Feeling like a monster to make time for yourself

I became dad just over four years ago.

In reality, after the birth of my first child, also because the first one was a baby, I didn't feel a strong impact on my private and marital life. Since the second was born, fifteen months later, but especially now that they are both toddlers, I started to feel a terrible lack of time for myself and feeling awful for the fact of feeling it.

I'm not saying this to apologize, but because it's like this: I'm a rather present father, I take care of the children just as much as their mother, I play with them and willingly take them around every time I can.

However, given their aptitude (and perhaps neurological disorders that are still unidentified but probably present in my firstborn) our children require our attention continuously, in the sense that it is really impossible to spend about 5 minutes without being interrupted in any activity: cleaning, cooking, reading, even just looking through the phone or sending a message to a friend, let alone a phone call.

Our life (I'll throw my wife into the mix too) has become rather suffocating. Lately I've started to give myself more space, for example by hypnotizing children in front of the television (which we usually try to avoid, but it's the only thing that entertains them alone), to write a music review or try to relax like in the old days.

The thing is, however, that every time I do it I feel like shit, like an absent father or even one who prefers worthless entertainment to his children's childhood.

The fact is that my life right now is really kids and work, work and kids, kids and work, and so on. It is nine months, for example, that I don't meet anyone which is not my wife or my colleagues (and I mean I see them at work).

Do you also feel this way sometimes? How do you make time for yourself? Then I have the impression that given my son's attitude we have compromised their behavior forever, giving them our full attention every minute of our lives now they want more and more. How much time do you allow for participatory play with the children?

Sorry for the rather random and excited topic, but I'll be interrupted in a few minutes. Indeed, here he arrived. Dad, dad, dad. :D