Learning to let go

Don’t worry, Caleb isn’t heading off to college just yet! This life lesson was brought on by a community yard sale in our neighbourhood and since we are moving two short months, this yard sale was the golden moment I had been waiting for to unload toys, books, clothes and general clutter from our lives.

I wasn’t sure how Caleb would handle the concept - yes, these toys are yours and yes, you are going to watch me give them away to strangers. I had a fleeting thought of just loading up a bag of toys and sneaking off to the yard sale on my own, but I decided that it was time for him to learn about letting go. I started off by giving him the talk – you are growing up and you don’t need all these baby toys anymore, but there are other little boys and girls who would really like to play with your old toys. I also added a touch of ‘we can’t take everything with us on the plane to Jamaica’! He seemed completely fine with that. I then let him decide which toys he would keep (his favorites) and which ones he would like to give to other kids (not his favorites).

I wasn’t sure if his positive attitude would change during the actual yard sale, but Caleb was completely fine with watching his toys go. He even came up with a sales pitch ‘You can have that, it’s not my favorite!’.

We visited Lawrencetown Beach this weekend, or as Caleb called it Lorax Town Beach!

Getting his feet wet

Pantless walk back to the car

On a different note, I thought I’d share this little DIY tip that I came up with. Caleb is now the perfect height to directly smash his head on the corner of the countertop. The loud thud (which makes me wince just thinking about it), followed by cries of ‘I bumped my noggin!”, had become all too familiar in our house. I needed to do something to solve this problem. I tried to think of what soft, protective items I had laying around the house. Unfortunately I’d just sold a bunch of teddy bears, so those wouldn’t work! Then it hit me – socks! I grabbed a couple of socks from the permanent pile of ones with no mates that I’ve held on to for years thinking the match would magically turn up. I added some flagging tape for extra visibility and voila! It may not be pretty, but I’d trade points in the style department for a safe noggin any day!