Getting the Sillies Out

The kids and I have been sick these past couple of days, and we've all been quite grumpy because of it. Nobody likes being sick! The Goob wasn't in the mood to hang out with The Bean and me, so he went off into another room to play. A few minutes later, he emerged carrying a paper shredder. I didn't even know we had a paper shredder! He asked me to help him take it out of the box, so we took it out and inspected it. He was very proud of his discovery, but was perplexed because it didn't turn on when he hit the button. I showed him how you have to plug some things in before they'll work, and he was fascinated. Then we turned on the shredder and put a few pieces of paper through it. This kept us entertained for quite some time! He kept running around the house finding paper, and I would tell him if it was okay to put through the shredder or not.
When he was tired of running around (he's sick after all) we sat down and stirred the box of shredded paper. Because my boy is 3 years old, the next logical step for him was to throw it all up in the air and pretend it was confetti. My first thought was, "No!! Mess!!", but then I thought, "Who cares? Maybe a mess is exactly what we need!".
So what did we do? We made it bigger! We shred more paper and had a blast throwing it up, letting it fall, rolling around in it and being very, very silly.

The moral of the story, if there is one, is that sometimes you just need to let go. Have some fun, don't worry about the mess. The memories are worth it!