On Pictionary…and being a better dad.
My wife is GREAT with kids.
I’m…okay.
I have witnessed my wife have full on back and forth conversations with new born babies.
My wife can draw, sing, build legos, dance, and make up spontaneous epic bedtime stories about firemen.
My kids like her more than me, and I get it. I like her, too.
That’s why I married her.
All that to say, on the nights she’s gone and I’m solo on dad duty, I try to think WWSD (What Would Sarah Do?).
1) Sarah would plan ahead
2) Sarah would do something not involving screens
3) Sarah would make it fun.
Oftentimes my ideas fall flat, and the “activities” consist of the boys jumping on my aging back from the top ropes of the back of the couch while beating me up with holiday throw pillows, and the last hour of her absence is just the boys asking me how long until mom gets home.
But, last night I actually did pretty good so I’m sharing my Win as a way to hopefully encourage anyone who might feel like you’re racking up more Losses than Wins.
Monday nights are Zumba nights for Sarah, so I take care of dinner thru bedtime hours.
At about 2:00 I started planning ahead (only by like three hours, so “ahead” is true, but barely). I thought about activities that wouldn’t involve a screen and would be fun for all the boys.
WWSD?
I saw my office white board. I know my kids love it because they occasionally sneak into my office and draw on it and write wrong spellings of new cuss words they learned at school on it.
This was it.
After dinner, I dragged the white board downstairs and the boys and I spent the next hour playing white board games like Pictionary and a couple I made up on the spot that were fun for like…18 seconds.
But, Pictionary worked. And it kept working.
Wesley (age 8) was given increasingly harder stuff to draw, because apparently he’s soooo good at drawing that early on his brothers were figuring out his drawings too fast and he wasn’t getting long enough turns.
William (age 6) likes to dance and cook. So, his drawings took a bit more time to figure out, but he had fun and a divine miracle allowed his brother to identify the colored-in, black, oblong shape on the board as a hotdog in a bun.
Levi (age 5) spends about 40 hours a week with markers in hand, drawing at the kitchen table. So, when I saw his actually very incredible whiteboard drawing of a helicopter, I immediately felt insecure about my own so-called abilities at pretty much everything and pulled out my phone and Googled “Harvard art scholarships.”
Noah (age 2) was on eraser duty, a job I realized he was perfectly suited for after he ruined our early rounds by repeatedly erasing his brothers’ drawings mid-sketch. He clearly had a nose for the job, I just had to teach him about timing.
“Na!” he would turn and say to me, eraser held high in his hand.
“Go for it, buddy!” I’d tell him, and he’d run up and clean the board so well I immediately pulled out my phone and Googled “Harvard janitor scholarships.”
And that’s how it went, for a full hour or more.
But this is life, and it’s every single day, so I’m learning to celebrates the wins when they come, and would encourage you to consider doing the same.
Do you have an everyday, perhaps even mundane, win? Let me know and I’ll celebrate it with you.
If you have a desire to buy or sell in the coming year, let’s chat.
Life has a way of keeping us all moving, and I’d love to be your real estate agent.
Contact me here to set up your free and confidential consultation.
Kevin
