Hi Lucida,
I'm a working mother
many think that I'm very hardworking, but frankly I'm a lazy mom and day time my kids are with babysitter, I only have around 2 hours each day (weekday) with my kids
I'm not those very hardworking mother that will flash cards or read to the kids often, I let my kids learn through playing. I only teach my girl (2 years 8 mths now) a phonics lesson once a week, and she attends 1 hour enrichment class every sat just for fun.
I think learning with kids is very enjoyable, only the mother knows how well is the kid and whether he progresses.
When my girl still can't recognise A-Z, many of my friends' kids who are younger than her already knew that. But i'm not worry about it, I just let her play the ABC magnets, and now she speaks much better than those kids.
Many times you'll hear friends recommend or suggest to you wat to do or wat to teach ur kids, for me i'll take those good advice but I won't follow all of them. E.g. my friend told me I should send my girl to Sichida to train her memory and who and who can memorise thousands words after attended Sichida.... To me, memorising thousands words is not a big deal, instead of letting the kids memorise something meaningless, I prefer to groom their creativity and interest.
Talk to your girl more (which I also need to improve on, ha), she'll impress you one day, just a matter of time, don't worry!