Taking Turns

There are plenty of days where I'd say my parenting is something of a disaster, with chaos and fussing from all parties involved. Happily, this afternoon was not like that at all.

We got to the "witching hour," that time around 4:00 when we all start to get cranky. Elizabeth wanted me to play squishy blocks with her, I needed to pick up the living room and start dinner, and Abigail wanted to roll around on the floor and look for things to put in her mouth. So I got out the kitchen timer.

We've done this before, and some days it works better than others. Today was one of the good days.

15 minutes of picking up led to:
A cleaned-up-enough living room for 15 minutes of me and E building castles with squishy blocks while A rolled around, which led to:
A consenting to go back in the carrier and E volunteering to help with dinner. We made the Chicken Tenderloin, Butternut Squash and Chickpea Stew from The Washington Post.

I'm 34 years old and I still sometimes need to be reminded of the power of taking turns.