A Family Recharge Day

I reached that mental space where I was starting to go crazy with life. It’s being stuck in the work mindset, house chores, errands, and sleep deprivation from my son never wanting to nap or sleep. I knew I was hitting my limit when I felt like I wasn’t being a good mom towards my 3 year old daughter. Over the last weeks, my daughter has finally started to enjoy playing by herself. I am thrilled for this because for the longest time, I’ve been trying to teach her independent play and it was never working. I was actually worried while I was pregnant with my son since she would freak out being by herself. Randomly something clicked with her and she is all about it. Some days we can’t even get her to do some educational play with us. That sounds odd, but she absolutely loves learning.

All that explanation to say I felt like I hadn’t seen, played, and known my little girl these last few weeks. While she was off playing, I was desperately trying to clean, deal with a little grumpy man, or trying to melt my brain with social media. I was absolutely drained. To ad insult to injury, We had just endured a week straight of horrendous rains while my parents were off camping at my favorite place on earth.

The moment I found out we were finally getting nice weather I bullied my husband into a family day. No errands ,chores, and not 1 trillion % obsessed with naps. Originally my last minute plan was to head to a local park near us to swim. However my brain went into panic mode of it’s the first nice day in well of a week and it would be utter insane there. I’m not into crowds and knew I would just get mad trying to go there which defeats the purpose of needing a family day in my opinion.

So with my number one option out the window what do we do?

We turned to our daughter of course.

With where I was mentally, my daughter has heard the word no a lot. This was breaking my mom heart. I was watching meltdown after meltdown because she couldn’t get her way during the day. Her biggest moments of getting her way would be picking her plate. My daughter is way too smart and this wasn’t filling her cup. She loves when we’re involved with her.

Knowing this, I turned to the popular yes day, or as my daughter very sweetly calls things, Family Fun Time. I told her in the day before and the morning of that we had zero things planned. No chores, no stores, just family time. Her face lit up.

Our version of a Family Recharge Day

Once the kids get older, a Yes Day may look different. Since we have a 3 year old and a 6 month old currently, we tried to make it home based. Knowing our daughter has been desperate to go to a playground, we decided to guide her in the first activity. After that she seemed to pick up on what we were doing. Spend time looking at the garden? Check. Play that new board game? Check. Back outside to use the trampoline? Check. Pull out the bubble machine? Check with all the giggles.

Take the time to mentally recharge

More often than not, we thrive on a schedule. Currently it’s a bit chaotic trying to figure out a new schedule with an infant who is still working on his first sleep regression. This allowed everyone in the family to try a recharge without worrying about anything. Although it’s definitely easier said than done. My brain kept going back to everything I could be doing or kept putting off.

It’s something I’m trying to work on. I’m always distracted by what I should be taking care of. I knew though this was important time for our daughter. She needed to have those fun family activity times. To possibly create memories she’ll cherish. Some of my favorite memories as a kid, were just silly day to day moments. Once in a while it’s nice to break from our normal.