Week 2

This was a week of sliding back into my old routines and trying to pull myself out. I did, as I noted before, get more engaged, but, the house suffered. Now I need to clarify that I am far from a neat freak, I can get stressed by visual clutter and it sends me into a PMS like tirade through the house wreaking stories of throwing toys away and letting the puppy eat hubby's shoes, mittens, books, clothes etc. that oh so quickly accumulate on the floor. So I need to add to my list, how to make tidy up fun for the whole family! Probably a tougher challenge than 52 new out of the house activities!
Miss J had a day where she was "off" and wanted to sit on the couch and watch TV all afternoon. I really struggled with this, but I eventually caved. She really wasn't herself and none of her usual favorites could entice her to get up and do something else. I felt really guilty, and bad, but after a quick friend sanity call, I realized that these days are going to happen, I'm not a bad mother and that choosing what the kids watch, favoring educational programming, that they may just learn something.

So for the get out of the house this week, we went to our local gardens with some friends. The gardens are free and a lot of fun to run around in, even in winter. The kids enjoyed pushing sticks through the ring of ice that had formed around the edge of the fountain, though their mittens quickly got wet and frozen which led us to the neighboring coffee shop for hot chocolate. I'll call this one a draw, since the intention wasn't going to the coffee shop, however necessity of warming up frozen fingers overruled any rules....let's face it maybe I should have called the rules, guidelines.

Our no TV for babysitting activities this week were:

• crafty bags. My oh so brilliant friend gave out crafty bag goodie bags at her son's birthday party and filled with all sorts of cool things like pom poms, silly putty, ribbon, tissue paper, scissors, glue, sticks and many other little things, my kids were entertained for hours. Miss J with the crafty stuff and little dude with the silly putty.
• play dough
• water play in the bathroom sink. Little dude has become quite obsessed with bathtubs but he suffers from eczema so frequent bathing is not good for him. We filled up the sink and let him go wild with his toys and plenty of towels.

Mid week check in

I'm halfway through week 2 and old habits are dying hard....well at least I feel like they are about to. Yesterday we had a great day of play, some out in the backyard, and some in the playroom. I felt very proud of myself for mostly staying engaged (I did make a sneak tidy attack in the craft room while the kids played). But the other mommy duties suffered. When I got home from my nighttime walk with the puppy, I found dishes still out from the previous day's baking (ewww), in addition to the accumulation of the day, two bags of laundry, dirty, and none of what I brought down to wash actually went into the washing machine.....so something's gotta give. I'd like to think that my kids can entertain themselves for enough time for me to do dishes and laundry, but experience tells me that there will be constant calls for "Mommy" to come either settle a dispute or "play with me". With that in mind, the remainder of the week will be about trying to encourage some independent play with the kiddos so I can still get some work done....or else my choice for underwear tomorrow is granny panties or a thong that is too small.

Week 1, rain rain go away

It was a bit of a rough start with tonnes of rain in the forecast, however on the sunny side of things, it was back to preschool for the kids. The rain forced me to deal with one of the other mommy challenges I have, resorting to TV to entertain the kids when I just really got to get something done....like make supper, clean the bathroom or finally finish the cup of coffee I started at 7 am and have already reheated 3 times and it's now 10:30. So for the no TV time entertainment, I turned to some old standbys....

1. Dance Party. We used to do this everyday at 5:00 but it's been awhile now of 5:00 TV while I make supper. We had a lot of fun with this one with all three of us shaking a leg, (and head and a bum).
2. Play dough. This did require quite a bit of interruption in my chores, however, overall it kept their attention long enough to prep some food or wipe a mirror, or drink a coffee.
3. Paper airplanes. Held their attention for a short time, until the puppy started eating little dude's airplane.

Get out of the house activities:

1. Free play area at the mall. I know I said I wasn't going to take the kids to the mall, but I had to go to pick up some things and we decided to play on the large butterfly, and turtles instead of our usual stop at the coffee shop. The kids had a blast with another little boy there. The three of them challenged each other to make bridges on the butterfly with the other two crawling under, this eventually turned into chase and tag which then evolved into monster roaring (not sure how the other mall patrons felt about that one). We spent 1/2 hour there and when we left Miss J commented "Mom, I'm like so sweaty and hot"

I've also realized that I've set myself up for quite the challenge with no repeats, realizing that I have 52 different get our butts out the door activities for the year....I have to admit that I'm a little nervous about that now.....and I've really felt my reliance on TV when little dude asked to watch a show and I said no, his response was "Show makes me happy". Ouch! I'm an active mom and I feel like I'm creating couch potato kids, I HAVE to change that.