One-On-One Time

Something that has become pretty important to me lately is one-on-one time with each of my kids.  Don't get me wrong - I absolutely love the time we all spend together, and it makes my heart jump for joy when I watch Matthew and Kate play together (which is happening more frequently now -yay!) but some of my very favorite moments with the kids have come when I am one-on-one with them.  You'd think that with our relatively simple lives and the fact that I only have two kids it would be super easy to have quality one-on-one time, but it's not as easy as you'd think.  So, with the help of my wonderful husband, I have started putting more effort into getting out for mommy/son and mommy/daughter dates.  (And Michael has been getting more one-on-one time with each kid too).   I have also been putting more effort into making sure that my one-on-one time with each kid really is quality time.  Obviously I am far from perfect from this, but when I am mindful of what I am trying to do, I usually end up making much better use of that time.

This one-on-one time is so important, especially for Matthew.  He needs as much of it as he can get.  Without it, he starts to look like this:

Upset.  Overly clingy.  No bueno.

Luckily, Kate is pretty good about taking a nap for an hour every morning and I always spend this time super focused on Matthew and his needs.  We read stores, sing songs, and have "learning time." (Which is when we work on words, colors, shapes, etc)  We both love this time.  He is a total sponge right now and he impresses me every single day with how much he picks up in such a short amount of time.  

My alone time with Kate during the day isn't quite as predictable, but it's a blast as well.  We read books, practice crawling, and/or play with as many toys as possible.  She is just the sweetest little thing.  

While this alone time during the week is great, it's usually still not quite enough since the activities we can do are limited to what we can do in the house.  This is where the weekend comes in handy.  ;-)  Yesterday (Saturday) I took Kate shopping and we had a blast.  She's at the age where she wants to see and touch everything, and it was nice to be able to take our time and look around since there wasn't a bored and impatient toddler whining at us.  Ha!

And then I took Matthew on a mommy/son date to the pool.  We both had an amazing time.  There was so much laughing and playing and it was oh so good.

Love these kids of mine.  I know that as life gets crazier and busier it'll be harder to get that quality one-on-one time, (and it probably won't happen as often) but I hope to always make it a priority.