Anyone a SAHM to one toddler? How do you keep him/her amused and entertained all day?

[suiledonn]

Hi, I am a SAHM to my 18 month old dd. Lately I have been finding it hard to keep her amused for the whole day. She used to have loads of energy for doing her own thing and would run around for ages just chatting to herself and playing with different toys. Then last month she was quite ill for a few days so I resorted to letting her watch tv as she didn't have much energy and now she wants the tv on all the time and screams and points at it. I can distract her for a while but she always goes back to the tv and I end up letting her watch far too much sometimes just for a bit of peace.
We do drawing and painting, dancing, etc and she plays by herself a bit. We go to toddler group once a week and usually into town two morning a week. We live in the country and go out everyday for a walk and she plays in the garden but the weather is definitely getting colder so we will be inside more and I am running out of ideas.
Any help welcomed. TIA

I think the first time I did it was about 17.5 months. Before that I had him "pretend" coooking with bowls, pasta etc. We usually follow his cooking exploits with a teddy bear's picnic where he goes and gets his teddy and eats his creation as a picnic. He loves it. The trick is to choose things that don't require precision, don't take too long and involve "bits". Always something I do on a day like today where the weather is diabolical and we've been stuck in because the car was at the garage.

I started cooking with DS1 when he was 18 months. He loves it. He's now almost 3 and he is actually pretty good - he can break an egg really well on his own (no shell in the bowl!) and is pretty good at rubbing butter into flour etc. He chops things like banana for our porridge in the mornings (encourages him to eat the porridge too!). Mostly I bake with him, but I do try to involve him in other types of cooking too