Childhood Re-Memories

Is rememory a word? You can remember, can you have a rememory? I could look it up, but I think I'll just claim it as my word for now. Until someone else says otherwise.

One of the things I love about being a Mum, is the chance it gives me to relive so many of my happy childhood memories.

Not only does it give me a shedload of warm, good feelings and an ability to share stuff with my kids, it helps me relate, as a Mum, to my parents more. They did all the same things with us.

http://www.angeldelightdesserts.co.uk/

I was making Instant Whip dessert the other evening and marvelling at the fact that it still smells the same as it did when I was a kid, and my four year old asked if he could run his fingers around the bowl when I'd done. "It's the first time he's ever run his fingers around a bowl" thinks I. And it made me giggle.

And it's not just the joy of eating 'kids' puddings all the time that makes me giggle. Although Jelly, Instant Whip, Apple Crumble and Ice Cream will always make me giggle more than Tiramisu or Passion Fruit Cheesecake. My taste buds enjoy Tiramisu and Passion Fruit Cheesecake, but they're grown up puddings, not for giggling at. Jelly just downright makes me smile. Making Jelly for my kids makes me smile.

And baking, which I'm missing at the moment, currently oven-less that I am. But I love that too, and I'm using all my Mum's and Grandma's old recipes. Well, the Google searched internet version of what I remember as Mum and Grandma's recipes. Sponge Cakes and Cup Cakes, which I'm decorating as much as my four year old is. And having just as much fun. Home made Birthday cakes, made in secret. Flapjacks and biscuits. Chocolate fridge cake! Yum. This post is going to make me hungry. I'll change course.

Toys and games too, I 'oversee' playing hide and seek with my two boys. Suggesting places to hide from memories of where I used to hide, playing with my brothers all those decades ago.

Building lego creations with my four year old, and realising I still make my houses in the same way.

Getting involved in their imaginary play, I can be a Pirate or a Shop Customer or a Titanic Crew Member.

http://www.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx

Making things out of old cereal packets, toilet roll tubes, buttons and foil. Glue, glitter and rounded scissors. I'm grinning from ear to ear.

Stickers! Yay! And drawing with crayons and pencils, I get to do this stuff with my kids every day. The kid in me is rejoicing.

Reading them my favourite childhood books at bedtime, watching them first enjoy a movie I loved as a child.

And I know there's so much more to come, starting school now but right through their childhood, their teens and even their adult lives. I'll be less involved in the boys lives by then of course. They won't think me cool enough. But I still hope to giggle and smile as I watch them enjoy the good things in life that I recall.

I catch my Mum now sometimes, a little smile to herself as she watches me parenting my boys. She's been there, she's remembering. And it makes her smile too.

So, until the day my sons say "Muuuum, you're cramping our style dude. Go be a grown up" or words to that affect, I'll carry on playing. And giggling. And smiling.

One of my favourite quotes is; "we don't stop playing because we get old, we get old because we stop playing".

And I'm having way too much fun with my kids to get old just yet.