The Afternoon Give Up

I am a little ashamed that I am admitting this, but it is the reality of my world at this point.  I have discovered that I am great at doing activities with my kids from 6 a.m. up until I put Ayden down for nap, which varies from 12-2.  At this point I feel like all energy has been sucked out of me and I struggle to find things for Audrey to do and I normally ask her to do some reading or quiet play with her Barbies.  Once Ayden awakes from his nap it is then time to try and make sure they don't kill each other and begin dinner.  This is where I begin to feel the guilt set in.  I am literally counting down the minutes until bed time so that I can just lay around and be a big lazy bum.

Lets face it, I feel all my energy is zapped from the morning, so that 30 minutes of rest Audrey has at the beginning of Ayden's nap is a time I live for.  What do I do...absolutely nothing.  Yes I said it, I do nothing for 30 minutes and I have no problem stating this.  Yet then when that 30 minutes is up, Audrey is ready for her individual time.  Earlier this summer I ran out of things for her to do because I wanted to get things done, but I realized that just made her even more irritable by dinner time so I knew something had to give.

We currently do about 45 minutes of different school activities.  We work on everything from handwriting to scissor activities.  Audrey seems to enjoy this a lot, so I continue every day.  However I have come to realize I will never be able to homeschool my daughter...like EVER!  It is so hard to have patience for a child that you are aware of their full potential.  Seriously I could teach a class of 25 kids at all ability levels and never lose my patience, and yet I can't even deal with Audrey complaining she cannot make her "y" the way it is suppose to.  I have to walk away from the table at least twice on a daily basis.  Why is it that I can work with other people's children, but not my own?  This is definitely going to become an issue when we have to work on homework in the future.  Maybe this can be a Daddy task because I am not sure if I would survive helping her, unless it involved a bottle of wine and then who knows what the answers to the questions would look like.

This post is obviously all over the place, so I guess I better get back to the actual focus and that is attempting not to give up in the afternoon.  I have taken note that my kids love schedules and plans, so I have found myself writing daily schedules so the kids, and myself, know what is going to happen next.  However the more I think about this, this is kinda crazy.  Who has their two and four year old looking to a list of what is next in their day?  Kids truly need to just be kids and play, however I guess if they thrive in this type of environment I should embrace it.

I am sure I am not the only mom out there that is burnt out by lunch time, but I sure am looking forward to preschool starting so I can take Audrey to her afternoon class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  She can get what she truly desires during my bad time of the day.  Ayden can also get his nap, and well I can get those daily chores completed or better yet find a time to sit down and probably work on posts for my blog.