"Yes" Mom Challenge with a Twist

Can I crack the egg? {shells won't be in the brownies if I do it}
Can I pick out my own clothes today? {your mom already laid out clothes}
Can I have a Popsicle? {you have on a white shirt}
Can we cut pictures out of the paper? {I don't feel like picking up tiny scraps of paper for a week}
Can we play with water balloons? {then we'll have wet clothes & we'll have to pick up balloon pieces}
Can we paint with shaving cream? {your dad probably needs that shaving cream}
Can we make smoothies? {that will create a lot of dishes to do}
Can we give the dog a bath? {you'll be a mess AND the dog will be a mess}
Can we go to the park with the big tire swing? {but we'll drive right past 2 perfectly good parks on the way to that one}

This list could go on forever, but I'm cutting it off here because today is the 1st of July and for the entire month of July Jill Savage is challenging all moms to say "Yes!" to things that you might normally say no to. Say "YES" to things that might create more work for you, give you something else to clean up, and take up time. What would it hurt if the kids make smoothies today? I'll have dishes to wash whether they make smoothies or not, so go ahead, have some fun!

Here's the twist for my "Yes" mom challenge. I'm not a mom. But it just so happens that this challenge is for the month of July and I'm watching two little darling boys, A & R, for the month of July. They are 2 & 3. I watched them last July too and we had tons of fun hanging out at parks, napping, and playing with play dough. But this year, they are getting older and to the point that we can do more fun things. I want to make this a fun month for them so I'm taking the challenge to say "yes" to things that I might not normally say yes to.

Since today is July 1st I started today by taking baby steps. We went to the park and then stopped at a farmer's market. It was a pretty nice day, but just a tad too hot for my liking and we had already been outside for a couple of hours. I was ready to get back in the car and blast the A/C to cool off. I turned the car on and rolled the windows down to try to cool it off a little while I was buckling everyone in. As I got in and got ready to pull out I started putting all the windows back up since I had the A/C set as high as it would go. I hear a little voice from the back asking if we could leave the windows down, please.

Normally I would say no. I'm hot. I want, no NEED, air conditioning! But I paused just long enough to wonder, what is it really going to hurt? I said "YES!" There's really no reason we can't all be happy here. I can let them keep their windows down and I can keep the A/C on in the front. It's true that I was not being energy efficient, I was "cooling the whole East Coast" as my grandma has been known to say, but I was comfortable and the boys were delighted.

More exciting things to come as I say "Yes" to A & R having a fantastic July!