I read Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness at Home today. I have a feeling I’ve read it before, but it caught my eye at the library yesterday. Some of her writing resonated strongly with me, and she made me think a lot about how to give the kids more free time. I don’t know how other kids have so much free time! I have to be a drill sergeant in order to hurry the girls through practice, homework, dinner, and getting ready for bed before they have ANY free time at all. I feel like if I let them have free time before all of that other stuff got done, they would just get increasingly tired and wouldn’t get their homework or practice done until 10pm or later.
But I wish they had more free time, I really do. So today I cut their practice down to thirty minutes, put them on a timer for homework and dinner—and even then they weren’t in their pj’s and ready for free time before 7pm!!! It’s so discouraging.
I am also worried that I am failing Ammon. He clearly needs more stimulation during the day than I can give him. I need to check out during Clarissa’s nap for my own sanity, but Ammon still hangs out next to me and asks for my attention regularly while I am either reading, cooking, sleeping (very lightly), or watching a documentary. I tried to preemptively stave off guilt by reading him a ton of books in the morning and by periodically reading to him and paying a modicum of attention to him during Clarissa’s nap, but by 1:30 my nerves were a bit thin. I was starting to find him…less charming than normal. Not because he was any less charming!! I was just worn out. So I put him in front of Amazon’s Room on the Broom (his very favorite movie in the whole world) and started cleaning and prepping dinner with some peace and quiet. Maybe I should enroll him in preschool…but then there’s the potty training issue. He adamantly refuses to potty train. So I guess I’m all he’s got for now. 🙁
On that note, this is a picture of Ammon coloring while I tried to check out.
