Step Away From Pinterest

How to relax and still make crafts with your toddler.

Taking care of young children is not exactly a walk in the park.

Aside from the poopie diapers, the endlessly runny noses and the need to feed them every 15 minutes, there is also the constant pressure to keep them occupied.

Safely occupied. (Because we all know how quickly a three-year-old can find a way to swing from the ceiling fan.)

In our desire to keep the kids busy, it can be tempting to overreach. Moms, grandmothers and daycare folks sometimes wake up the middle of the night with the BEST ideas. Like, the BEST!

One night, for example, I woke up at 3 AM. It was the week before Halloween. There were already plastic bats and orange twinkle lights hanging in the living room and I was running out of orange paper. I needed a plan to keep the kids busy on the following rainy day.

“Marshmallow ghosts!”

The words just popped into my head. I drifted back to sleep imagining the kids and I making adorable, slightly smooshy ghosts with a variety of facial expressions.

The reality, as any parent out there knows, was far from perfect. The icing didn’t turn sticky. The marshmallows were either totally melted or totally firm. And it turns out that my little tubes of icing aren’t subtle enough to make tiny frowns.

So what did we do?