By Gretchen Rubin
My children make me happy for many reasons, of course. But it strikes me that one reason that they make me happy is that they encourage me to engage more deeply with the physical world.
Left to my own instincts, I’d drift absent-mindedly through the apartment, reading, writing, and eating cereal for dinner every night. Through my daughters, I become much more alive to ordinary pleasures—the comfort of our weirdly soft fleece blanket, the vanishing sweetness of cotton candy, the textures and colors of the Play-Doh, scented markers, and velvety pipe cleaners left scattered around the kitchen.
I'm trying to push myself to enter more deeply into childish pleasures. I love blowing bubbles, but I haven't blown bubbles in a long time. I delight in looking at new boxes of Crayons... More...
