Pillow Play

Pillow Islands

What an awesome day today has been!   I can't believe how blessed I am to be home all day with the kid and get to be the pouring into them.    After a couple of very busy weeks, I decided that it was time for a little downtime around the Butcher household.   So we closed our doors to visitors and play dates and just enjoyed being together.  

Avoid the lava.

After a fun morning at the park where we made some new friends in the neighborhood (downside to extrovert mother of two extroverted children), we came home had some lunch and I set about making our play room into Pillow Island (The Preschooler's Busy Book)  H and I had a great time avoiding lava while trying to jump between pillows.    It was so much fun!

Pillow Piles

And then I sat back and watched a little bit more and that's when the real fun started for Mommy!   My nearly 4 year old little man ran into some problems when he noticed pillows were too far a part.  This lead to lessons in problem solving.  Then he got tired of avoiding the lava and started using the pillows in whole new ways, leading us into a whole afternoon of adventures.

Breaking Free!

Our 15-20 minute activity developed into a couple of hours of pillow fun.   There were forts built that had to be destroyed.  Mommy and H took turns being hidden by pillows only to explode out of them and surprise one another.   Pillows were linked together to form a bigger pillow island.    There was more jumping and laughing and being silly.  And because we were being so active and having so much fun, our pillows were also able to serve as a "hospital" after H bumped his head on the floor.    It was a pretty spectacular leap that landed him there.  A. eventually joined in on the fun and some wrestling with her brother ensued.  

A's in on the fun!

When it was time to change the pace up again, we made homemade popcorn (including a little popcorn dancing when it began popping) and settled back into the pillows for a snack together.  This was the highlight of my afternoon.  A was curled up in my lap, H sitting across from me and we are just chatting.    We played high/low  (state your high point of the day and your low)!   My heart soared when H announced that that moment was a high for him.   And nothing else mattered in that moment except the joy on my children's faces as they shoveled popcorn in their mouths and celebrated the fun we were having.

Pillow Hospital

After all that playing we found one more good use for every pillow in our house; comfy cuddle area for a movie!   So we spent the next hour or so in various stages of cuddling on the living room floor watching The Lego Movie!   It was the perfect ending to a much needed low key afternoon.   There will definitely be more days like this where all of my attention is on my little ones and taking our ordinary every day moments and making them extraordinary for my children.   

Movie Time