Even though we have very active older kids we still have a younger crew that has equal amounts of energy and needs for attention. This group doesn't love sitting still or being quite. Sundays are long and offer an opportunity to focus on them. The older kids go minister, sleep, or to more meetings, the younger ones are still free to do what they like. This Sunday we painted.
The next rainy day Merle was driving me crazy constantly poking and pulling on Andrea. We looked up so ideas on the busy toddler website and found making bread in a bag. He did it all himself. Measuring the flour pouring it in the bag and squishing and kneading the ingredients together. He was so pleased.
I remembered boxes could be great play items. So I drew some pictures for Alia and she and Andrea colored and colored. All these busy activities lasted about 10 minutes. And then mom was tired and they were fighting but we had a constructive 10 minutes of harmony.
After a while, Merle got to knead the bread. That was fun. Andrea also wanted a turn as seen by her crying frustrated face.
After some good pushing and pulling we put the dough to rest/sleep. Merle told me the bread does not have eyes so it cannot sleep. He pushed two indents in his dough to remedy that obvious problem.
After a few hours of waiting the dough was ready to shape and raise in the bread pan. I did that step but he came and pushed in two more eye holes.
After several hours the bread was finally done. He was so excited to share with everyone.
Everyone agreed it was delicious and were so impressed that Merle could make bread.
Small win, slight shift in thinking, and success. We have lots of ages and stages to try to manage and keep moving forward each day.
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