Confessions of a Stay at Home Mom: Play Time

 When I became a stay at home mom almost 3 years ago, I thought it was going to be so easy to stay home with little kids all day. I had plans of being the best mom ever and turning my kids into geniuses by doing preschool type activities daily. It's hard for me to admit but after only a couple of weeks, I realized that I didn't always enjoy getting on the ground and doing things with my kids. 'School' was often hard because I couldn't get my daughter to pay attention all the time.

Over these past 3 years, I've fought between being an 'in the moment' mother and being the mom that sits on the computer or is cleaning most of the day. I've gone through many phases where I'm either really good at being a mom or really horrible at it. I've tried different ways to make myself more motivated and I've learned that forcing myself to leave the house helps.

But since I don't want to leave the house every day and since I want to be a good mom to my kids even when we're home, I started setting a timer for 30 minutes and playing on the floor with my kids.

You'd be surprised what 30 minutes of playing with your kids can do. Though I don't always enjoy it in the moment, we are all in better moods. Thirty minutes may not seem like a lot when you're talking an entire day with children but I decided to start with a goal I knew I could keep and bump it up from there. Yesterday, I did 2 thirty minute sessions with my kids and we all had so much fun.

We played in Petey's room and the kids put on an acrobatic show for me.

 Spidey is learning cool tricks from his big sister.

 We played a game where you jump over the other person and you can't touch them or you lose.

 We practiced some dance moves. I told Petey she was bending her body over during her toe touch...

 ...so she fixed that. :)

 And to end, the kids wanted to jump off of a chair and look at the pictures I was taking of them each time. They loved seeing the picture of how high they got.

I may not be an amazing mother who plays on the floor with her kids for 10 hours every day or does special activities with them daily but I'm trying. I plan on continuing my goal of at least 30 minutes a day because I can already see how much my children love it.

So if you're like me and playing with children isn't exactly your thing, make yourself a goal you know you can achieve and don't beat yourself up or compare yourself to what someone else is doing. The best mother you can be is not the same as the best mother someone else is.