By Carmen Markowski, Discovery Toys Team Leader

Do you find there are some things you put off? Sometimes it’s an overdue phone call or e-mail to a friend, sometimes it’s cleaning out the cutlery drawer. I hate to admit it, but I even waste time and energy just thinking about these things that I’ve put off for yet another week. Is there some guilt? A little, but I get over it.

There is one particular area of my life, where I’m tempted to put things off and recently have decided I just can’t. You probably know which area of life I’m talking about…it’s with my family. In particular, I’m thinking of my kids. Right now I have three kids under the age of six. Nobody told me what a needy time this would be in their lives and I guess I wasn’t smart enough to have figured it out before hand. Would I have changed my decision to have three? No way. But perhaps I would have been better prepared for this time in my life.

It seems like there is an endless list of things to be done…around the house and with the family, not to mention if you work part-time or full-time. So the moments I’m thinking of, are when my four year old asks me to play lego or read a book. Two things I happen to enjoy, but when I’m in the middle of something…sometimes business related, but sometimes not, it is very tempting to say five more minutes. And let’s face it, those five minutes often turn into fifteen or twenty. I hate to admit, even getting a glass of milk for my boy, gets promised and forgotten all too easy, especially when I’m at the computer.

So yes, we are adults and there is an endless list of things for us to get done in a day, but we are parents too and sometimes it’s in those little actions like taking a break from whatever we are doing, to read a book or play some lego, which show our children they are more important than our cleaning duties or our work.

This is why I encourage you to put off that overdue phone call to a friend. If they are a true friend, they’ll understand. And frankly, your life will be fine if the cutlery drawer stays a mess a few months longer. But that special little person in your life will not be so little next year or the year after that. The time you spend with them will be remembered and cherished for years, and not just by him…by you! Play today.