Confessions of a Working Mom: Keep it Simple, Sweetheart.

 The lesson here was simple: "Keep it Simple, Sweetheart!"  My kids couldn't care less if the hearts were tattered, ugly pieces of fabric or beautiful stuffed pillow hearts...the game was the same!  They didn't care.  I had put this silly, unrealistic (for me) standard on myself.  And wasted the precious hour of naptime being frustrated...

So there I was, feeling guilty about all the cutesy "mom" things my kids miss out on because they have a working mom.  Birthdays, for example.  I do not make the cake.  I have a zillion and one friends who can make these incredible, cartoon character themed cakes.  I buy mine.  Yep, I pack up my toddler and let her pick one out.  She loves it!  But I sometimes feel like a slacker mom.

So I caught the "I need to be more crafty" bug, and had this idea to sew all these little colorful heart pillows.  Then I would hide the pillows and the kids could go find them.  Sounds great, right?  Well...I didn't have the time (or extra money) to buy bright, cute fabric, so I cut the hearts out of old clothes that were way to ugly to ever be worn in public.  Then after I stitched about 3 hearts, I realized it's a very hard shape to sew...and then I got frustrated and gave up.  Nap time ended much too soon, and the kids came bouncing down the hall.  I was shocked to hear my daughter ask, "Mom, what are these cool hearts?"  as she pointed to the pile of unsewn, flat, hideous hearts I had cut out.  These fabric cut outs were a far cry from the cute, colorful pillows I had imagined.  But as two pairs of anxious eyes fixed on me and asked, "Are we going to play a game?"  I just didn't have the heart to tell them that Mommy had failed at this project so completely that the game was forever ruined.  So instead I said, "Yep!  I'm going to hide these in the living room and when I call you in, you guys see how many you can find!"  This was followed by cheering, and I ended up hiding all 21 hearts no less than 5 times before they began to tire of the game.

The lesson here was simple: "Keep it Simple, Sweetheart!"  My kids couldn't care less if the hearts were tattered, ugly pieces of fabric or beautiful stuffed pillow hearts...the game was the same!  They didn't care.  I had put this silly, unrealistic (for me) standard on myself.  And wasted the precious hour of naptime being frustrated.

Another example of simple games: color sorting.  Kids LOVE to sort!  I gave them a deck of CandyLand cards and some containers and they went to town.  KEEP IT SIMPLE!