Invitation to Play Camping Picnic

It has been so cold out that we have not truly spent time outside in months. We have had snow on the ground, falling or below zero temps since November and I miss one on one outside time with little S. On my phone I have a picture of him on our last well truthfully only picnic - it was a mommy and son day. We went to the library and chose a bunch of books, then I drove us to a park we had never been to before and put out a blanket, snacks and gave him a bottle while I read all our books from the library to him. We played on the swings and slide and spent time in the quiet park together. He collected leaves and handed them to me. At first I thought he was cleaning up the park that his OCD had kicked in but soon I realized these were treasures that we needed to bring home and I put them in our bag with the library books. It was such a great day and one I know I will always treasure. Today I wanted to recreate that sort of with a invitation to play.

I made a camp fire (we didn't have one on our original picnic but its about 60-70 degrees colder outside than it was then) using some toilet paper tubes and a paper towel tube, colored construction paper and some red and glittered tissue paper. Considering I can count the number of times I have been camping with a camp fire on less fingers than I have on my left hand and I have not been in maybe 30 years I think I did a pretty darn good job.  I grabbed a jean duvet cover as it seemed the most appropriate for the event and laid it out. I added two meals from his play food.

meal one: bacon lettuce and tomato sandwich

meal two: bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich

I then put out a basket of play fruit and filled one of his cooking pans with mini marshmallows. I twisted together 2 pipe cleaners to form each of two sticks. Not for the first time in the last two months have I said to myself  "man I wish I had brown pipe cleaners" each of the times I have said this to myself I have stopped and taken a moment to think: I am so blessed to have this problem. I never thought I would need a pipe cleaner in my adult life having almost given up hope of having a child this little miracle has brought so much into my life. I hope I can be a good enough Mommy to deserve him". Not having brown I had to settle for orange. I twisted them together and then added a marshmallow or two to the ends and place them near the fire.

When he saw it after breakfast, he promptly cleaned up his toy food, set onto the couch the marshmallows on a stick, threw away the other marshmallows and got back inside the box from yesterday to color. This invitation to play apparently was  to teach mommy some you win and some you just do for the memories.