Stay-at-home moms: what's your average day look like?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Now that Whatsit Jr. is turning into a preschooler, it’s becoming more and more difficult to come up with interesting stuff to do during the day. It used to be enough to park him in front of a mirror and let him make faces at it for awhile, but frankly that just doesn’t cut it with an almost-3-year-old.

What do the rest of you all do with your toddlers during the day? We do occasional art projects; the handprint turkeys were a lot of fun. It also ate up a whole 20 minutes. He watches Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers every day, which is another good hour and a half. He plays with his toys and makes up stories a lot. I let him help with the cleaning. We read books. I need more ideas, because I feel like I’m going stir-crazy.

We do plan to start him in preschool, but the preschools around here mostly want the kids to be potty-trained first, and that combined with enrollment schedules and wait lists means we’re looking at next fall (August, probably) before he starts. I’m a little concerned about this as sometimes I feel like I’m just not doing enough at home to keep him interested and stimulated. I also have BabyWhatsit, all of 10 months old, to contend with.

I’m basically just wondering how other moms (or dads) at home spend their time and wondering if I’m right that I’m not really doing enough with Whatsit Jr. or whether it’s normal for a toddler to spend large chunks of time off doing his own thing and entertaining himself. I know I mentioned some things I do with him, but those things really don’t take up all that much time throughout the day.

I never really planned to be a full-time stay-at-home mom and I feel like everyone else must have read all the books and figured it all out beforehand or something. I mean… what am I supposed to do all day long?!

2

Heh, I have almost the opposite problem; I’m not sure where to get the time to spend some time with my kids! Well, I guess that’s an exaggeration, but it’s really kind of how I feel. I have a 4-yo and a 20-month old, both girls.

Yeah, it’s amazing how fast they can get through art projects; you plan something, and it takes all this time to get together, and then bam it’s done.

Actually I think it’s pretty normal for a 3-yo to play by himself a good bit. Hey, he can entertain himself, which is a good skill, not a bad one. And you have to fix dinner sometime; just think of all the pioneer moms who probably never got to play with their kids and thought that was normal.

Here are some of the things I do:

At home–
Dancing. Put on some music and let him go. Raffi is good for this, but I’m sure you have favorites.

Dot art, drawing, playdoh–all these take some time and require only intermittent attention, so you can go back and forth. Dot art is big dot paint markers, get them at the teacher or craft store.

If you have a camcorder, let him make a little movie, like the Three Pigs or whatever he wants.

Have you got a yard? Can he plant some seeds? Or have a mudhole?

Let him take the sheets off the bed for you, and then make tents out of them.

Abroad–
Library storytime. Your friendly neighborhood library will probably have one for toddlers, one for pre-schoolers, and maybe even an evening family one. They do art projects, too, sometimes.

The park. OK, it’s winter. This spring, the park. Invite a friend, have a picnic. The baby will be old enough by then to have a great time too.

I try to get some other-kid interaction daily, or at least 3/4 days. So I invite friends over, or they go someplace, but the other committments I have count for this too.

Do you go to the gym, or do you want to? The childcare will give him fresh faces to play with and new toys. Sometimes the staff might take them for an activity.

See if your community center has classes for tots, like music fun, or cooking, or mini martial arts, or whatever. Ours last 3-4 weeks, and cost about $40.

The grocery store. Let him grab apples, talk about your choices. I’m sure you already do this, but just in case…
I find that it’s important to get out of the house once a day, most of the time. If there are no errands, go for a walk or a bike ride or invent something. Go to the library a lot (OK, well, I’m a librarian). If you don’t know many other parents at home, find a club to join, like a mother’s club or (if you’re religious) MOPS.

Well, I guess this is long enough.

3

Oh, I forgot. Do you know any other kids about the same age you could start a pre-school group with until he starts next year? 3-4 kids is a good size, and you can trade houses and meet once a week for about 2.5 hours. I can tell you what we did last year if you’re interested. With groups you can easily do field trips to the fire station and stuff, very exciting, and get a few hours to yourself as well.

I’ve been doing it for about a year now; DangerGirl doesn’t go to a preschool but has this group instead. It’s been pretty good, and taught me a lot about teaching and entertaining small children!

4

I’m already feeling that way, and Alex is still young enough (19 months) for silly faces and peek-a-boo to keep him going for hours. We mostly just chase each other around the house playing a slightly altered version of hide-and-seek; it’s different because we can usually see exactly where the other is going anyway. We just like the “BOO!” and “RAWR!” parts at the end.

I do have days where I feel I could be doing more (and I’m probably right on those particular days, because I’m too busy dwelling on whether I spend enough time with my kid to actually spend any time with him… :smiley: ), but he’s happy. Who am I to say he’s not happy enough? He tells me when he wants to play with me; he’ll bring me a book or a toy, or he’ll call to me from next to his toy box if he just wants to get my attention. And when he does those things, I don’t hesitate to do stuff with him. And sometimes, I play with him even if he doesn’t mention it. We like rolling trucks on the highway carpet thing he has. But if he’s content with his own company, hey, great. I could probably use a shower anyway.

If I need to give extra attention to anything, it’s my house cleaning (please don’t send me over to flylady; the million and one emails a day are really pointless and they annoy far more than they inspire, plus it took ALL CAPS and strong (not foul, just not very polite) language over the course of more than a week to get off their mailing list, and that was after removing myself directly from the Yahoo! site and sending no less than 3 replies by clicking the “unsubscribe” button right from their messages… she has good ideas though.) Hey, how’s your house look these days?

Music is fun. Maybe while your little one is napping, you could put some music on and dance around with your 3 year old. Easy, fun, entertaining and, best of all, it’s a fantastic workout. Nature hikes (in the park, a patch of trees somewhere, I usually go in my backyard because it’s enourmous) are fun, too, and you can use the stuff you pick up for projects later. As much as I miss my infant, and as much as I fear my eventual teenager (I’m mostly joking), this awkward stage where big kid projects would be fun if he didn’t want to eat the materials is the slowest little stage I’ve gone through. I think he was an infant for like 2 minutes and then one day, he was walking and had 6 teeth. That was six and a half years ago, maybe more. :wink:

I really just came in here to say, “Don’t sweat it.” If he’s happy, y’know? As for yourself, you could take up an art of some kind (music, painting, writing, needlepoint, whatever) and work on that. If he’s interested it what you’re doing, grab some paste, a few sheets of paper, and some macaroni noodles for him to mess with while your little guy munches on crackers or something in his high chair; I would think that’d be at least 40 minutes right there. As soon as Alex stops eating crayons, we’re going to color all the time. I love coloring. He realizes now that they aren’t food, and he does draw scribbles and stuff, but I hate looking up to see a mouthful of green tongue and brown teeth. So scaring each other from beside the couch, it is then!

Or you could just go the wildly popular soap opera/bon bon route… :wink:

5

Yeah…you wanna be careful with crayons. As long as they’re non-toxic (do they even make toxic crayons??), the kid will be fine, but it’s not a pleasant surprise when you find bright green poop in a diaper, shortly after the green crayon went missing… :eek:

My son and I spend most of our time during the day watching A Bug’s Life. Over and over. And over. We jump and clap at some parts, laugh at others…over and over. And over. He’s getting some ABC toys for X-mas, a magnet one for the fridge, some blocks, just a whole bunch of ABC and number stuff. And a(nother) huge Elmo. This one dances. Which means we’ll be dancing too. I actually enjoy doing that kind of thing…as long as no one’s there to see me…I can’t dance…but hell, what does a 2-year-old care, anyway? :wink:

6

Finding a playgroup can be a soul saver.

Also, make a point of going to the park when the weather is good. Or going on nature walks . Kids love picking up pine cones. You probably won’t make it 100 feet from the car, but they adore it.

7

A very cheap and very messy thing to play with that my kids adored.

Flour.

This stuff they played with and still play with for a good hour or more at the table. Clean up is probably faster than playdoh and I keep it in a specific ziploc bag so it doesn’t get used for baking.

Don’t use a sponge to clean it up. Use your hand or clean towel.

It is loads of fun.

8

My youngest is almost five, but before she started Pre-K, I made use of an organization called “Family Support Centers”. The had the Family Center, which is for children up to age four, and their parents. We went almost every morning, and they had activities, lots of age appropriate toys, parent support groups, really fun field trips, etc. Everything was either free or very, very inexpensive. It was a really great thing for us. If you call your local Dept. Of Soc. Svcs. they should be able to tell you if there’s something similar in your area.

9

Thanks for the good suggestions so far, guys. We are somewhat hampered by the fact that we only have one car, so until MrWhatsit gets home from work around 1 PM (he works 4-12 most days) we are carless. But, we do try to get to the park at least two or three times a week even so.

I can definitely get the kids more involved with my cleaning schedule, and I really like some of the project ideas (flour! brilliant!) people have mentioned. I also think I need to stop stressing out about this so much. You’re right; if Whatsit Jr. were feeling intellectually deprived or whatever, I think he’d let us know, in his toddler way.

Keep it coming!

10

Flour is neat. Have you ever tried the similar cornstarch goop? You take a lot of cornstarch, and add water until it becomes a weird glop that solidifies when you push it around but liquifies when you let it alone. Food coloring is good too. Kids love the stuff, and it washes off easily. It will get moldy after a few days, though.

11

Flour?

Try cornmeal.

I used to watch a boy and this was a fun thing. He’d scoop it like sand. He’d run his cars through it. Basically, I’d put it in a big cake pan and let him have fun.

One day this kept him entertained for hours:

You’ll need:

Salt
a paper cone
string
tacks
black paper (bigger is better!)

you attach the string to opposite sides of the open end of the cone. you then tie them and then tack the tied strings to the top of a door frame. In short, you are making a plumb bob.

Cut a SMALL hole on the pointy side. fill cone with salt. push the cone ( it should’t be touching the floor. maybe 1"above it).

The salt then flows out in cool patterns. when the cone is empty, you can scoop it up from the paper and start over.

If he likes it, color the salt for more fun., or use sand.

Here’s kind of what it would look like, except the cone is centered in the door way.

----------------- <— door frame
|
|
|
| <— string
V <— cone
----------------- <— paper

12

Two from my son:

  1. Hang a paper lantern (or any other light spherical thing) from the middle of a room. Instant tetherball/bap toy.

  2. Get a plastic bin. Put “trash” into it. Let him dump it and fill it. For some reason, this fascinates mine for hours, though I wish he’d stop using real trash…

13

Eww! :slight_smile:

I’ve never met a kid who didn’t like Swiffer dusters.