If only this phrase were easy for me to remember day in and day out.
I am not a lover of messes. I want to be...I'm just not. I try to embrace messes, enjoy them, find the child-like delight in them...but I know I so often f.a.i.l. at this!
This weekend I was grating soap for our laundry and Natalee was SO interested in what I was doing. She stood right beside me and kept asking, "Can I see it now? What's it look like now, mama?"...and then the question I knew was coming, "Can I touch it?"
I swallowed my own "mess maker" anxiety and said, "sure sweetie" and she had a blast. I have a super awesome grater so as I emptied the scoop into the glass laundry soap canister she began jumping up and down. It took me around 30 minutes to grate the bar of soap I wanted to do and the entire time Natalee stayed engaged in simply making "castles, cakes, and other imaginary structures" with her fingers in the soap inside the canister. She paused only once to ask me if she could move from standing beside me to sitting in her booster, and then once more to give her baby brother a turn (he wasn't too interested).
The long and short of this post is to remind me how good this was for Natalee to allow her take the lead and have mommy say YES to her mess for once. Not only was this terrific sensory integration, it was terrific confidence boosting and mommy time.
Here's to many more messes!
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