Ladder

I believe life is all about cycles, seasons, and phases. Right now I’m hard core in the mom phase so a lot of the insights I have come from my children. It is pretty amazing even though exhausting as well. I am trying to focus on progress over perfection these days so this will be a short blog today. I’d rather share a short story now than a perfected piece way past when my sisters expected me to post. :)

LJ is four years old now and most days he can get through the day without a nap and not be a complete bear by bedtime. However, we still make him go in his room for “nap time” so that we can have some down time ourselves. Anyway, this past weekend he went into his room for nap time with a bit of a struggle. He wanted to play with some loud toy that I did not want him to play with so I took it away from him and put it on top of his bookshelf where he cannot reach. He stayed in his room about two hours like he usually does and I could hear him playing on the monitor the entire time. He usually flips through books, plays with some random toys, talks to himself, etc.

When it was time to get up, I went into his room to change him back into play clothes and he directed my attention to a stack of books by his bookshelf. “Mama, look what I did! I made a ladder so that I could reach my toy.” He was referring to the toy that I had put on top of the bookshelf before nap time so that he could not reach it. As I looked at the “ladder” that he had made (picture below), I thought it looked a little unsteady and was amazed that he was actually able to get his toy. However, when I looked closer, I could see that the top book was wedged just perfectly under one of the shelves to make it more stable – he had built it just tall enough and found the perfect final book to tuck under the shelf for stability. I couldn’t even be mad that he had gotten the toy that he was not supposed to be playing with! I was in awe of his creativity and ingenuity!

Almost a week later and I am still thinking of his book “ladder.” How can I apply this creativity and grit in my own life?! What would it look like for an adult who is told they cannot do something, to build a “book ladder” and reach it anyway?! What goals or ambitions do you have that someone has told you may be unachievable or unreachable? How can you say “F You, I’ll build a book ladder and reach it by myself?”!! Here’s to building our own book ladders, one step errrr book at a time…