Brain Dump: Life, Work and Baby Bun

Needed to vent / dump my thoughts out.

FAMILY LIFE

My partner and I have finally reached a good place. Things have been rough ever since The Bun was born. Between my exhaustion with a newborn and his harping as a new father who wants everything to be perfect for his son (and exacting, super perfectionist, unrealistic-for-real-life standards), we have been having fights ranging from minor to epic.

I THINK things have improved because I have learned to try and be a little more of a perfectionist and he has learned to let the little things go and to not lose it over a few germs here and there.

He has learned to try and corral in his emotions & temper that can just erupt out of nowhere; and I have learned to not fuel it when it happens by yelling back at him.

What has worked for me in my responses is to calmly respond without a strong, angry reaction (my normal modus operandi) and in return, without any fuel to set him off even more, he reacts to my calmness and has controlled his own reaction.

We’re both people with emotional, hair-trigger tempers. And we have to work on that.

It has helped.

What has also REALLY helped is him not being at home while I am at work.

I felt the same thing when he was working and I was at home with Baby Bun — useless, ineffective, tired, stressed about not making money.

Although I must say that I find it completely unfair (still) that society thinks it’s OK for a woman to be at home with the kids because she’s a mother but father get off scot-free in any child-rearing duties.

I’ve been slowly just trying to let things go and to NOT step in to help get The Bun ready in the mornings, or do watch him when we’re both at home.

Sometimes he gets home from work and I’m in the middle of a frustrating episode with The Bun.

I just leave, go and do dishes and ignore The Bun, or take a long shower to calm down.

He senses it (is getting better at that) and steps in to entertain The Bun until Mommy calms down.

WORK

I’m exhausted.

My brain hurts.

I’m working the equivalent of 5 consultants and because it comes easily to me (and I work fast), it looks like I am doing this effortlessly and it is so easy but I can only let the mini hamsters in my brain run so fast before they all just give up and flop on the treadmill, breathing hard, out of breath & drained of every little ounce of hamster-ness.

I need a break.

What kills me is other consultants, are doing the actual work of 1 consultant (or HALF in some cases) and are making it look like it is so hard and it is the equivalent of 5 consultants.

(Before you ask, they’re all older than me and we’re making the same $$$$.)

At least now we’re sort of over the hump and it’s just coasting to home from hereon in.

I will say that it looks like they want to keep me on… for a very long time, so I could be looking at a very long-term contract with them.

I just hope the pace slows down or I get more help / time to do things properly.

I’m sort of disgusted with the way things are going and my own personal project standards are not being met due to the crunched time & stress.

My problem is my standards are too high. I care too much and it’s giving me a lot of unneeded stress because NO ONE ELSE seems to care the way that I do, except for maybe 3 other people out of a team of 50.

Very disheartening.

BABY BUN

My baby escaped from his futon this morning.

I walked into his room with a warmed bottle of goat’s milk to a squealing baby waiting at the door for me (he couldn’t reach the handles).

We had to remove all his futon bed barriers (big heavy boxes) so that he doesn’t accidentally baby ninja-fu himself over the boxes and break his neck in the mornings.

He had been working on his baby ninja game for a while, so it is not really surprise to me that he finally made it.

My little bun succeeded in escaping from his bed barriers by hurling himself over like a ninja this morning. ?We removed everything and now he can’t climb anything to hurt himself. Bittersweet because it means he is growing up and becoming a bigger and bigger baby ? #dontgrowup #stillmybaby

A photo posted by Sherry @ Save. Spend. Splurge. (@saverspender) on Sep 25, 2015 at 11:31am PDT

FOOD

I have a newfound love of wild mushrooms again. This stir fry was SO.. SO GOOD.

A photo posted by Sherry @ Save. Spend. Splurge. (@saverspender) on Sep 25, 2015 at 11:05am PDT