Stop and Smell the Roses

August 10, 2012 By Lanaya

I love that my daughter can see the positive side of everything, no matter how big or small. It’s the innocence and purity of a toddler that makes you smile especially when you see so much anxiety in your day to day life. Reagan is constantly running around with a smile on her face and laughing about something. It is sweet and beautiful to watch and sometimes we adults have to take a step back and slow down, see life through our young child’s eyes.

Take this morning for example…On the way to daycare Reagan was sitting in her car seat playing with her sunglasses. About a minute later I hear “broken mama, eyes, broken.” I turn around to see that she had snapped off one of the side pieces of the glasses.

“Oh no, you broke them,” I said to her.

“Broken, Oh No!” she exclaimed back to me. “Sorry mama, broken.”

“It’s ok, honey. We will have to buy you a new pair.”

“Here mama…broken.” She handed the glasses to me and I put them in the cupholder and we drove along.

“Mama, I see it? Glasses?” I handed her the main part of the glasses less the broken arm. She started laughing and out of nowhere put the glasses on her face. They were a bit crooked of course but she thought it was the funniest thing. “Look mama, still work.” I looked at her and we both started laughing. How simple it was for her to just go about it like nothing had happened. She made a positive out of a negative. Reagan took her new love Elle with us today and she thought Elle would benefit from wearing the broken sunglasses too. It was one of the cutest things I had seen.

For us it’s all about how quickly we can get this done or rush to that appointment. For a toddler it’s about exploring the journey that leads them there. At times it just takes something small like watching the joy your toddler gets out of a broken pair of sunglasses to just stop for a minute and appreciate things. I am going to keep that in mind today. Take the time to appreciate a situation. Look at it as a broken pair of toddler sunglasses that became a prop for an elephant named Elle who will forever have her eyes protected from the sun.

It’s an old adage, but sometimes we need to hear it every now and then. Stop and smell the roses.