You Say Play-Do, We Say Play-DOUGH

Thursday, July 28th

This week has been interesting.  I noticed that life had kind of taken over.  We had Judo classed, soccer meetings, etc. and I also noticed that I was breathing effortlessly through it.  I was not panicking, thinking, "We HAVE TO get these activities done."  The kids, however, were wondering when when do we get to pull ideas from the jar?
Thursday morning, we pulled out 2 ideas:  Make Play-Dough and Create a Time Capsule.  Anyone want to guess who said what . . . "I choose out" and "Cool!"... :)
I decided that I was going to go with it.  I suggested to Lauren that instead of looking at the activity as something she "has" to do, she can look at it as trying something new and spending time with her mom and brother.  I told her that my experience was that she was choosing out of spending time with us and that I felt sad about that.  She stewed on that for a little bit as I drove them to camp.
When I picked them up later, they had golf clinic.  Normally they golf at separate times, resulting in us being there for 1 1/2 hrs.  I made a decision that they would golf together today, so that we had time to go to the grocery store to get what we needed for Play-Dough.  Lauren still was not sold on this activity, and came around when she saw the food coloring on the list.  At the store, she saw on the back of the box, that she could make all sorts of different colors...."I'm in!!"
I want to affirm Lauren for a second.  We tease her sometimes about how she remembers the details of every conversation and every little thing she sees and hears  (even when she is not supposed to be listening!).  When we got home, I started pulling out the pots to make the play-dough.  I had a recipe I found online and it required stove-top cooking.  I was in a bit of resistance....it looked so darn messy! Lauren said, "Mom, what are you doing?" Me, "We have to make the dough on the stove".  Lauren, "No we dont'.  You can use the Vita-Mix....Look (she pulls out the Vita-mix book), it says right here!"  She is giggling and said, "I remember everything....remember?"  <sigh>  God lover her!
They had fun pouring and measuring.  I had fun surrendering to "letting" them pour and measure! The inner controller in me normally would have done it all myself, and made them watch....to minimize the mess.  So we dumped all the stuff in and set the timer for 5 minutes (like the instructions said). 
Sidenote: While we were measuring and dumping, I was also making dinner....
So, the 5 minutes was almost up and my Vita-mix started making this horrible sound!  The kids start yelling at me telling me to turn it off!!  I yell back, "It is not done yet, the timer has not gone off!" (typical analyst!!)....and then the Vita-Mix just stops!!!  I panic a bit because this is brand new!
I go to dump out the dough, and it is like cement!  And, it is really hot!!! I start laughing, because really, what else am I supposed to do!?  So, I follow the instructions and divide this hot cement into four clumps to begin adding the colors. 
It was cute! And....my arms hurt!  Ha!  They were able to get most of the colors blended, needing my assistance at the end.  Did I mention it was like cement?!
We put the dough in the fridge to chill and off to mommy's boot-camp we went.  When we got home, Chris had a blast playing with it!  Lauren decided she wanted to wash my car!  We decided to start putting together the time capsule tomorrow.  They really wanted to go outside and wash the car.  By the way, I was instructed that I was not allowed to help!  No arguments here!  And, it does not have to look a certain way either! :)

What I noticed, making dinner while making play-dough did not necessarily work for me.  I felt like I was trying to do too much at one time.  I choose to stay away from frustration or overwhelm, though.  This is good for me, as I can easily step into it when I take on too much at once.