When is a laundry basket not a laundry basket?

When is a laundry basket not a laundry basket?  When it’s a ball-pit of course!

With babies and children, one picture seldom tells the whole story.  Some of my favourite photos are part of a split-second sequence. Or they show a developing story over months and years.  So I love this week’s ‘dialogue‘ WordPress weekly photo challenge for the opportunity to convey the dialogue between two pictures.

Recently our little girl has had a real interest in everyday household objects.  Car keys, saucepans, mummy’s ‘big girl’ hair brushes. But the clear favourite is the laundry basket. Turn it upside down and climb over it, put your dolly on top and push it, Sit in it and get daddy to pull you along in your own personal ‘sleigh’.  The possibilities are endless.

These are two of my favourites – there were many other laundry basket possibilities!  With a child in the house there is always a pile of laundry, so the basket is always about somewhere!

Maya Angelou once said ‘you can’t use up creativity.  The more you use, the more you have‘. I am learning that the enormity of childhood creativity is a wonderful, beautiful thing.  I wish us adults could hold on to it a little better.  At the very least, I hope our daughter holds on to hers for a long, long time to come.

Hands up – I confess I am a bit of a Pinterest procrastinator! So when there’s something important to be done you can usually find me looking at pinned quotes or considering the feasibility of some overly ambitious Pinterest inspired home projects.  Here’s a sentimental little quote I came across earlier in the week.  I thought it seemed particularly apt:

‘Today I will be thankful for all the little socks and the grass stained jeans and the endless piles of laundry.  For there will come a day when the laundry basket is empty and these days will be profoundly missed’.

That day will come, of course.  But even when the laundry basket is just a (rather empty) laundry basket once more, the memory of ball-pits, sleighs, and baby obstacle courses will remain.