I miss being a kid...

Note to self: When you have kids, make sure you build forts with them. Often. And please don't be all adult-y afterward and tell them they have to clean it all up before bedtime. Let them keep it up for a few days.

In short... let your kids be kids, Lizzie. Because today you really missed being a kid.

Thanks, self.

I worked all day today and make big grown up decisions and I had to talk about firing someone and make more stressful choices and in the middle of the day all I wanted to do was make a fort. Right there in my office. Around my desk. I wanted to take off my shoes and get a juice box and some wonder bread and the Power Rangers movie and sit under my desk. If I had actually made that fort I can promise you that in seconds, I'd become the cool coordinator and everyone would want to work on my team. Either that or I would have become the weird one in the office... but that's a price I'm willing to pay.

Don't you just miss being a kid sometimes? Spending all day every day playing?

Like playing the lava game... we could play the best lava game EVER in my office because we could easily climb over cubicles and leap from the printer to the copier. Everyone played some sort of variation of the lava game growing up... for some it was sharks or acid or space. Where did we learn that game? Maybe from our older siblings. But what about those who don't have older siblings? And yes, they play the lava game in Italy. And England. I witnessed both. How did the phenomenon start?


My cousins and siblings and I spent hours in the tree in our backyard one summer. We brought boards up there and had "rooms." One branch was called the "lobby" and we called it the tree hotel. We'd just sit up there all day. Molly and I also spent a week for three consecutive summers up the the plum tree picking fruit for our "Plum Ice Cream," which was actually disgusting but our parents would eat it and rave about it to humor us. Grandma Di was the best about making us feel good about our Plum Ice Cream. What was in it Molly? I think it was something like pulverized plums, whipped cream, lots of sugar, sometimes some juice, and other random things.

Sometimes when Molly and I were mad at our moms, we'd run away to the side of Molly's house and we'd bring a blanket and a Great Harvest cookie. If we were really mad, we'd run away to Dagny Gold's house and when we finally went back to Aunt Katie's we were annoyed to realized that our moms didn't even know we were gone.

In one of our houses in Chicago the room Kathy and I shared had a walk-in closet. I remember taking books, blankets, my stuffed elephant, and fruit snacks and climbing up to the top shelf of the closet. I'd sit up there forever reading. I remember getting huge stacks of books from the library and reading them all in just a few days.
We had a big pit across the street from that same house in Chicago. It had huge hills perfect for rolling and sledding. We loved going there after it had rained a ton because we got to play in the mud. I remember going to Danny's baseball games and playing spy under the bleachers. Sometimes if I was really nice the Treat Mom would give me game treat at the end. I remember playing soccer games on Saturdays and sometimes having to stay for Kathy's soccer games and my dad would get me a hot dog and berry starbursts to eat while I watched her. I remember summer swimming lessons.


Another summer my cousins and siblings and I discovered a gap between our neighbors fence and our fence. We played runaway children back there and build houses out of boxes. Molly and I played Animal City growing up. I still have all of my Animal City stuff. I miss doing that.
 Danny and I used to go to the park by our house with his best friend Adam and they would catch crawdads in the canal while I made swings out of the willow tree's branches by the lake.
I remember running around barefoot everywhere as a kid. I remember sitting on the front porch with my dad and watching the rain and thinking that it looked like a bunch of little bugs running all over the pavement. I remember my mom talking us to the park or the pool. I remember her drawing with chalk on our front steps. I remember rollerblading. I remember my skip-it that had a counter in it so I could keep track of all of the skips. I remember Saturday morning cartoons.

We would put on plays and sometimes stage the Olympics in the cul-de-sac we lived in. Neighborhood nightgames were a nightly occurrence. Once my friend Kristen Avers and this other red-headed girl and I put on Beauty and the Beast and I definitely played the part of the Beast. Awesome. I think I was Gaston too... I was basically all the boy parts. I remember riding bikes to the 7-11 with Danny and Kathy and getting laffy taffy and sour gummy worms... playing made up games like "Monsters" and "Swordfight" with all three of my siblings... rubbing my dad's shaving cream into the carpet when I was supposed to be taking a nap... sneaking into my sister's room during Sunday quiet time and reading the comics... spending hours making videos... singing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream coat with Kathy and Kendra at the top of our lungs while wearing various dress-ups... playing school and store and wrestling and exploring.

But now I am an adult. I have insurance. I have a 401k. I have a salary. I have to buy things and drive places and be grown up. That is why I am determined to allow my kids to be kids... and maybe sometimes play with them as if I was a kid again too.