Playful Parenting Is My Solution

Eversince I found out that I am having a baby girl, I already envisioned "us" doing and enjoying a lot of things together, and one of those is this. When I started working again, one of my worry wss that Jashley will become more attached to her lolo and lola than to me because they are the one who is taking care of her while we're on our job. So thus playful parenting became my solution.

I always make sure that during weekends or holidays we have a precious time together doing fun & enjoyable things that allow her to learn and us to bond. And because I love crafts it meant fun for me too and also become an outlet for my DIY fantasies.

Here are some of the activities we had during the recent APEC holidays. 

I let her stick stickers on the door and some on my arms & legs. 

Next is these colorful Popsicle sticks. I just trace a Popsicle stick on a plain paper to make some shape patterns and color them in different colors that will be a guide on what Popsicle color she have to use. After completing the shape, I explain to her the attributes of that particular shape. All you need are some popsicle sticks, a paper and a crayons or a markers. 

Then she discover another activity she can do with these colorful sticks. I left her for awhile and came back to this busy little bug. 

I asked her what she's doing, her reply was "I'm building a castle". Afterwards she tries to fit herself in but found out that only her favorite bear can fit in, 

so she decided to rebuild it and made sure that she will fit in this time. 

The next day I made this container out of an empty milk carton, I put a colorful construction paper on top and a slot on each color that will correspond into what Popsicle stick she have to insert. 

This will not only make her master her color recognition but it is also a great fine motor ability exercise using her pincer grasp to pick up the sticks and push them through the slot. 

This was a hit for her since she kept on asking for this the entire day. 

If the previous activity was a hit, this next one is a little miss for her, after inserting the shoelace for about 2-3 holes in each shape, she already gave up and don't want to touch the activity again or maybe she's just not yet ready for that kind of activity. 

I'll keep this for now and wait until she become ready.

But among all those activities we did, I bet that her favorite was this. This is actually not part of the activities planned for that holiday, the original plan was to bring her in the play area at the mall since she was recently bugging us that she wanted to swim on balls. But unfortunately we wasn't able to bring her to the mall for some reasons. I am just lucky that I was able to squeeze-in those playtime in between. Anyway, in order to fulfill the promise that we made to her, Hubby brought out her inflatable pool and bought those toys at the nearby market, but since the price of the ball were too expensive for 10 pesos each compare to the one that I saw at the toy store which sold in bulk, Hubby decided to just buy a few pieces and will just fill it up next time. 

My little girl was so happy and keep on hugging and kissing and saying thank you to her Daddy.

This style of parenting maybe time consuming in terms of preparation but I like it that way, its my way of making her feel that I love her and I enjoy playing with her. 

Quality time with my little girl

Yesterday while I was doing a household chore, Jashley run towards me with 2 toy cups on her hand she told me "One for Mommy (while giving me one of the cups) and one for Jashley". Since I cannot accept what she was giving to me because I have a dirty hands that time, I said sorry and told her that we'll play after I finish the chore that I was doing.

After that scenario I realized that With all the busyness happened at home over the past few weeks, its been a while since I have spend a quality time with her, well, we do have this "short quality time" with her every night before we sleep (if she's still awake when we arrived home from work) but unlike before, if we don't have any plans of going out on Sunday, we have the whole afternoon to just play. I usually prepare an activity for her to do or if I wasn't able to prepare one, we will just play whith her toys. But as what I have said for some reasons we wasn't able to do that lately.

So yesterday while she's having her afternoon nap. I prepared an activity that we can do that won't need a lot of preparation time. Since she's offering me a drink with her toy cup earlier, I thought of using those toys for the activity that I have in mind.

We had an indoor picnic.

Pouring some yougurt drink on Mommy's cup

Then on her own cup

Passing to me the pitcher

Asked me to pour some on her cup

Let's have a toast Mommy

Enjoying her drink

See that smile on her face?

After we finished eating those snacks I asked her "Are you happy with what we did?", she replied "opo" with a big smile on her face.

I'm glad that she enjoyed the activity we did yesterday, I actually had fun too. We'll surely do this again and with Daddy next time.

How about you Mommies do you also have any bonding activities with your little ones that you could share? I would like to hear those too.