By: Caroline Kambrich
After this past rainy, dreary Memorial Day weekend, and as a parent to a toddler, you start running out of ideas to keep a child entertained indoors. There is only so much TV you can watch before the parental guilt starts to kick in. So, Joe and I devised a plan to come out with all the stops in terms of creative activities. Our son is incredibly active, so there are the easy go to’s with sports, soft puck hockey in the kitchen, a mini plush football to toss around, and wrestling matches on the couch. The energy is quickly drained (especially on our end as parents) – so these activities only last so long. There are a few new ideas that Joe and I have tried – and it’s basically taking real-life activities that we do every day/weekend and turning them into little toddler to-dos. For example, the game “restaurant”. I will greet him as he walks into the kitchen, “Good evening, sir! Welcome to Klemenz Trattoria! Follow me right this way to your seat.” He gets all giddy and scurries over to his little kid table. I ask if he needs time with the menu, and he always orders a myriad of fruits and vegetables. “I would like 4 potatoes, 11 oranges, 6 blueberries, and butter. With a large blue Gatorade, please.” I promptly bring him his pretend order, give him the bill (which he never pays), and then we start all over again.
He also enjoys playing Pizza Delivery and Hotel. Hotel Colton is a hotel I wouldn’t recommend to travelers. His turn-down service is quite messy, and requests for fresh pillows or room service often go unanswered. The plus side is that I get to lie down for a solid 10 minutes before he wants to play something else. The Pizza delivery game is interesting. We give him an assortment of ingredients to make a pizza in his mini play kitchen (flatbread, pepperoni, a little bag of mozzarella, and a little bowl of sauce). I’ll place my order over the fake telephone – and I will get the strangest pizzas with ingredients I never gave him – fruit loop pizza…a flatbread with literally just mayonnaise on it…Definitely not what I had ordered. I even tell him the order is wrong, but he just laughs and walks away. Nonetheless, I “devour” it like it’s the best pizza in the world. It can be draining at times, but I do love coming up with different games to play with him. Not only does he get excited to play something new, but I get to see a whole new side of him and his communication skills. Sometimes, he will get really into a character role and deliver an outstanding performance, and others, he gets bored and tries to figure out a way to end the game as quickly as possible – like dining and dashing during our restaurant game. I chase after him to pay the bill, but to no avail.
Joe is a lot more physical when it comes to his play skills. He, much like Colton, does not like to stay seated for too long. So he enjoys wrestling, hockey, lacrosse, soccer, and all of the above sports. Being indoors is tricky, but he always finds a creative way to make it work. It warms my heart to hear them screaming and belly laughing, as Joe pile drives Colton into the bed or when Colton will take a pillow to the side of Joe’s head – he is always careful with him, and it’s truly unbelievable the amount of energy those two have together.
I think Joe and I strike a nice balance of activities with him, and we love seeing him go all in. It nourishes his personality and expands his creativity, and we love seeing him get more and more adventurous and confident with every game we play with him.
