I didn't think that through...

I think it's VERY important to play with your kids. To enter their world of imagination no matter how "out there" it may seem. I have always made it a goal to play with Nathan every day although I don't always succeed. I work outside the home, so by the time I get home, nurse the baby, make dinner, make sure everyone is bathed and has clean cloths and diapers (we cloth diaper) then it's pretty much bedtime.

But even 10-15 minutes of play time with Nathan not only makes me enjoy being a mom more but helps me realize the preciousness of him. Because face it- 3 year olds do not always seem precious! But our play time can be...

The other day I was playing with Nathan on the floor in his room. We like to take our pointer finger and middle finger and "walk" them around like they are legs to a person and we make our "finger people" talk.

We were in the middle of a huge world war III type of good guy versus bad guy battle when I had an idea. I said "Why don't we invite the bad guy to church?" all enthusiastically. Although my husband and I seriously need to work on inviting more people to our church- I thought it might be a good idea to instill this idea into Nathan so he might see the "bad guy" as a person. Because after all- there is good and bad in all of us right and we all have value as a person made by God and loved by God. Might as well start teaching this early, I thought!

So we did. We invited the finger person bad guy to church, used jumbo legos to build the church and of course we had to build the most important part of a church (to a 3 year old)- the play area. Equipped with a slide. We had "class" where the bad guy learned a lot according to Nathan. And the bad guy even got to play with the slide and talk to the other kids (who were represented by various plastic animal toys) We had fun- and I think the bad guy did too.

I was proud that I used play time to teach my son that there are other options he can choose other than trying to destroy the bad guy.

Until dinner that night.

Nathan looks at my husband and says, "There was a bad guy at church playing with all of the kids"

Uhhhhhh.....Oops.

(Shout out to Katie who is for the time being my only follower! lol Love you girl!)