Oh the Joy of 'Room Time'

So today I instituted 'room time' for Lily.  It's still relatively early in the morning, but already I needed a few moments of peace and quiet to relieve my frazzled nerves.  It's possibly because my other baby, Sushi, is having back problems that I've become irrationally stressed out this morning (i.e. trying to prevent a toddler from lovingly harrassing the poor dog is quite a chore!), but in any case I decided today was as good a day as any to begin the 'room time' routine.

'Room time', for those of you who don't know, is when you teach your child to play quietly and entertain themselves in their own room without requiring supervision.  This is a god-send when you need to get stuff done that isn't possible to do with toddler at your side (i.e. like, um, practically anything!).  I actually suggested this to my sister before I even had a baby, when her daughter was about Lily's age.  Mainly, the goal is to keep yourself sane enough to function on a basic level :). 

I have actually been planning to do this for some time, but usually end up caving when Lily stands at the child-gate at her door, shaking it violently and pitifully crying for 'mama' (blast you my tender heart!).  But today, she only cried for a few minutes before giving up and moving on to playing quietly with her toys.  At this very moment she has been in 'room time' for 18 minutes, about 15 of which have been spent quietly, and already I feel like a new person!  Sometimes all a mom needs is 15 minutes!

I think my goal will be 30 minutes of 'room time' each morning and possibly, especially once she officially moves to only one nap a day, another 30 minutes in the afternoon. 

So with only 10 minutes left of room time, I should probably sign off and take a few minutes to breathe deeply before the chaos resumes.  Have a blessed day, friends!!