About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
He grew up in a financially stable household. I didn’t. I consequently spend a hell of a lot more time talking to JB about money than he does: how we have to work for our money, how we prioritize saving above all because we always want to make sure that if something happens to our ability to earn, we will have savings to draw on.
I give them a very modest allowance and require them to save a portion of it at all times, while letting them start to make decisions (and mistakes, though that gives me heartburn) with their money. I tell them that we expect that they’ll make mistakes as they grow up, that they’ll be better served making small mistakes now where they can learn about how their behavior shapes their spending and learn to adapt systems that will work for them and their habits, instead of against them. My anxiety is of course heightened by the fact that they are most definitely a spender personality. That was my brother. I hoarded my money from the first time I held and saved my own red envelope money, whereas my brother could always find another reason to spend. I’m still years away from seeing how my attempts at teaching JB to be wise with their money and generous to others will work out.
I don’t want them to have financial anxiety and YET I want them to have the skills that the anxiety taught me. I’m really not sure how to do that.
I think it’s interesting that Scalzi mentioned being open with Athena about their income and spending choices. I’m open with JB about our spending priorities but not about our income yet.
Life with Smol Acrobat
Smol Acrobat is getting to the age where we teach them about caring when they hurt someone. They’re deeply concerned when someone has already sustained an injury and will check on it daily for weeks. Months, even. But recently they accidentally hit me in the eye. My “ouch!” and reminding them gently to check in and ask “are you ok?” caused them to freeze up completely. No apologies at this age since we were told ages ago they aren’t developmentally ready to do that. That startled me, I didn’t think that would cause stress for them.
I’ve seen something similar in Demon Cousin. That kid blames the other person for getting hurt and has a screaming meltdown when asked to check on the injured party. I’m not saying Smol is going down that road, but I immediately saw the parallel and we practiced the line “are you ok?” many times with all kinds of different scenarios to take the tension out of saying it. They’re already good at “scuse me”, they do that at daycare a lot, apparently. We’d taught them to say excuse me when trying to get past someone (mostly Sera who doesn’t understand anyway but it’s a hell of a lot better than letting them yell at and smack her to get her to move). After an extended practice session that night, they relaxed and willingly used it to check in the next day.
They’re wielding many new words inexpertly this month: booboo, getting better. Healing! Sun waking up. Mommy, WAKING UP! (said while patting my face when I try to sneak in a nap during a reading session) Retty niaow! (Ready now). Pout pout fish, pout pout face. (said while squishing my face between their hands)
Pronunciation and enunciation are an ongoing struggle. Ta-do has finally morphed into towel. We’re working on strawberry. We need to get through this on our own because I will cry if we have to spend $500/month on speech therapy.
Pupdate
I’ve tried to invite Sera 🐶 to be my office buddy many times, even bringing a bed in for her, but she’s always refused. I don’t force her, if she leaves she leaves. But it’s sad. I’m used to having a dog very nearby. Seamus used to lay with his head on my lap when I sat on the living room floor with him to work. I miss that.
JB carried an armload of costumes into the office and left them for me to deal with. Before I could, Sera 🐶 staked them out as her nest. She’ll come and sleep in the office as long as she can sleep on the nest of JB’s clothes. It makes no sense.
Precious Moments
Smol Acrobat is currently obsessed with owies. JB’s owies, dad’s owies, relitigating the time they took an owie from that door six months ago, see? See here on this foot? Door! They need to check everyone’s owies to confirm they’re getting better.
They demanded to see my owies, rolling up my pant leg.
Oh, I don’t have an owie there.
“See! Owie!!” Prods my leg.
Oh. I guess they’ve heard me aching around the house. “You can’t, kiddo, my owies are in the bone.”
Year 4, Day 80: I usually come into Monday feeling wrecked but this Monday comes with the extra spice of marrow-deep regret after spending most of Sunday washing loads of lost and found laundry and packing them away, and sorting and packing several unexpected boxes of donations from our friends who had also kindly saved empty large boxes for us to use. Unfortunately I burned through all my energy and my reserves of energy without realizing it, so I’m burnt out today. I had to pace myself very carefully all day, taking loads more breaks than my usual one, and work wrapped in a heating pad.
We also had a call with the daycare director today. There was another incident on Friday with the Prior Offender who attacked Smol Acrobat, this time right in front of PiC, where PO started shoving Smol when they wanted the toys that Smol was playing with. PiC intervened and they kept at it anyway. It’s developmentally normal but we still don’t want them in the same classroom where they’ll be around each other all day, everyday, and I don’t know what options there are but there had better be some.
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The one bright note: Smol Acrobat sat/stood at the table and ate their whole dinner on their own. No whining, no playing with their food, no flopping all over the place ignoring their plate. They just served themselves and ate!! It was a tiny miracle. The one odd thing was they called the BBQ sauce “spicy”, wanted to try it, deemed it thumbs up “goot”, but insisted that they only dip off my plate. That was an acceptable price for their feeding themselves without fuss.
Year 3, Day 81: We recently inherited a stack of old page protectors, from someone’s closet cleanout which is perfect because dun dun dunnnnnnnn….
Big project! Going through our financial and personal paperwork making sure everything is complete and organized. The paperwork currently merely exists in two binders. It’s not going to be particularly helpful to anyone in the event of our deaths. So everything is going into page protectors. Tabs will identify sections and the claims pages for life insurance and disability policies. I’m missing some information for my supplemental life insurance through PiC’s employer, and we’re missing his birth certificate so those two items are on the To Do list. Once things are complete and in order, I’ll type up a table of contents.
I’ve started a similar project with JB’s school records and notable moments. I’ve kept a journal with notes and pictures for them, in an old composition book, but it’s bloated with all the photos and cards I crammed in there to easily write in.
This inspires me to move my recipes to a binder system, too! My old journal method is good for storing data/recipes and useless for finding them quickly. I’ll need to pick up a new binder and possibly more page protectors by the time I get all these organized.
Generally I maintain a primarily digital records existence but some things you need to have in hard copy.
Year 3, Day 82: We were notified that Smol Acrobat was exposed to a COVID-infectious kid last week. We immediately tested the kids and we all came up negative but it’s going to be an anxious few days waiting to see if anyone else develops symptoms or tests positive.
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I’ve been trying to eat fewer carbs this week to see if it would help with my persistent pain spikes of the past few weeks and my unwanted companion belly bulge. It’s a bit rough going from ALL THE CARBS to some carbs, sometimes. This is a very moderate approach, just adding more veggies which I’ve always struggled with, and smaller servings of carbs but my cravings have zero respect for “moderation” and respond disproportionately. After three days of slightly reduced carbs, my body is urging me to throw in the towel. Shan’t. I’d like to give it an honest go for a few more weeks.
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Listening to my mentor and old friend talk to another old friend, both of whom I met through the PF blogosphere waaaay back in the day, talk about money is so heartwarming.
Year 3, Day 83: I’m doing the dropoff commute today so that PiC can bike in without having to stress about JB. I don’t mind doing my share of dropping off for camp and daycare but it sure eats up a large chunk of my day.
I lost another 45 minutes this morning to observing interactions between a white cop and a Black man. It seemed calm at first but then the Black man became upset at whatever he’d been told and I immediately worried for his life. I worried even more when three more cruisers showed up and surrounded the area. Why do you need to outnumber one upset, but absolutely and clearly non threatening, person by six or more officers?
I sat there as a witness, ready to film if anything went sideways, and was so thankful when they finally all pulled away without laying hands on him or escalating.
I hate this about our society. I hate that the moment he showed anger, I feared for his safety and his life because so frequently police have taken less as an excuse to murder. I hate that this is the norm and that my Black friends and neighbors and fellow residents cannot simply be human without potentially putting their lives at risk.
Year 3, Day 84: Whoops, I lost the note I’d written for Friday. Quick summary: a huge load of work came in and I cleared it all under Monday is a holiday for everyone else and I need to take some of it off to mind the kids.
PiC and JB are scheduled to help our friends move too, so they’ll be gone for a while.
Year 4, Day 73: You know it was a rough weekend when you’re looking forward to Monday because you can work without parenting for several whole hours.
Both kids are making me banana pants in their own special ways and to add insult to injury, it’s been ten days of this sleep regression. Smol’s waking 2x a night and refusing to go back to their crib on the second one (usually from 2-4 am). I am noticeably frayed around the edges.
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Sometimes, I feel dislocated in time. When I was 17, I felt ancient compared to my peers. Now I’m 40 and hear that my friend is sanding her deck and think: that’s what adults do. How does one both feel agéd and too young at the same time? It’s weird.
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Writing my net worth update for last month made me realize that I still have a lot of financial anxiety only half buried. It usually floats in the background but our extremely expensive summer is (probably) making it come to the surface.
Realistically, 7.5 years to reach our financial goal isn’t terrible. There are so many other factors that we’ll have to deal with in the meantime – getting small kids through daycare and primary school, prepping them for college, aging elders in our lives to care for, figuring out how to climate-change proof our lives (as much as is actually possible), activism against fascism, etc.
Five dollar bet that zeroing in on this financial goal situation is my subconscious’s attempt to hold onto some kind of semblance of (false) control. It’s following up with a tantrum because I consciously know I can’t control anything. You’d think saying that out loud would help, but it doesn’t yet. It will, I think, just not right away.
Year 3, Day 74: Between the sleep regressions and being the biggest pill in the world at every single dinner, Smol is really showing JB up in the Difficult Toddler Department. Their arms mysteriously lose the ability to convey food to their mouth but if you take them from the table, they scream EAT EAT EAT!! When you return them to the table, they sit and crumple a napkin or turn sideways to contemplate the cosmos or pick at the coasters. But those arms still can’t convey food to the mouth. 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
My rule of thumb is that they’ll eat if they’re hungry and don’t worry about it during the day, but the last meal of the day is the last meal. If they go to bed after 1 broccoli floret and 6 goldfish crackers from an earlier snack, I’ll be hearing “mama milk mama eat” at 430 am and then I just might transform into a banshee and scream. So I suffer through all kinds of contortions trying to get them to cooperate and consume the minimum number of calories into their system to hopefully get us closer to “through the night”. But my GAHHH is it frustrating to spend every single dinner trying to finagle food into the toddler whose disinterest in feeding themselves closely resembles a cat presented with an inferior meal. And it’s truly disinterest. They don’t have any issues with the food taste or texture. They’ll go from “food what food” to willingly eating anything if a sufficiently motivating greater prize has been offered. A kid that’s got texture or taste issues wouldn’t flip the switch like that.
Year 3, Day 75: PiC and JB are attempting to commute to summer camp by bike. I was quietly horrified by the idea as a very weak bicyclist but I knew they were in good hands with PiC who has years of bike commute experience. This second ride was a fun adventure for JB but it’s too stressful for PiC. JB can’t listen or hear well when they’re on the road. While the cars have been unusually careful around them this week, he was sweating bullets because JB’s ability to hear instructions on the bike on the streets is terrible. This experiment may end this week.
I had to run some paperwork to the elementary school and on my way out, remembered to ask the secretary if she knew when the lost and found giveaway was going to be. It turns out I’d gotten that wrong! Last year, it wasn’t an intentional giveaway, it was an old book giveaway and so they decided to put the lost and found items out too. She offered to let me pick through to find JB’s stuff so I explained that my interest was actually on behalf of the Lakota reservation. I’d planned to pack as many as I could carry back home for them (fingers crossed). She said, oh! No one’s come to claim anything so it’s all getting donated. May I have them, then? I asked, sight unseen.
They were happy to let me have it all! We packed up a huge box and 6 large garbage bags of jackets, sweaters, and vests. About half were already washed, I’ll have to wash the other half. Sera was quite surprised when I came home after my “quick errand” with many many sacks, like a rescue Santa. My local friend can provide 3-4 large boxes for me to pack these, so for the cost of shipping, we’ll be able to send at least a hundred, probably more, pieces of outerwear.
Year 3, Day 76: JB was the first up this morning. Smol had two wake ups in the middle of the night, PiC tended to both, so the two of them were out cold in the guest bed. I was aching and tired from yesterday’s haul, so I wasn’t up for another half hour.
They got up, got dressed, made breakfast, packed lunch for PiC, packed their own bags, and were ready to go without a single word from me or their dad. Amazing!
Now that I reflect on the day, I’m suspicious that we got a replacement JB. There was the whole morning thing. When I picked them up early from camp, they ran out quickly, no prompting needed, dressed for class, didn’t whine or complain when I gave them only 5 minutes to play after, didn’t dawdle when time was up, helped me at the grocery store, put on a pot of rice while I made the rest of dinner. They even bathed Smol after. I had quite the Supermom day myself, but that was very much enabled by JB being their (or someone else’s, where has THIS kid been?) best self today, unprompted. My guess is they were in an excellent mood because they had a field trip to look forward to and no school bully to deal with. They’ll be back to normal tomorrow. But I appreciated it!
Year 3, Day 77: Every day this week has felt like a highly compressed hour and also a week, rolled into one.
This was my first day all week without calls, meetings, or other out of office errands. I needed that solid block of focused work time to clear my desk before the weekend and finished just in the nick of time. Is it just me who feels this imperative to meet a totally arbitrary cutoff we set because that feels good? Because it’s very much my own deadline that I set. But it’s so nice to start the week with very long timelines on work rather than feeling crunched right from the get go because I didn’t clear enough work on Friday.
We had some commute logistics to straighten out. PiC had left the bike in longer term parking at work and JB’s bike was brought home, so he had to get that bike back before we could pick up the kids in the car. I don’t know if they’ll be doing the bike commute together again, it sounds like it was stressful.
Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working. I know from my Mom’s experience that qualifying for or relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA. Aside from that, I aim to do my best to make the most of what we can do while we can.
***
Dividend income. We received $969.74 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.
Year 4, Day 66: It’s Memorial Day in the US. Somehow I never realized that we normally share Memorial Day with Canada. I guess the subject has just never come up? Anyway we usually have the same holiday Monday until we didn’t (this year) and Canadian friends wondering what all the moaning about work last Monday was about is how I learned we normally share it.
Usually holiday Mondays feel like punishment because the work that piles up by Tuesday hits like a hurricane but this week I’m appreciating it because the entire week’s schedule is terrible. I’ve got to take the kids to appointments both Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, have a midday Tuesday meeting, and have to take JB to activities once or twice a day every day this week. I spent some time Sunday and today doing as much work as I could squeeze into half hour blocks of time between child minding and my current pain flare which feels roughly like having an acid bath inside one’s skin. Nothing but the best fun for me! And, naturally, since my car has recovered from its fits last week, PiC’s car died this afternoon. Sigh.
Year 3, Day 67: It’s only the first day of four and already I’m ready to quit. 😅 We survived the stress of getting to our appt this morning, dashed back home to squish in some work, then had my midday call. By the time I had lunch with JB (catered by chef JB), I had an hour left to work before we had to get back out the door. Sigh. I did NOT want to go. I’m not even sure JB wanted to go. But they had a proper lazy half morning and half afternoon playing math and typing games on the computer and were ready to move around.
On the plus side, our postage has shipped and is due to arrive on Thursday. Next time we get a big enough order or three, I’ll be able to test the pricing against Pirateship to see if it’s cheaper there (thanks, Rae!). I hope it is, I really like the sound of scheduling pickup! For the small orders, the first class pricing is pretty reasonable.
Year 3, Day 68: My Tuesday ended with working until 11 pm, and today started with Smol Acrobat waking up at 4 am and again at 5 with a diaper leak. Absolutely no one was in the mood for life. But we had to haul everyone’s butts out the door because Smol had their second dentist appt and we had to get there in plenty of time to deal with any balking or bawling. JB had wanted to come along so we scheduled it for a day they could come, and they were helpful keeping Smol corralled and on track thankfully. Some days are good, some days are full of regret. Poor kiddo was so tired from the early wake up, they kept telling us they were tired. They didn’t want to go to daycare. Unfortunately for them, they had to. We warned the teachers and they caught a hefty nap in midday. Whew.
Meanwhile JB and I had to run back home for a couple hours for me to work and then run back out to their half day camp. I stayed, working, for the full 4.5 hours to mind how it was run and generally get a feel for the place. That hard folding chair was not comfortable at all and it was a huge relief to retreat to the car after a few hours.
I felt like maybe I was being a helicopter parent. They were trepidatious about being left in a strange place alone for the first time, nothing like their intro to daycare where they could not care less if we were still there. I wondered if I was negatively affecting their resilience by agreeing to stay there. But we’d never been there before and I needed to know how things ran for my peace of mind. After a half day, they were absolutely comfortable and didn’t care if I stayed or not. Thankfully! I could not camp there another solid 4.5 hours or 9 hours later this week.
Year 3, Day 69: A morning half camp for JB today meant I caught a few hours of quiet work at home before having to go pick them up, drop off PiC’s lunch, and run by two elementary schools on our way home to drop off the student prizes and my paperwork. This week has been a poorly plotted marathon of appointments and errands and I will be so glad to be done with the last one tomorrow. I wished I had rescheduled some things but the two biggies could not have been rescheduled.
We still made it to their two self defense classes and I still got my work done so we’re going to call this an Exhausted Win.
Year 3, Day 70: We made it to the finish line! Not unscathed.
JB lost their damn mind at the end of the day and interrupted me to mouth off about setting the table for dinner. Smol Acrobat went ballistic when dinner was over and it was time to brush teeth.
PHEW.
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Going through all our home insurance and other important paperwork, I noticed that our dwelling coverage has almost doubled since 2017. It’s increased incrementally each year, and so have the premiums, but never noticed this creep. This is a bit of a surprise. I wonder if this is all automatic adjusting for inflation. Must be, we haven’t done anything.
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
