Playing in Dirt | Kansas Documentary Photographer
As adults, I think we lose our sense of fun. We grow up, we have bills, deadlines and responsibilities and totally forget the lesson we learned as kids. That anything can be a toy or can be fun, the only limit is your imagination.
Before I get too far into my personal realization, I want to mention the awesome opportunity you’ll have below to check out fellow photographer’s blogs as part of the blog circle I’m in this month. But more on that later…
This is one thing that my daughter has taught me over the years: to engage my imagination at any point to take a seemingly normal or boring item and turn it into a new world. Being a photographer, I get to document this imagination down to the little details.
As the weather has warmed over the last few months, she has taken the sand out of her sandbox and combined it with the dirt and mud behind my peony bushes to create everything from a beach to a kitchen. Last weekend, we stumbled upon a Little Tikes sand table for toddlers set out as a “curb alert”...which is basically someone setting it out for trash and we decide to make someone else’s trash our personal treasure.
We brought it home and I jokingly commented “Hey, it’s your new kitchen!” and bam! She became the next dirt-Gordon Ramsey. She immediately went back to her beach or kitchen (whatever it was the last time she played) and transferred all her sand-dirt to a bucket. She then took her little plastic tea set and baking items in her sandbox and started making “chocolate sand pie”. My daughter would stop every so often to gather leaves, berries (aka: weeds), dandelions and pieces of my lilacs to add to her recipes.
It’s funny to me how, as an adult, my first reaction was to cringe at the mess she was making. The dirt under her fingernails, her muddy feet, and incredibly dirty clothes seemed inevitable. But really, all those things can be washed or scrubbed...even the floor if she were to track it inside. So really, what was the big deal? I had to decide to just let go, let her play and then let soap and water work it’s magic at the end.
After that, I decided to sit down and let her serve me some of that “chocolate sand pie” and a “cup of coffee”...and I raved about how delicious they both were.
What are some ways you find yourself learning to let go and let your child enjoy their imaginative play? Reply in the comments below and tell me about it, I’d love to know I’m not alone!
Now for the blog circle I mentioned earlier. I’ve joined with some incredible photographers for this circle, so make sure you check out my friend, Stacey, who is one of the incredible Newborn Photographers in Albuquerque. Her blog post is about her client ordering process, so go check out her post!
Till next time…
