Wow, I’m feeling tired today. And I woke up late, too, and just finished a nap. I need to rework my mornings, since I’m sleeping in later than usual and dd10 has been waking up and taking care of the little one when he wakes up (earlier than everyone else, of course and she’s the one who hears him first!). Very sweet of her, but she needs to get started on her morning routine when she wakes up and this keeps her from being able to get started the way she would like. When I go to sleep earlier, I wake up at 4 am and can’t get back to sleep for a couple of hours and then oversleep until 8:30 or 9; when I go to sleep later, I wake up at 8:30 or 9 am and the kids are all up before me. I’m wondering if I should just go to sleep early and then wake up at 4 am. I could certainly get a lot accomplished in a quiet house! And maybe then I could schedule in a mid day nap.
Anyway, I fortunately have some time to get ungroggy before I need to head out to buy the game table that I called someone about. We currently have a foosball table that we got (for free) that the kids LOVE. I never really played foosball as a kid and it had no attraction for me, so I didn’t anticipate how popular it would be. When we moved it to the basement, the framing had to be dismantled and now won’t easily go back together, so it’s a bit shaky. I pointed out to ds13 that all we need to do is get some small screws and redrill the holes for two cross boards, which he agreed about, but in the meantime, I found someone selling a junior game table. It has foosball and several other games (like mini ping pong, knock hockey, shuffleboard, pool), and I thought it would be nice to have since it maximizes the games they can play and takes up the same amount of space as the individual foosball table. (I really like items that maximize space by doing more than one thing.) I stumbled across this when I was looking for a used air hockey table, and getting this solves part of the dilemma I was wondering about.
Here was my dilemma – we only have room for two game tables in the basement, and one has to be junior sized. If I got a full sized air hockey table, some of the kids would be too small to use it, but if I got a kids’ sized version, then the older kids wouldn’t be able to comfortably play. So this solves it – the new game table will have several games for the younger set (assuming that when I see it, it’s what I want and I buy it), and then when I find a full sized air hockey table for the older ones, I’ll get that. The older ones can still enjoy playing at the smaller table for the games other than air hockey.
Why all the effort and thought about game tables? I’m really not one to believe my kids need lots of toys or have to cater to their every little material whim. (People assume that since we spend so much time at home and the kids like it, I must have loads of toys, but I really don’t.) These were my idea; they never would have even thought of asking for them. Though I could certainly find other uses for the space, I feel it’s important for the home to be a place where kids want to be and enjoy being. Part of that is getting along with your family members, and part of it is having nice things available to do with each other and with friends who come over. So these are being purchased based on my values and goals for our family. These items encourage playing together – you can’t play on your own – and having fun together on a regular basis bonds siblings even more. Strong sibling and parental relationships are an integral part of the goals I have for our family.
How do you make your home a place your kids want to be?
Avivah
