I took my almost-three-year-old out to play the other night while my husband was working in the yard.  She had a few restrictions on where she was allowed to play, due to the yard work going on, and after a while she started getting antsy and bored.

“Evie, can you bring me four different kinds of flowers?”

And.. the hunt was on.  She finally found four different flowers so I asked for one blade of grass.  (She brought me a handful…)  I asked for a twig, a vine, a leaf, a dried leaf, something green.. whatever I could think of.  It kept her busy for a long time, and when I finally ran out of things for her to look for… I started telling her to do things instead.  Run around the tulip* tree three times! Go touch the fence!  Run over to the white door! Run around the tulip tree! Stand right there and jump to touch a dogwood branch! Spin around four times! Run around the tulip tree!  (That one was her favorite and she requested it a few times. “Say, ‘run around the tree!’” she would instruct me.)

*It has tulips planted around it. It is not a variety of tree that produces tulips, no, although that would be awesome. Tulips are my favorite flower.

Anyway, that is my parenting hint of the day.  She loved it, and it was great fun for me, too. As a bonus, she was so worn out when I took her in that she wanted to go straight to bed instead of taking a bath. (She is a bit of an insomniac so her desire to go to sleep is always celebrated.)

Incidentally, I also do a minor version of this in the grosser public bathrooms.  Can you touch your head? Can you rub your belly? Can you stand on one foot? Can you point at your knee?  Anything to keep her from touching the toilet or running her hands over the trash can.

Try it!

In other news, I ordered that paper I talked about from Staples Monday morning. It arrived Tuesday, as did an email that said my $32 rebate is being processed.  Talk about easy!