So a few months ago, I bought a sandbox for my girls to play with in the backyard. As far as tactical parenting mistakes go, this was one of my biggest.
It seemed like a simple solution to a rather annoying problem... my girls like to dig. I can't blame them, they have watched me for years out in my garden, planting flowers, shrubs, and trees. I even went so far as to buy them cute little gardening tool sets complete with gloves, spades, rakes and sun visors. (See what an enabler I am???? Geez, I was BEGGING for trouble!) So what did they do with these cute tools? They would follow me around and dig up what I had just planted. They would "help" me weed the garden by pulling up one or two weeds along with all of my annual flowers. They would take buckets and bowls from their indoor play kitchen, fill them with mulch from my garden beds and dump them out all over the patio and grass. They were kids being kids for sure, but they were making a huge mess.
So I had this epiphany... I'll buy them a sandbox. Yeah, that's the ticket. They won't dig in my mulch anymore, they'll dig in the sandbox. Great!!! Their digging will all be confined to one little space. Yeah, that's it. I'll buy a really cute one that has an adorable circus tent fabric, shade cover on it to keep them shaded in style while they play. I am the smartest mother EVER! I'll order 500 pounds of sand to keep them entertained all summer while I sit on the patio drinking sangria and toasting to my profound intelligence. What could possibly go wrong???
After the first week, I realized it was messier than I thought it was going to be. Occasionally, the girls and their friends would track sand in the house and sand would sometimes end up outside of the sandbox and on the patio. But it was nothing that a broom and a well-placed towel inside the back door to wipe their feet couldn't handle.
After a month, I was definitely starting to question the purchase.
Two months and 200 pounds of sand tracked into my house later, I am now ready to admit defeat. I have sand everywhere. According to my daughters, the best part of having a sandbox is figuring out all the places you can put sand other than inside a sandbox. And my girls are creative! They would dump it all over themselves, throw it at each other, feed it to their brother, pour it in their pool and water table, dump it in my garden, bring it inside the house and the straw that broke the camel's back, turning the entire sandbox into a mixing bowl in which to make chocolate chip cookies (with bucketfuls of mulch as their chocolate chips of course). It's no longer a sandbox; it's an eyesore.
I am the type of mother that doesn't let my kids use paint in my house because it's too messy. I rarely let them play with play-doh, and when I do it's always the 30 minutes immediately preceding the arrival of my cleaning lady. Whenever we get home from a trip to the beach, the first thing I do is vacuum all the sand out of my car. So why exactly did I buy a sandbox??? Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with sand inside my house if that house happens to be situated on a beach on Cape Cod or in the Virgin Islands.
So this morning I put it up on craigslist, giving it away to the first gullible parent that will haul the entire thing off of my property and out of my life. I'm not saying that anyone who owns a sandbox is insane (although I am implying it). What I AM saying is that someone like me, who is anal and can't stand a mess should never buy one. If after reading this you still think owning a sandbox is for you, come on by and pick mine up. It's yours free.
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