One of the unspoken rules at our house (especially after work in the evening) is that it is important to make time to enjoy each other and be silly. Until FJ goes to bed at night, we really try our best to be engaged and in the moment, which usually requires us to hide our phones and avoid e-mails.
I really want Felicity to know that she is my number one priority. I also want to show her by example how to live life with joy. Our time is spent together reading books, dancing around the kitchen with daddy, playing chase in the yard, blowing bubbles, and playing hide & seek.
For some reason, Felicity's favorite spot to play hide & seek is in the downstairs half-bathroom. She will make either Austin or me huddle up in that tiny bathroom with her and our dogs, Maggie and Jackson. Poor Maggie, a big black lab, can barely fit in that tiny half-bath, but she will squeeze in and sit there patiently while Felicity giggles in anticipation of being found. If you are looking for a reason to smile, then I recommend that you watch this video and experience first-hand how fun it is to play hide and seek with my little buddy.
Another game that Felicity likes to play is "dress up." However, rather than dress up like a princess or her standard favorite (Minnie Mouse), lately her version of dress-up has involved getting out her old baby accessories and wearing them in new, creative ways, such as turning her newborn socks into mittens! Once the "mittens" are on her hands, she will smile and clap in front of the mirror. When she does so, I am quickly reminded how every game and activity at this age is teaching her something new - like the sound differences between clapping with and without "mittens." Occassionally, she will insist that she continue to wear those mittens when she goes to school. We tend to get a lot of sympathetic looks and questions about what happened to her hands, so maybe next time I should put a sticker on her that says, "I am just being silly!" :)
Felicity is starting to open up and be more silly at school, too. Yesterday afternoon, Austin arrived to pick her up and found her in circle time, sitting next to her friends, reading books and wearing a bucket as a hat on her head! It turns out that she had been wearing that bucket for hours, and had been disappointed when her friends didn't want to wear their "hats," as she called them.
From the moment she was born, she has just had such a delightful, expressive, and (let's be honest) dramatic personality that we like to joke that her personality matches her hair.
Oh, by the way, it is FRIDAY! That is definitely something to clap about....
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