Today's 10 for Tuesday is 10 ways to feel like a kid again. Now, I might only be in my late 30s, but I don't feel like I've been kid-like in ages. Silly yes, but not all silliness is being like a kid. I've not really been great about recapturing that joy lately, so most of my play is knitting or word games, which even when I played them as a kid never felt too much like being a kid.
Here goes nothing.
1. Read a book. Depending on how old a kid you want to be, reading a YA novel or a children's classic is the best. My favorites (in the classics) include: The Little Princess, The Velveteen Rabbit and the Serendipity books. I also read a ton of the Bobsey Twins. I read a lot of twin books, because being a Gemini I always felt like reading about twins (if I'd had a twin, then I'd probably have read different books). I also read the Holliday books, because kid detectives are awesome!
2. Dance. You could ask one of my friends if I've done the Hokey Pokey in public and I promise I will deny everything.
3. Look at toy patterns. It might be crafting and thus a little less kid like, but it is still awesome, and kid's toys are a great way to get that feeling of joy. I especially like Sheldon the turtle, though I'm looking for a cute frog.
4. Singing. Most people probably grew up with children's songs and a subset of whatever their parents listened to, the first music I remember was a Popeye album and Pink Floyd's The Wall. Making up your own songs is way more fun, though singing along (and butchering the lyrics) is a time honored tradition.
5. Paint by Number. These are always a lot of fun, though I got into these when I was anal enough to want to be careful so they'd look as much like the picture as possible.
6. Children's painting books. You know the ones I mean, with the vaguely pastel lines that you then painted with either a brush or a cotton swab dipped in water. Those are children's gold.
7. Stickers and fake tattoos. I remember collecting the sheets of puffy stickers and we still have a drawer full of sticker sheets, though now we use them to close envelopes for things like birthday cards.
8. Eating ice cream with raspberry sauce. My dad would give us bowls of strawberry (or another red flavor) with raspberry sauce for dessert and tell us we were having bat's blood and bat's brains. It didn't stop us from eating it. Also acceptable to my child mind was have a quarter of a Pepperidge Farm cake for dessert.
9. Blueberries with sugar and milk. That was often breakfast in the year or two we lived in a house with high bush blueberries outside the front door.
10. The ocean. For me being a kid always brings to mind body surfing, Marco Polo, pretending to be a mermaid and searching for beach glass and clams at the beach (though mermaids and Marco Polo were more often pool games).
What makes you feel most like a kid?
