Hellobee Boards

I've been working on this recently because she started acting out for attention. I spend an hour every evening and about 3hrs, split into segments, on a weekend day. Its helped with the behavior, but massively increased her clinginess.

I work full-time, so probably about an hour each night. On the weekends, it's more like 3-4 hours each day.

we read together in the morning and afternoon on the couch for like an hour total, but the rest of the time we are at home, he likes to play by himself. we spend most of our time out, just wandering around with the stroller, chatting, for the majority of our day.

@Bao: Maybe an hour a day now that I've gone back to work. :'( On Saturday or Sunday though - several hours!!!

I mentioned this on my blog yesterday. I was feeling guilty for playing on my phone, so I put it aside and payed attention to LO. Over 10 minutes and she never even glanced my direction. I play with her when she wants me to, but she's more like me and prefers independent play. (My mom says that when she tried to play with me when I was a toddler I would basically tell her to go away.)

I don't really anymore. And I'm cool with it. She's playing with her sister or pretending to nap while I do my make up (she does request "bedtime" songs for that, which I do sing) she helps me with chores and we talk while we do other things. I play outside with her usually 1 to 3 hours a day but I'm still observing at least half the time and not actually playing. And I'm surprised to say that I dont feel bad about it. Her whole first year of life I spent totally focused on her but I feel like we are much happier this way. We kind of do life together instead of me stopping life to focus only on her. We share plenty of laughs and funny stories and there are days when we spend the entire day doing kid stuff but I don't really feel like I play with her much anymore. I've never really spent much time playing with her baby sister and she still seems to be hitting milestones and being happy at the same rate as DD1.

ETA: I play peekaboo with DD2 and chase with DD1 and we have tickle fights and we dance and whatever. What I'm saying is I don't purposely sit on the floor with the intent of just playing with them anymore like I used to with DD1. And everybody is happy and fine.

Since DD transitioned to 1 nap, barely an hour at night! I get maybe 10 minutes in the morning? Weekends definitely way more, but we're not always just home playing, but our whole day pretty much revolve around her!

@Mrs. Sunshine: Sounds like you do exactly what I do/hope to in the future.

@looch: @Torchwood: I honestly don't think it is good for children to feel that they should have their parents attention at every moment of the day/be able to demand that they play together whenever the child wants. If the parent and child are having fun together playing, of course! But if the parent is really wishing they could check their email real quick or do some dishes while they keep on their kid happily playing independently, I think that's great.