Quiet Moments

I've been a mother long enough to know that when your child is missing and being quiet, it means that messy mischief is most certainly going on. (Last week, it was large bottles of baby powder emptied  on the floor and two guilty children.)

But sometimes, as I go running looking frantically for the child that is suspiciously quiet, I find them with a book. And then my mommy heart is happy. And then I obviously go find my camera to capture the moment in as many possible angles as I can.

When I was pregnant with J, I was an Early Childhood Education major with big dreams of how to best raise a child. Our impending parenthood paired with my coursework in child development and pedagogical strategies assured me that we would know what would be best for our child and we would implement it every time. 

(Insert mild eye-rolling and laughter here.) Needless to say, our visions of parenthood quickly changed when we became parents.

One of our main priorities as new parents (that actually lasted) was to make intentional decisions in the lives of our children. We wanted to have valid reasons for at least most of the things we included in our children's lives. So when we moved a few months after J was born, we sold our television and haven't owned one since. 

All this is to say, we filled our home with books instead which has made these quiet moments of reading and enjoying books a daily occurrence at our house. I have LOVED exploring the world of children's literature with my kids and I love that we quote books instead of movies at our house. I feel a great bond as a family because we have many friends in common, like Trixie, Mercy Watson, Benny Alden, and Wolfie. 

I should say that I do not feel that television is evil or parents who watch television with their children are careless. I feel like all parents have those one or two things that they are passionate about (organic snacks, stylish clothes, cloth diapers, and on and on....), and my thing just happens to be reading and limiting screen time. 

There are times, like every day at 5 pm when I am trying to make dinner, that I wish I had a television and Daniel Tiger to get me through! But I know myself and feel I would use the television too often to entertain my children and so I have to just abstain all together. Thanks to Gretchen Rubin, I understand this tendency about myself. 

And if my kids grow up thinking that only hotels have the luxury of a television, that is just fine by me.