I’m fortunate enough that I get to stay home from work with Isla every other Friday and, of course, weekends. Evan has a weird work schedule and doesn’t get weekends off with us. I look forward to these 3-day weekends so much. I love our time together. It’s so nice to be able to sleep in and just lounge around until we decide to make breakfast. So as I’m sure you can guess, I’m going to be showing you how I entertain my 1 year old.

Isla is a very busy toddler. She’s a bit of dare-devil with a destructive side so I like to keep her as busy as possible. Keeping her busy with activities also makes for an easier nap time. She goes right to sleep when I lay her down. She still takes 2 naps a day that are about 1.5-2 hours each, but she wakes up pretty early in the morning.

I thought I’d tell you how we spend our time and what activities we do throughout the day to show you how I keep her entertained. This is just a typical Friday/ Saturday for us.

Isla is 15 months old today and even though we still have some time before she starts potty training, I still tell her during diaper changes if she has peed or pooped so she can start to get familiar with the terms and can tell the difference. This is just something I do throughout the day.

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Isla wakes up at about 6:30 and then I give her a cup of warm milk and we snuggle on the couch and watch the morning news. Isla loves to watch the weather – I think it’s because the maps are so colorful.

At about 7:15 she is ready to eat, I will make her either French toast or scrambled eggs, and she of course gets fruit every morning. She takes a while to eat breakfast and has been sharing / teasing Teddy (our golden retriever) with bites in the last couple of weeks. It’s hilarious. Those two crack me up. He loves Isla so much.

After Isla eats, she will play with her toys in the living room. We recently bought her a tiny recliner and she likes to sit there and read books, or I’ll give her an empty laundry basket and she will throw her toys in there, one by one and then I’ll dump them out and she can start over. She loves this game. She plays by herself until her first morning nap. I’m usually cleaning up after breakfast – starting laundry or getting dressed.

At about 8:30 Isla will go down for her first nap. After about 2 hours she is more than ready to lay back down. She has done this her entire life and I think because she doesn’t really nap very well at daycare so she gets to catch up on sleep during the weekends.

She will sleep until usually 10 or 10:30 but I don’t let her go longer than that. I like to have her outfit ready so I can change her as soon as she wakes up in case we need to leave the house and run errands.

She is much better if we run errands in the morning so if we need to get out of the house and do something, I prefer to do it during this time.

She has a little milk and a snack when she wakes up. She is currently loving goldfish at the moment, but applesauce is always a favorite.

If we end up staying home, I like to give her some options on what we do. Usually we have a dance party first thing because she is in such a good mood after her nap. I’ll ask our Google home to play the soundtrack from Trolls or the Sing movie and she will go nuts just dancing around with me. It’s so funny to watch. These are some of my favorite memories.

After we are both out of breath, we will sit and read a couple of books together. Isla LOVES books. She likes to pretend to read. I read them to her and then she “reads” them to me. I hope she never loses her love of books.

About this time, she starts to get hungry and I’ll make her some lunch. Lunch has been kind of hit or miss lately because my child would eat mac and cheese at every meal if I let her so I will put on one of her favorite movies so she is distracted while I make her lunch and encourage her to eat.

Lately, she doesn’t want to use her hands at all. She wants to use a fork or spoon, so lunch takes….awhile. Because miss independent doesn’t need help.

After she eats, we will play catch with her little ball. She loves to throw it behind her back and is always so surprised to see where it lands. It reminds me of that scene from The Office where Michael is saying farewell to the warehouse workers. I’m trying to get her to say, “catch you on the flippity flip.” No such luck yet.

If she isn’t in the mood to play catch, then I will let her do some water play. She is obsessed with trying to get in the dogs water bowl and it’s too cold outside to play with a water table right now but she really likes to play in water so what I’ve been doing is laying down a towel and using a metal baking pan and filling it with just a tiny amount of water. I only use a little bit of water because if she spills it, I want the towel to take care of the spill.

I set out a few toys that are allowed to get wet and she proceeds to splash and get her hands wet and eventually may even try to stick her tongue in the water. It’s inevitable. I usually have her in just her diaper to do water play.

Isla loves when I build towers out of her stacking cups or blocks and she knocks them down. She always claps when she knocks one down and it’s pretty cute.

I like to change up her scenery sometimes, so I’ve been taking her into her room and letting her get stuff out of her toy box. She really likes the little people bus right now. She gets it out and will push it up and down the hall and all around her room.

If the weather is nice, I’ll take her outside and let her walk around. I just watch her closely, so she doesn’t try to eat anything. Everything still goes directly into her mouth, so I’ve really got to pay close attention.

She also loves to ride in her cozy coupe car that we got her for her birthday and let me push her around the drive way. She thinks it is so funny to go really fast and then stop. It always gets a giggle out of her.

I love to take her on walks around the block and she likes to look around outside but doesn’t really like being in the stroller, so we use the Ergo baby carrier. She also got this tricycle from Radio Flyer and we can’t wait to use it more often.

I try to show her different textures outside. I’ll let her touch leaves, grass, plants and tree bark. Lately I’ve been trying to teach her to smell things. It’s pretty hilarious to watch someone try to sniff something and knowing they aren’t quite able to do it yet.

I also make sure to tell her about what kind of weather we are having. “Oh it’s so sunny today” or “look at those clouds!”

I try to talk to Isla as much as possible. It’s important that if you do this to always give her a chance to respond to the conversation. I’ve done this since the day she was born, and she really talks and engages now when I ask her a question.

Being outside is also a good way for her to point things out to me. She has been asking “What dis?” for a awhile now and so If she asks, I make sure to provide an answer.

We love to play with things that aren’t necessarily toys. Isla loves to get pots and pans out of the cabinet and I’ll hand her a wooden spoon and let her play the drums. She really likes to play with pots and pans, especially with some back-ground music. This makes for a noisy afternoon, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

We don’t do all of this every day, but I try to squeeze in as much as possible before her second nap.

After her afternoon nap, she will have some more milk and a snack.

I like to try and clean while she sleeps but sometimes, I take a nap too. Adulting is hard.

If I’m trying to get stuff done around the house, I’ll put her in the Ergo carrier and put her on my back. I do this while I vacuum sometimes and she loves it. I also gallop throughout the house with her on back and she loves that too.

I try to let her practice getting down off our bed and the couch a few times every weekend. She is really getting the hang of it now. I’m always scared of her falling off and it has only happened once so far.

I also try to name objects in the house throughout the day, like: “those are daddy’s shoes” or “that is Isla’s blanket” and she really is getting the hang of it now. I’ll say: Go get your book or bring me your shoes and she’ll do it.

We have been practicing how to point to our nose, eyes, mouth, knees and toes. She booped me on the nose tonight and it was adorable.

We also try and play hide and seek. She tries to chase me around the kitchen island. This can go on for a while. I don’t know how she has all this energy.

Isla loves to play with Teddy. She reads to him, she snuggles him, and climbs all over him.

Isla really likes to play peek a boo but more recently, she likes for me to jump out at her from behind the curtains or a door. She will gets so tickled that she eventually will fall over from laughing so hard.

At about 5pm I start our evening routine and you read more about that here.

It’s so easy to get burnt-out or frustrated when trying to get a ton of stuff done with a busy toddler, so I try to save most of it for her nap times or after she has gone to bed. I try to make the most of our days together because I work full time and I have some serious mom guilt about that.

I hope you enjoyed this post about how I keep Isla entertained so that she doesn’t Hulk smash our house.

The key is to use all the teaching moments throughout the day. I try teaching Isla something new every day.

What is your favorite way to keep your 1 year old entertained? I realize this is all stuff you probably already knew to do but sometimes it’s nice to have a list. I know I’ve run out of things to do with her before.

Let me know if I missed anything on my list! I’d love to hear other ideas. I’ll be sure to do a post when she turns 18 or 24 months old.