Creative Mama

One thing I have a lot of "guilt" about is my inability to play with Anne. Granted a big part of this is her "fault"-she just almost cannot play with you. There are very few activities she can focus on for more than a few seconds (literally). The other half of this problem is my fault. I have always struggled with my attention span, especially if it involves something I'm getting bored with. In school, half way through class periods, I'd be doodling or writing notes. With John, sometimes right in the middle of a conversation, I'll just "go" somewhere else, physically or mentally and not be able to keep up with what he's saying. Mostly it's because my mind starts to wander and think about all the things I need to get done and then I'm
overwhelmed with a huge urge to do that thing. (For example, if I remembered I wanted to look up a website I saw on a commercial, I have to do it that second.)

Anyway, this all goes back to my relationship with Anne because more than anything I would like to spend more time with her, specifically give her more of my attention. I've been trying really really hard to come up with things that will hold her attention and engage her, because if she's engaged, I can be engaged. Here are some pictures of some of the creative ideas I've had recently.


Anne has discovered stickers and coloring. She'll spend a good 15 minutes playing with stickers and sticking them all over her legs and feet.


I got this idea from a toddler activity book. Putting food coloring in the water was all my idea. It's a simple idea that kept her attention for about 20 minutes-just putting out a basin of water and giving her unusual things to play with in it.


Here she is all wet from the water play. Doesn't she look especially grown up in this picture???


I found tub paints at Wal-mart that I got for her. The ones I bought cost 2x as much as the generic brand because they had Sesame Street characters on them. She liked these paints a lot and spent another good 20 minutes playing with them. (Also, I think this picture is especially cute.)

Today my goal was to pick two specific times that I would play with her for half an hour. The first was a huge success. We played with her doll in the bath tub, which morphed into playing with the tub toys outside of the bathtub, which was quite fun. The second attempt was a failure. I tried to color with her, but she kept saying "No Mommy" as soon as I would try and color anything. So finally I got a separate piece of paper to color on, and as soon as that happened she lost complete interest and had no desire to play with me...guess the 2s are creeping up sooner than I thought, huh?