Let Em Play

I took Lizzy and David to their homeschool botany class this morning and overheard a few of the kids discussing the toads and tadpoles they had collected from their pond.  The spring peepers have been going crazy around here, so I decided I was going to do something extremely uncharacteristic for me.  I was going to let my kids go slopping around in the swampy area behind my mom's house and look for frogs.

I do not like messes.  I do not like it when my kids get muddy.  I do not like it when my kids get wet.  Yet I knew they would love to look for frogs, so I let them go anyway.  My mom was working in her yard so I sent the kids down there to by themselves while I stayed home to work on my cleaning out my closet (my mom lives 5 doors down from me).  After about an hour, I went down to see if they'd found anything.

They found a couple tadpoles but no frogs.  And they were covered in muck and mud.  But the smiles on their faces was priceless.  They spend almost 3 hours splashing around in the water, getting as dirty as possible.  They came out of the woods every so often to dump the water out of their boots and then went right back out to play.

When I first got there and realized just how dirty they were getting, I was so tempted to call a halt to their fun, to tell them to be careful and not get too dirty.  I stopped myself instead and thought, "Let em play.  They're having fun.  It's nothing a little soap and water can't handle."  So I sat down and had a good chat with my mom and did my best to not cringe when I heard them jumping and splashing in the water.  It's going to take me a while, and it's probably not going to be easy, but I am doing my best to be a mom who just lets my kids play.