<Work in progress…>
My kids are currently early risers so it hits me around 9 many mornings: how am I going to get through this day?? We’ve got a 10 hour stretch and nothing planned. Boredom, and therefore destruction, are close at hand. Now what?
Know yourself. The tone of the day relies most heavily on my mood. If I am restless, the home is restless. If I am happy, the home is happy. I spend a good portion of the day thinking about myself in order NOT to be selfish. I do not necessarily indulge myself, but if I am cranky I do not let crankiness rule the day. I do what I need to do to alleviate crankiness. Sometimes I can consciously decide to put it away. Other times I decide on another cup of coffee, my favorite cookie, or an hour with my favorite music playing in the background. But you direct the day, and creating a good day for yourself creates a good day for your children.
Continuously be self-reflective.
Have a schedule. We have a loose schedule for everyday, and it is based on my personality and preferences. Well, OK, mostly. I would not actually prefer to wake up at 5, but there are many circumstances we must accomodate throughout the day. As a Type A mom, though, I like to get dressed first thing in the morning and have the boys dressed too. Others prefer to stay in pjs for a relaxed feeling later into the morning. Do what is right for you (know yourself). Most mornings we go out either to run errands or go to the library, bookstore story time, a museum, etc. Most towns have local parenting magazines to give you ideas, and those are usually free at the library. The afternoon we reserve for playing, and in the winter months that gets tough. A lot of websites offer ideas like this one from Paula. Explore them!
Have favorite activities or projects. At the moment the boys love to play zoo. They bring me each animal in our toy collection one by one and have me set it up on our coffee table. A few weeks before that it was trains and before that it was grocery store.
If your baby is too young for interactive play, you can concentrate on your own project with your baby. I worked on two project throughout infancy. One was a photo project in which I took smiling pictures every day. Later I went back and chose my favorite picture from each week and created a 100 picture collage showing the development of my smiling baby. The other was similar, but instead of pictures, I tried to take short 5-10 second videos of all the “regular” activities we did, then created a short (3 min) video montage. When I’m really feeling the daily drudge, I watch the video and see that I am already sentimental about what felt like monotonous days just a year or two ago!
Have downtime. Your child does not need to be entertained every minute of every day. Kids are learning so much and will absorb it when they have downtime. If you have a schedule they will anticipate and cooperate for downtime, even if downtime is not a nap.