Ask Sherry: Why Little Bun is starting to stay home more often with us

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Why is your Instagram count so low but your Pinterest so high?

You have as much of a clue as I do. I have no idea but I also have a few educated guesses why…

My Instagram has been painfully slow in growth for two main reasons:

A) I do not post every hour

B) I do not post myself or my face / life in there

It is clear that the IG growth is far more likely to be higher when you can see the person – their face, their house, their kids, etc. I am not doing this. I only post the outfit from the neck down, and a few things here and there, but I generally keep it pretty Anonymous. This has greatly hurt growth… people trust me less, in a way.

I do not post every hour either — I don’t have enough pictures or content to do this, but then again, I am all alone without a team to help, AND I am not posting anything personal. If I were to allow myself to post more personal photos, I’d have content enough for every hour.

I actually don’t care as much for Instagram or Pinterest growth because what I want is the growth to drive people to my blog, not necessarily to stay on Instagram and be popular there… although that’d be a nice bonus.

For my Pinterest growth, I actually am surprised I have so many followers there. Every day I get an email saying more and more people are pinning and following. I think a lot of it has to do with using Tailwind (use my referral here for one free month as a trial) to organize and manage that. I use Tailwind for Instagram too, to do drafts and have all the hashtags come up automatically in a block (saves me SO MUCH TIME) but for Pinterest, it has made a HUGE difference.

I basically pin my Instagram posts into Pinterest (scheduling them) and making my photos do double duty. Well worth it. It has saved me so much time, my posts are now organized, and I can post at the best “follower times” even while I am asleep (at 8 p.m.)….

Did you say why Baby Bun is staying home more these days instead of going to daycare?

I did not mention why… for my partner, it is because he works remotely half the week, so he doesn’t want to leave Little Bun in daycare. He wants to spend time and be with him at home, so he has opted to keep him with him on those days when I go to the office.

For me, it is because I want to do something similar. So I am taking days here and there at home with him, working remotely to spend time with him…

It’s because we can so we’re doing it and saving money. Win win.

How do you work when he’s home without resorting to just plopping him in front of a screen?

So for my partner, it is not an issue. He has a big iPad but that’s it, he gets bored easily. They end up doing math together — quizzing on math tables, baking bread, etc

For me, it is a little trickier — I take away the iPads at a certain point (after about an hour), and then he just goes and plays with toys that he has, because I make up games like building a huge city in the middle of the floor, in different shapes — Circle City, Rectangle City, etc.

He likes interesting games, and I have tried to come up with cool ideas for what he already has, so that we have games..

When he is building said City, he is very concentrated and quiet. I can usually work and just turn and encourage him a little: Oh look at that tower!!

Other times, I have to resort to giving him back the iPad so I can hop on a call and speak in French – he has stopped crying and screaming when I am on the phone in French, because I explain to him ahead of time what I have to do and why.

Then our day is feeding him lunch – about half an hour; feeding myself lunch and giving him bites – another half an hour, and then we read a few stories together beside on my desk, and nap.

He naps, I stay awake and work through the nap.

I usually log off a bit earlier than usual when I work at home because I start when I wake up — no makeup, dressing or commuting required, so I gain about an hour that way.

Throughout the day, he is pretty good. He gets bored with the iPad to be honest with you. I end up sitting beside him, giving him math equations or doing (now) piano treble clef notes to entertain him while I work.

Still have a burning question?

You can ask any question using the form here and all of my previous Ask Sherry posts are here.