How much time do you spend just 'being' with your toddlers and taking their lead?

[BiscuitStuffer]

And rather than taking them to the park or something, I mean getting down on the floor with them and letting them climb on you / ignore you / demand a story or whatever it is but being under their lead rather than doing jobs / relying on something external (like swings or slides) to entertain them?

• that's what got me through my lousy pregnancy!

DD goes through phases of needing more and less of this. She's in a 'less' phase at the moment. When she was potty-training, she needed a lot of contact.

She's also just come out of a phase of two months or so where I had to draw everything into one where she's enjoying drawing by herself again. She went into it at a point where she'd just started to draw a couple of recognisable things, and has come out of it drawing things like circles and eyes and noses and legs and grass and bridges... For a couple of months it was as if she couldn't draw the things she wanted to but just wanted to watch me.

I try to do it but am crap at it . dd is 2.7 now and it does seem like the more you give her the more she wants. Dh and MiL give her their undivided attention for hours so when I'm alone with her she expects it and I find it exhausting.

At the mo she likes jigsaws, playing baby with her dolls, playing with balls and her little cars. I can if I'm lucky get her involved in "helping" i.e. wiping things down/washing up/hanging socks on the drying rack.

I'm a bit directive I'm afraid and go out a lot so there's another focus than just me and her at home, rubbish mummy. Finding her hard work at the mo generally TBH, "terrible twos" is an understatement.

And am 19 weeks pg at the mo, for the first 12 weeks had bad ms and let her watch far to much tv as couldn't cope with the energetics (and am only with her weekends and 1 day in the week, not even a proper SAHM! God I'm so lazy).

She's got 30 episodes of peppa pig on DVd and screams for them as soon as I'm with her but trying to wean her off tv at the mo, my fault tho. Tis v difficult, admire those of you who do 2-3 hours a day or more-and enjoy it, you're the sort of Mums I can only dream of being and never will be.

I probably should stress that I do spend most of my time in their company, talking to them the whilst, it's just that it tends to be spent:

refereeing
doing things for / with them, e.g. taking the little one to the toilet, helping them get dressed, bathing etc.
sitting down at mealtimes with them
involving them in things I'm doing, e.g. sorting washing, putting the potatoes in the pan, buttering bread.
in the car doing my endless pick-ups and drop-offs of children at school / preschool / ballet etc.

I'm very good at reading stories and doing drawing / cutting / colouring / sticking. Just pretty rubbish at getting down on the carpet and playing.

The mitigating factor though is that there's only a year between each of mine so they've always had each other for entertainment. I think if I only had the one, or a larger age gap, I would have had to have learned how to get up close & personal with the Mega Bloks.