As I alluded to, we’ve been a little out of sorts around here. Mason is finally almost over bronchitis that lasted weeks, and I haven’t been feeling great either. No one is getting a good, full night’s sleep since Mason switched to the toddler bed. All of this has made me a less-than-engaged parent (in other words, we’ve watched lots of TV).
It dawned on me at 6 am while scouring Pinterest for kid activity ideas (Play at Home Mom is both idea and guilt-inspiring) that Mason is probably bored.
Yes, he has toys and things to play with. But we were staying indoors because of the cold and wet weather. I started feeling a little guilty when he could explain the plots of the last three episodes of Max and Ruby.
Naturally, my first instinct was to feel guilty. But it also inspired me to figure out ways Mason can learn to entertain himself.
Mason loves paints, markers and playdo but where I store all this — in a drawer right off the kitchen — he can’t open by himself and it was a jumbled mess. I figured I’d start here.
Off to IKEA we went. We got a kids’ play table, chair, some new art supplies, a butcher paper holder, and some bins (these will be for organizing toys — a later project).
Mason agrees: assembling IKEA furniture can be frustrating.
He certainly still gets bored. But it’s nice to have a place that’s his with accessible tools he can use to entertain himself.
I didn’t think we had the space but it turns out, we do. This is in the kitchen, right next to our small breakfast table. One downside: It’s closer to the counter so Bruno the dog can jump onto the table and onto the counter. We’ve already lost some bread.
Our little artist experiments with watercolors for the first time.
