Adventure's Expectations
I heard somewhere that it’s become popular to be “busy.” I don’t know if it feels super popular to me, but I’m OK with this concept unless it’s always the kind of busy that keeps us in the office, or doing chores, or working toward reaching some kind of unreachable perfection dictated by Pinterest and social media. I’m not OK with that kind of busy (not to say that I sometimes don’t fall into the trap). The kind of busy I want to see more of in my life, and hope for others, is wrapped up in experiences, self-care, exploring, learning, and working toward acceptance of our own here and now.
When Max and I met in college 10 years ago, our definition of adventure was pretty grand. We were scaling 14,000’ mountain peaks with views of what seemed like the whole world, backcountry skiing up and down extreme powdery lines, camping in a new place every weekend, cliff jumping from 40-60’ into the local reservoir, or trying our hand at barefoot water skiing. And lets be honest, all of it with a considerable amount of really cheap beer. Y’all we were having so much fun!
Fast forward 5 years, we’re [pretty much] adults earning our professional degrees in a big city, working office jobs, have a car payment and a few more injuries under our belts, and buy better beer. Adventure changed to skinnier skis and skiing icier pitches, fewer and shorter mountain peaks, car camping when we could, figuring out public transportation, and buying exotic pets—Enter: Alice the rat and Hamlet the pig.
Five years later, here we are with 2 toddlers (talk about adventure), both of us have careers and are in bed by 9:30pm each night. This doesn’t mean that we’ve lost our desire, or [physical] ability to adventure the great adventures, but now there are a couple small humans requiring naps and food and snuggles and sunscreen and thumbs in the mitten thumb hole and potty breaks or diaper changes and the orange hat not the blue one and temps above 0…and and and. Our lives have required us to adjust our expectations for adventure to fit our current chapter of life. Accepting this is something we are figuring out: children are quite portable. We all just need to be a bit flexible. It didn’t happen over night, and I’ll admit that Max and I both occasionally feel slight resentment for not having as much “me” time as we used to. But over all, this chapter of life is pretty sweet and full of adventures, they just look more like swimming—with water wings, canoeing—slower rivers, cross country skiing—on warm days, skiing—down the bunny hill, and sneaking outside during nap time. We can picnic in the woods and go on short walks through the countryside—don’t forget diapers; we can adventure to the back yard and find bugs and slugs and worms, then find the birds who will eat them, or sit near a pond and listen to the spring time frogs chirp. It’s all very exciting.
Adventure is a lot slower. Adventure is different. But teaching these nuggets to adventure in ways accessible to them, and in ways that push their comfort zone (not ours), fills them with desire for new and breath-giving experiences so that, if they want, they’ll be able to adventure our way someday. What makes an adventure an adventure is the thrill of experiencing something new and exciting. Even if it’s boring to us, the look of wonder on the kids’ faces is thrilling in itself…or let’s be honest, if the “look” is more “I wanna go home” at least they were exposed to something fresh, and Mom and Dad got a break from the house. Recognizing this has helped us to slow down and appreciate the little things that we were always going too fast to notice. We’ve had to accept the slowness and brevity of our “now,” which is a blessing. Every day doesn’t have to be spent inside with laundry, dirty dishes, messy rooms, and everything else making it on the to-do list, and every day doesn’t have to be spent on some crazy wild ride. We are told to “find a balance” with it all (that’s also popular, right?). Everyone’s balance looks different, and balance doesn’t mean equality. Balance should look more like acceptance, self-care, and sanity in this life season of kids. Can you imagine?!
Here are some of our favorite kid friendly adventures, particularly on the Big Lake, but definitely adaptable for most places:
Go to the park.
Find a lake or pond: throw rocks, splash, swim, fish.
Go on a short hike: backpacks and snacks make this easier, but if you don’t have one, go slow, let kiddo walk, find “treasures” and tucker that little buddy out!
Go on a walk: down the road, down the drive way, through the woods. Find little things that make it interesting along the way - jump in puddles, funny sounding birds, big rocks to throw in little puddles, color changing leaves, cracks to jump over.
“Nighty rides”: (pajamas required) between dinner and bed, hop on bikes (or get in the car) and go for an ice cream treat.
Go skiing (it’s not as hard as you’d think; a whole post about this topic coming up soon).
Go camping and spend the night in a tent (even in the back yard).
Run through sprinklers (if you don’t have sprinklers, they make sweet hose attachments).
Pick fruit: in the wild or at an orchard.
Find pretty flowers for a bouquet (let the kids collect their own using safety scissors).
Dig out a snow fort.
Build a couch/blanket fort.
Plant a garden (or just a seed) and let the kids get their hands dirty.
Fly a kite.
Blow bubbles in the wind.
Catch worms and bugs in a jar.
Go on a picnic: backyard, park, mountain, living room.
Adult adventure will not be put on the back burner forever. That’s why God made babysitters (and friends and family). Use them! It has been SO important for each of us, and our marriage, to dedicate a couple days each month to reconnecting to one another and our need for escape and adventure. Even when the kids are able to keep up, we’ll still choose to leave them behind every now and then, for the sake of “modeling good self-care”…amiright?!
How do you and yours choose to adventure? What ways do you make it accessible to your kiddos? We’d love to hear your thoughts, and can always use more ideas!