Mom and Sofka’s Day

How and when do we spend quality time with our children when the countless demands of everyday life grind us down at every turn? Sofka and I found a solution!

As working parents, we’re very often eaten up by guilt that we might not be spending enough time with our kids. Very often we wait for the weekend, as that promised time when, as a family, we’re supposed to spend quality time together.

And then the weekend comes.

Too often you find yourself lost among piles of laundry, giving way to piles of dishes, grocery runs, rags of every shape and size. The kids go off to play at a friend’s.

You remember you’ve still got work stuff you didn’t get to during the week.

Or everyone’s just so worn down by the exhaustion the previous week left behind that you don’t have a shred of energy or motivation to get up off that couch and do “something” for yourself, let alone with the people you live with.

Yes, this sounds far too familiar to all of us.

And yes, ideal weekends exist that look nothing like what I just described.

And yes, of course those weekends exist too. The ones where you leave the house in chaos, pile into the car with your loved ones (or onto bikes, depending on the destination), and just go somewhere different, somewhere fun.

Everyday life grinds us all down, eating away even at those little oases of family peace called the weekend.

And we want to be not just good parents, but good family members too, present for the people we love. It would be great if either the day were longer and we had bottomless reserves of energy, or if the weekend lasted at least two extra days. But neither option is realistic, at least not yet.

So what’s left for us?

To be creative and get organized. Exactly that.

That’s how Sofka and I invented “Mom and Sofka’s Day.” A day right in the middle of the workweek, nothing groundbreaking about it, but very special to us.

What does a typical “Mom and Sofka’s Day” look like?

Our day is Thursday.

On that day, we do everything together, just the two of us.

And no, I don’t skip work that day, and she doesn’t skip daycare. But on that day, I’m the one who takes her to daycare, I pick her up early, and I take her to music school.

We’ve built little rituals that turn this “ordinary” day into something special — rituals that let both of us say “I can’t wait for our day” multiple times a week.

They’re not colossal events, but they’re enough to lift us out of the everyday, out of the machine called boring, routine reality full of dumb obligations.

On that day, on Thursdays, the two of us rent a car (because, no, we still haven’t bought one), which is an experience in itself (I’m working on a separate post about car sharing here). In the car we blast Disney hits and sing at the top of our lungs.

I pick her up from daycare early enough that we can park without any stress, and still get a coffee at the little café inside the music school. Mom drinks her real coffee, while Sofka drinks a kids’ cappuccino made from cocoa and milk foam.

While we sip our coffee, we talk about all kinds of things — from recapping how each of our days went, to plans for what we could all do together over the weekend, to rehashing the cartoons we’ve watched together.

Then Sofka goes off to her lesson, and I stay behind to finish my coffee while jotting down ideas for new posts and collaborations on my Remarkable, or planning social media posts. I try not to do those things when I’m actually with Sofka, because it matters to me that I’m genuinely present and listening to her during the time we spend together. On the other hand, anyone who does anything beyond just their “regular job” knows how precious and important every free moment is.

After the lesson, there’s a mandatory trip to the city library and a short walk through the old town.

And then we grab the car and go pick up dad from work (with the music still blasting from the speakers, of course).

On our day, it goes without saying that I’m the one who reads the bedtime story, after which we whisper a little more and recap all the fun things we did that day. Always ending with the obligatory “I can’t wait for next Thursday.”

That’s how the two of us built the ritual of our day.

The beauty of small rituals

With this, I wanted to nudge you to think about which of your existing obligations you could top off with even one different activity — some kind of “seasoning” to enrich your relationship with your kids.

Not only will these kinds of “rituals” bring you closer to your child, they’ll also be glad to have your undivided attention, something they can count on.

An activity that will remind you, at least once a week, that you shouldn’t feel so bad if you didn’t do anything groundbreaking with them on the other days.

Relationships are built through attention, not material things or expensive trips.

And yes, it’s absolutely possible to carve out that time — if you actually look at your calendars and get organized about combining the pleasant with the useful. Because children aren’t an obligation we need to just get through, they’re the beings we love most and should devote ourselves to, even if it’s just for a few minutes a day.

The point isn’t quantity, it’s quality. Mom and Sofka’s Day is our little oasis, time just for the two of us.

Let’s learn together!

So what’s your “magic story,” the one you’re writing with your own kids? (Write it in the comments, so we can all get ideas from each other — because parenting isn’t a competition, it’s a kind of school where all of us are average students.)

Warmly,

S-Mama