Picking Up Sticks {The Ordinary Moments}

There is one thing that all children love – picking up sticks. From the moment LP and Little Man learnt to walk they would toddle around and pick up sticks constantly. Even now they will pick up sticks as we walk along and save them in the basket of the pushchair, or hold onto them for dear life.

Those sticks aren’t just sticks to the children. They’re a magic wand, a sword, a tennis racket or anything else their imagination decides the stick will be that day and Little Man has started collecting sticks, so that he will always have a choice of imaginary objects to use, whatever happens.

Little Man can spend hours going in search of a stick, bringing it back to us and then going in search of another one, repeating this process until he has a pile of sticks that he straightens up and looks after, adding to it continuously until it’s time to go home.

LP and Little Man are collectors. They love an adventure but they love to have something to show for it at the end, something to take home to remind them of that day, that outing or even the walk home. We have shells in Little Man’s room that we’ve collected, stones in the back garden, pine cones everywhere and now there are sticks too.

I love the children’s imaginations. I love their collections and I really love the fact that they want to remember the days that we have had – even though there will be many, many more times to pick up sticks.