Making the Most of the Little Moments

I have heard it said before that, "Quality times happens amidst quantity time," and I have come to believe that is true.  It may be easy to say that we will carve out an hour a day, per child, but it is not easy to do.  In fact, the more children we have, the more work there is to do, which makes it harder to carve out the hours to be one on one with those we love most.  So, here is what I propose...

While we are all making the most of the quantity of time we have with our children - which to my liking is rarely enough (unless it is a really bad toddler day :-) - create special mini-events to make the most of those little moments.  How does this look?  I have found it looks like: readjusting my expectations to be happy to share one book with a child, even if I can't read all afternoon.  Being happy to scratch my daughter's back for five minutes at bedtime and chat, even if I can't snuggle her for the evening.  Enjoying a time of "Rescue Hero" pretend play for 10 minutes on the rug between rounds of laundry, even though I would rather play all day.  Is that painting a picture?

I have come to see that the moments my children seem to enjoy and recollect the most are not the ones I put the greatest efforts into.  By that, I mean the large scale events - it still takes effort and discipline on my part to sit down and read a book when my tasks are staring me in the face - but not nearly the effort that a whole day at a zoo or a park would take.  Both types of events are important, precious and memorable; but I have found when one of my daughter tells me what means the most to her, it is in the time I took to listen to her tell me something important while I scratched her back.  Or when one of my sons expresses what he loved about his day, it will be something seemingly little (but not really little at all, in his mind); like a tickle fight on the floor.

Don't look down on the small stuff, and don't stop putting out effort because there isn't time to do the big events all the time.  That is real life - we know there will ALWAYS be so much to do!  BUT we only have these moments to savour for a while.  For as long as my kids want to sit on the couch and read, I want to be sure I have read at least something with them.  For as long as they have thoughts to share, I want to be sure I have listened for at least a little while.  I don't think anyone is helped when we neglect all duties to "play" all day, but everyone is helped when we make the most of little moments.  They will never forget it and neither will we!

Zechariah 4:10 "Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin."