that were all dumped in a bucket to make a funky brown paint.  And my girl was happy, and I got to do that for her.