Quiet Time

My sweet girl has been having a tough time of it lately since she's decided there's no more need for naps. At first I tried to just have her lay on her bed looking at books, but this didn't work. She wanted to be read to or nothing. As much as I do enjoy and value reading together, I can't do that for an hour each day when I need to be catching up on housework or calming frazzled nerves or both. So, in order to insure some level of quiet while Max is napping, we've slipped into the TV/movie trap. Now, I think it's safe to say, she's a total couch potato. She'd love to just sit in front of the boob tube watching TV or playing her Leap Frog ClickStart til the cows come home. Alas, it's just not working for me. The overwhelming guilt over all that screen time squelches my delight at the free time it gives me. Sooo...

I've decided to attempt to make a Quiet Time Basket-- this being a basket with a handful of goodies that can only be played with during Quiet Time. I'm going to try to have a few educational things and crafty things and some silly things in there too. Today, I put in a music CD, a Bible story CD, a new jigsaw puzzle, a few print out coloring sheets with a glue stick, pompom puffs, and markers. I also threw in a set of kid scissors and some cutting practice paper. We'll see what she does. She was really psyched to get into that basket and get playing. My only concern is that there may be lots of calling out for, "Mooooooooo-mmmmmmmmmy" if she gets in a bind.

I guess we'll just see how it goes today. My thought is that we'll do the basket M-W-F, and have a movie on Tu-Th. Now it might be that she goes cuckoo over the basket and I'll be able to cut out movies at quiet time totally and just save them for special times or when I'm really in a bind getting dinner made, etc. I think I'll just have to pray in that direction and see what happens! I'm convinced that God does care about the concerns of a stay-at-home mom and this is definitely one of mine.

Now if only I can get Max to stop waking up at 5:15am...