Quality time

There's always been this debate over quantity verses quality, especially as it pertains to family time.

In my opinion and experience, it takes quantity time to have the truly quality times with family.  Quality doesn't happen on a schedule.  Quality time can't be manufactured like some consumable good.  The most quality of times are spontaneous and often arise in the midst of the mundane or the chaos of the everyday.


...like the moment when you're typing a blog post while thoughts are fresh and your seven year old daughter is talking at you incessantly, as always, and you look at her and realize just how precious she is...so you take her in your arms, pull her close, and hold her, smelling her snow fresh hair, feeling her warm little body that is growing all to quickly, and knowing how much it means to her to be the center of your attention for that short moment in time.   :)

It strikes me as insane that people work long hours to be able to afford beautiful homes with every imaginable comfort, but little time to enjoy it, or work overtime to be able to afford a vacation, for a week of "family time", all the while missing out on the precious, everyday moments. 


As a homeschooling, stay-at-home mom, I no doubt have an award winning quantity of time with my kids, and recently my husband began working from home, so we really have an upper hand when it comes down to "family time". But, I'll be honest, not all of that time is what I call "quality".  At least not in the sense of enjoyment.  Disciplining and training children is tough stuff, emotionally and physically! Spiritually, if you want to do it right...and being with them every waking hour, though very beneficial to training, means that there is a lot more to deal with!  Let's not forget the never ending tasks of running a house like cleaning and cooking, when surrounded by four crazy, starving children all day is literally like sweeping sand from a beach and throwing food into a black hole.  Training children to be responsible and tidy seems an impossible task!   Therefore, much of the time is not the kind of "quality" alluded to in this ceaseless debate.  Certainly there is little more important that some of these difficult tasks, but "fun" or "precious" are the last adjectives I have in mind to describe them. But it is out of these times when those quality moments arise simply by being there. When the light bulb illuminates and a child learns something new on their own, when you see an unexpected act of selfless kindness from one child to another, or when you suddenly find yourself in their world and for a moment you remember what it was like to be a child because they've inspired you, or simply when you let yourself let go and enjoy the moment with them!

Last night was a perfect example.

All day I looked forward to going to bed early and losing myself in my latest novel--time to read is a very precious commodity when you have five young children, you know--and on high-pressure days, time to unwind is most welcome.  Bed time came strictly at 8 o'clock, and I made my way to the kids' room to supervise the end of the day "clean up"...I had already fought with them for an hour over it and two had missed out on their dessert because they hadn't finished picking up when they were supposed to, so the night could have easily been defined by "frustration"!  Sitting on the floor, my littlest girl came and plopped into my lap and I brushed her hair while two of the older children finished their jobs.  With the toys and clothes put away at last, my middle little girl came and took her place next to me, wanting to show me some of her "favorite things" she had stored in her treasure box and letting me braid her hair as she did so.  Meanwhile, my littlest girl had found some books to look at.

My oldest daughter and husband came in with the camera to take a picture of the girls' braids, so they could see them, and naturally it became her turn to have her hair braided.  My son, the oldest, flipped through the radio stations to find appropriate music for the dance that my little girls were now doing.   I watched my little beauties dance to Mozart as I braided the long locks of my nearly eight year old daughter, amazed by how quickly her hair had grown since she took the scissors to it at age five, listening to my husband talk to my son as he laid on the bottom bunk behind me. 

Just as soon as I finished braiding her hair, my daughter hopped up and said, "daddy's turn!" and my two oldest girls proceeded to make little tiny pony tails all over his military regulation hair...while I read through an ABC book with my two year old daughter.  We sang the alphabet, traced the letters with our fingers, looked at pictures, giggled, and snuggled.  My nearly 10 year old son couldn't resist and soon sat on the bed behind me and began to practice making pony tails in my hair.  

After everyone, especially daddy, was newly beautified, the kids showed off their moves, the two oldest gals drawing upon their memories of ballet, my son being just as goofy as possible, my darling two year old insisting on dancing with her daddy, spiked up, pony-tailed hair and all. 

Two hours past bed time, every ounce of energy spent, baby boy awake and ready to eat, we performed the nightly ritual of cleaning teeth and saying prayers, so thankful for time like the hours we had just spent together.  Not one remembering the difficulties of the day, or thinking about what we had missed or how we were sabotaging a perfectly good schedule...

It's times like those that make the world go round, when I look around me and feel so blessed, when my cup runneth over!  and I'm so glad that I'm there for them.