Time with Q

One of my favorite things to do is check out mentally.  I don't do it very often.  I'm a single mother of 2 great smallish people.  There's not a lot of time for that.  I normally have to be on my 'A' game to keep up.

Last night my son needed some time with me.  Let's call him Q.  He normally likes me to play with him because when I play, I build lego structures (for him to destroy in the first 10 minutes) or I come up with new ideas because I don't really want to hold little figures while making "pew, pew, pew" shooting noises.  I talked with him briefly about his day and he showed me some things he'd been making with legos and then immediately changing subjects to the latest configuration of nerf guns.  He loves that there are inter-changeable parts to the guns and always wants to share the latest and greatest creation.

Let's SHOOT!  I picked up one that contained darts with suction cups on the ends and shot the window and TV.  Fun!  That's all it took, he grabbed a nerf gun and joined in.  Suction darts everywhere.  That wasn't good enough...I quickly asked for the "automatic" shooting nerf gun that requires batteries and spits out darts in rapid succession.  I was in the play zone.  I had checked out.  We began strategizing about what the benefits of each gun were and how we could have equally cool guns with similar fire power.  We shot stuffed animals, framed pictures, targets, green army guys, "not the dog!", and each other a few times.  We used our laser sights, reconfigured the guns, and tried to fix one gun that wasn't working to no avail.  Picking up the darts and reloading for future play wasn't AS fun, but it's all part of the game, so we did.

While picking up the nerf darts, I began asking about some tech decks he had laying on the ground and asked if we should make a skate park for them.  Tech decks are tiny skateboards that you maneuver with your fingers.  http://www.techdeck.com/app/website  I'm more of a designer or builder with toys, but my son loves that, because he would rather play with whatever I create...and ultimately destroy it in the process.  We started talking about skate parks (of which he's never actually seen or been to) and I told him we could make one out of the discarded shoe box laying on his bedroom floor.  Let's GO!

We had alreay cleaned up the guns and ammo, so we scooped up the tech decks, the corresponding skateboard ramps, and headed to the kitchen for a little creative time.  I told him about graffiti and how we could decorate the shoe box with pictures we found online.  Enter GOOGLE.  I did a basic search and we chose colorful and interesting (age appropriate) graffiti to print copies of.  We cut them out, glued them in the shoe box, discussed placement of the skate ramps, and secured them with sticky dots.  It was looking good, but something was missing.  Let's PERSONALIZE IT!  I penciled out his name on the skate park floor and filled it with my own amateur rendition of graffiti containing his name.  We were done!  It was cool!  The tech decks had their own space.  We bonded.  Q began thinking ahead to his next sharing day at school and said his friends would be SO jealous of his tech deck skate park.  I was proud he liked it.  I enjoyed the time spent with him.  It may have been a little selfish that I needed to 'check out' from my regular adult duties, but I believe he benefitted from our time spent together.  I really do enjoy hanging out with him and can't wait for our next mom & Q adventure.