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Christina M. Currie

Christina M. Currie's Touch of Spice column appears Fridays in the Craig Daily Press. E-mail her at director@craig-chamber.com

I don't find it difficult to find something (or 1,000 somethings) to occupy my time on a construction site, but my children do.

I'm at a loss as to why that is. I would expect that kind of chaos, littered with interesting tools and unidentifiable pieces and parts, to be the exact environment that small children thrive in.

But, my daughters, 8-year-old Katie and 7-year-old Nikki, don't seem to find anything about that scene that's appealing.

Until recently.

They've been acting a bit different lately and actually leaving the car when we arrive at the home we're working on.

That changes the whole dynamic of a construction zone.

Nikki's excited about having a new room, but her future plans mainly focus on how she's going to set up her "cubby," a small crawlspace accessible via a door in her room. She wants a light, that's for sure, and a glass case with a key where she can display her animals.

That was different. The only animal she has to display is one we picked up for $2.99 as a checkout counter impulse buy. I didn't realize it was the beginning of a collection.

But, it evidently is.

One night, the girls blessed us with their presence INSIDE the house for once and spent their time with a stack of cardboard in the bathroom.

Interesting.

But, they were inside, they were having fun, and they weren't (I prayed) doing anything dangerous or making a mess.

When I checked in, I discovered what had captivated their attention so. Nikki had covered the bottom part of a cardboard box with blue painter's tape and wrapped green painter's tape (the $13 a roll stuff) around the top, forming it into a cute little house that had not one inch of cardboard showing through. She even used the tape to create little trees inside.

This creation was her animal house (which saves me from tracking down a glass case, but not from adding to her collection of actual animals), and she was extremely proud of it.

For about a second, the expense of replacing the tape flashed through my mind, then it occurred to me that was the cheapest diversion ever and a crafty project to boot.

Katie was working on her own tape creation, but she wasn't as invested in the final product as her sister was.

A few nights later, Nikki followed us into the house, but Katie opted to stay in the car.

Not long after, Nikki reported that her sister was crying in the car.

I ran out to see what was the matter and held my daughter as she sobbed, "I don't know what's wrong, I'm just sad."

I've felt like that before, so I told her there was nothing wrong with having a good cry when you felt like it.

Turns out, she was just missing her mom, which touched and wounded me. Touched because she wanted to spend more time with me, wounded because I know my daughters are getting shorted as we focus our attention on a project, the deadline for which is looming over us like a knife.

We decided we'd play a quick game together before heading to the house the next night and read together for a little while that night.

Then I coaxed her inside to "help" as a family.

We stood arm in arm scrubbing a window sill (made much more difficult with one hand, but worth it seeing the smile on my daughter's face).

Of course, she grew tired of "mommy" time faster than her tears would have indicated, and she was off to paint happy and sad faces on cardboard boxes.

Then Nikki came up to me, wearing a box on her head. The face painted on the box had tears dotted beneath the eyes.

"Why so sad, baby?" I asked.

"When I saw you standing with Katie, I thought you didn't love me anymore."

I reassured her that I would never, never, never stop loving her. She must have believed me, because she turned the box around so that I could see the painted smile and scampered off to paint some more.

I was reminded yesterday that life is about finding balance, something that we get many opportunities to do but rarely do well.

I also was reminded (yesterday. It was a very eye-opening day) that "your children are only children once."

I can't say that life still won't be about the house for the next 30 days or so, but I do have to remember that life isn't ONLY about the house.

And if it means we have to start working 30 minutes later, well, there's a darn good reason for that.

And it's 100 times more important.