
Week of Money: Where getting mansplained seems to be the theme of the week
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DAY ONE
??:?? — I wake up and just watch Little Bun snore beside me. He looks so sweet and peaceful.
6:30 a.m. — After his milk, he closes the door, and I make myself some tea. I have been going through a bit of a headspace about my money lately. I don’t need to worry about it, but I am struggling with “what if” scenarios and “I should have” feelings that have played out across my mind, tormenting me in all the bad decisions I have made. It is like I can only focus on negativity right now, and even looking back and seeing all the good, the accomplishments… it still bothers me even though I have zero control over the outcome and what I could have changed then. So that’s where I am.
7:12 a.m. — I start on restoring my laptop back to its original state. I can’t go into an Apple store and don’t want to anyway, so this is just me Googling and doing DIY stuff on the computer to try and get it to work.
12:08 p.m. — Finally. I spent the morning struggling with restoring and wiping my laptop to have a new fresh install, and it’s on its way:
12:28 p.m. — We have lunch, and I want to lie down and read a book, so I do that while Little Bun naps.
3:56 p.m. — I am so inspired by these stylish looks. I think they’re full of details that are amazing
Love the draped, popped collar.
The gold rings, that gorgeous top… WOW.
Now I want a pure white fedora with white trim.
4:11 p.m. — I am pinning ideas for a future home for decoration. This one with the big soaker tub with black hardware is definitely something I am interested in, and the nice warm wood/rattan accents…
I also like this one. My style is clearly something along the lines of Clean, Modern, Scandinavian
6:30 p.m. — I feel drained. I do all the dishes, laundry, dry them, dry the laundry, put it away (Little Bun helps with some of it), and I just feel fatigued. Is it from being inside all the time? Is it the first signs of depression? I am on key alert because I can feel myself drifting into a blue kind of mood where I feel like things are not going well, my anxiety is through the roof, I am stressed and I HAVE NOTHING TO STRESS ABOUT AT ALL financially speaking. It’s just.. ridiculous for me to feel this way, and yet I do.
8:17 p.m. — Time for bed after he watches a bit of Gordon Ramsay – Uncharted with me, and watches me drool over the curries in the episode in Sumatra.
Spent: $0
DAY TWO
6:00 a.m. — Little Bun starts with questions: “Mommy how big is the galaxy?” … “Mommy, how big is the universe?”… “Mommy, did you know there’s water in the universe?“…. “Mommy did you know that the galaxy is mostly made out of hydrogen but the building element of life is carbon?” …. I sip my tea and nod, googling each answer as he asks me.
7:19 a.m. — Little Bun: “Mommy do you know why I love watching Fixer Upper?” … I respond “No“, and he tells me in the sweetest voice: “Because I am looking for a new home for us to live in!” He is so.. incredibly sweet and cute, I love him beyond all words. He’s so empathic which I wanted, thoughtful, and sensitive. I’m trying to encourage all of these traits in him because they are important.
8:08 a.m. — This was very funny:
10:11 a.m. — I have an early lunch but I still feel very tired, dizzy, with a slight headache because this weather is so up and down. It keeps going from sunny to rainy within a day and it is messing with my head, as I get really bad barometric pressure headaches.
10:28 a.m. — I lie down for 10 minutes. I tell Little Bun 10 – 15 minutes to nap. He’s my little timekeeper normally and won’t let me sleep past 10-15 minutes if I tell him to wake me up.
10:45 a.m. — Little Bun: Mommy is it time yet? You said 10 Minutes! … I feel the pull back to sleep and I tell him another 10 more.
10:55 a.m. — Little Bun: How about now? …. Mommy: I am so tired, baby, I am sorry. … and I drift back to sleep. He doesn’t wake me up again but goes out and plays with his father, and then came back in so quietly I didn’t hear him.
1:03 p.m. — I hear Little Bun click off the iPad and go to lie down, and I realize I conked out for almost 3 hours… I just kept sleeping and sleeping while he sat there quietly, on his iPad, playing on mute, and watching over me (I felt him lean over me a few times while I slept to check on me). He’s very very sweet, and I needed this nap very badly.
1:22 p.m. — This is a beautiful picture of a glasswing butterfly – you can see right through!
3:19 p.m. — Oh and my partner painted the closet once, and needs to do another coat. Things are progressing.
6:17 p.m. — I do all the dishes, laundry, and I inform Little Bun of the plan. He looks up eagerly at me, and excitedly says: Mommy let me help you do the dishes! And put away laundry!!!
6:50 p.m. — We do dishes, he wipes down all the cutlery and halfway through he moans: THERE IS TOO MANY OF THEM… and I eye him strongly, and say: “Just take one spoon or fork at a time. Soon you will see there is none left. Don’t give up. It may seem like a lot, but just try one at a time“. Another life lesson. I praise him at the end when he finishes and say: “See? That wasn’t a lot when we just focus and do it a bit at a time. We don’t give up because things are difficult or hard. Just try. We like to work hard.”
7:35 p.m. — We then put away the laundry, with him telling me: TEAM WORK! Let’s work on this together! … and we fold towels together in no time.
8:22 p.m. — We start getting ready for bed. He has to read a page about Science with his father, and then draw. So the other day he read about sunflowers, and had to draw one, and name its parts based on what he read.
9:10 p.m. — Snuggled together, we sleep after we chat about nonsense like what he was like when he was a baby.
Spent: $0
DAY THREE
??:?? — I wake up tired. As usual.
6:34 a.m. — I make a cup of tea.
8:08 a.m. — I do yoga – I try to do it every morning for at least 10-15 minutes to stay in shape, as I am noticing I am losing my strength in my arms when I could do lots of moves and poses and now I am lazy.
10:40 a.m. — Little Bun insists that I help him beat this harrowing level. We are on Day 4 of him insisting I beat it for him. I have been working on it for 4 days, and used all of the tricks up my sleeve (e.g. booster boxes and so on) to try and get it to clear but it is SO DARN HARD. He promises me SIX kisses and SIX major hugs if I beat it for him because HE REALLY WANTS THAT SPECIAL BADGE.
2:03 p.m. — I finally beat it, 4 days later, 50 tries… and get the special badge he wanted. Oh the things we do as parents…..
3:26 p.m. — Little Bun wakes up to this good news, and he hugs and kisses me 5 times.
3:44 p.m. — Then we read more books to his Stuffies, teaching them about the Periodic Elements. I use this as a way to get him to read (he is so much quicker now), and to explain words like “distinctive” to him so that he understands big words and it makes sense rather than him just reading a bunch of English but not knowing what it means. I use his Stuffies with a fake Stuffie voice to ask him questions, to explain things, play with him, and he is very excited to ‘teach’ his Stuffies all that he knows and learns.
4:25 p.m. — W have decided to homeschool Little Bun and Grade One entails of:
- Learning 1 – 100
- Counting in groups of 2, 5, 10, etc
- Counting forwards and backwards
- Counting naturally, knowing it is 123456789 .. not 3958172
- Learning ABCs
- Learning uppercase and lowercase letters
- Learning small 3-4 letter words
- Learning about the sky, earth, and elements of the environment around us, plants, animals, etc
I am racking my brain to remember what I did to teach this to him at 18 months – 2 years because this is what I remember doing when he was a toddler. I wish I had taken notes because as we are homeschooling him, it would have come in handy now. I work on the Learning Plan for the year. I guess it’s a lucky thing I don’t have to work and I am not working so I can do this.
5:55 p.m. — Then we have a treat, french fries and this delicious chicken my partner grilled with some maple syrup:
6:10 p.m. — I start reading my book, and Little Bun I can tell is antsy and needs “Mommy time”, where we read books to his “babies” (stuffed animals), and he takes care of them, and explains things from his books to them (and I talk for the ‘babies’ by asking him questions and quizzing him to explain things). I think it gets him excited and more interested in learning about things in his books so he can explain it to his ‘babies’ and learn at the same time.
7:08 p.m. — I take a shower, and when I come out, Little Bun takes a DEEP SNIFF of me and tells me I stink. It must be the BHA lotion I am trying to use up on my body, and it does have a chemical-y smell to it. I need to get rid of it (it was a sample), so I can get rid of more things from my toiletry cabinet, hence why I am using it. It is working however, and my skin is sloughing off dead cells.
9:10 p.m. — Time for bed. I have been watching episodes of Love on the Spectrum and it is such a wonderful show.
Spent: $0
DAY FOUR
??:?? — I wake up somewhat early before Little Bun and watch him snore. I drift back to sleep, and am slightly woken up again by Little Bun poking his father and squealing because his nose was bleeding. My partner gets up, I roll over and go back to sleep, and he handles the nosebleed (his department).
7:26 a.m. — We’re all up, I snuggle Little Bun (I call him “Snuggles” now, as a nickname), and then I feed him yoghurt (there was no milk in the stores), and make myself a matcha latte.
7:26 a.m. — I log in and do all of my banking. I have to make sure I didn’t forget a thing (sometimes I do), and go through my list. There are some things I can ignore, like ideas for posts for the blog, and others I cannot.
9:19 a.m. — I chat with a friend and she lays down why “bougie” in English doesn’t translate to “bobo” in French:
Note: I know English people made up the word “bougie” to come from the French word “bourgeois” but it is presumptuous to assume that our slang in our English language is something they understand/use in theirs. Just because we made up something in English doesn’t mean they accept it as their slang.
For French people, “bougie” is already a word they use, that means “candle”. It LITERALLY MEANS “candle” to them, not the English slang on the word ‘bourgeois’.
How about the other way around — would we know their slang? They use lots of English words all the time like “boucan” based off the English word “book” to mean “book” when in French you say “livre”, but that doesn’t mean when we hear “boucan” we think of the English word “book”.
Or when we hear slang in other English-countries like “thongs” in Australia doesn’t mean underwear, it means flip flops, amongst other things.
It’s really imperialist to think that everything we do in English is universally adopted, and this attitude of our society annoys me greatly. I suggest we all take a step back before making such comments.
8:10 a.m. — I call my friend who is out on her walk and we chat for a LONG time… her husband can’t understand what we could be talking about for hours on end, but this reminds me back when I was in school and spent hours chatting to my friends on the phone.
9:34 a.m. — Off the phone, I do laundry, clean up a little and make a list of things to get done.
10:50 a.m. — I make a quick breakfast, Little Bun takes his breakfast by himself from the counter to sit and set himself up to eat, and then quietly runs off to play by himself in the bedroom while I do things.
12:28 p.m. — This is funny – stories about people they’ve dated:
12:56 p.m. — My partner is home from doing the grocery shop, and we stay in the bedroom while he disinfects everything. There was no milk again, so he has to go out again maybe next week.
2:13 p.m. — After lunch, he and Little Bun go down for a nap together. Little Bun likes napping with his father, but for bedtime, he wants Mommy. Night time is when he REALLY feels the need for me, and when I am away, my partner says he cries himself to sleep because he doesn’t have me to cuddle and talk to him. He likes to put his pillow on his father in the ‘nook’ of his body, and then cuddle up beside him to nap (I took a picture once. It’s really sweet and a nice bonding moment as well.
3:30 p.m. — Little Bun is up, and I am trying to organize my desk. I have so many chargers, I wish I could just pare it down but I need all of it, it seems.
4:19 p.m. — We work on drawing and mapping out elements, and chose Zirconium because it’s pretty. We will pick another one today, and maybe make up our own element to add to the periodic table!
(Please all you science geeks, ignore the mistake of the X’s through two electrons at the top and bottom. I didn’t know the shells had set electrons of 2, 6, 10 etc..) But the point is he learned there are 40 protons (positive) that counteract 40 electronics (negative).
8:56 p.m. — I ask Little Bun what he likes about sleeping with Mommy and Daddy in a big bed, and he whispers back: I love talking at night with you.… I know he also just likes knowing I am there. When he sleeps during the night, he sometimes reaches out and pats around the bed until his hand rests on me, to feel me snuggling beside him and feeling loved / secure.
People knock on family bed arrangements and how they can’t sleep with their children (“I don’t know how you do it, bla bla bla“), and their need for separate sleeping spaces, etc.. and the truth is I need it too, but I got used to having him in my bed for the past 4 years. It feels empty without him now. I will be with him for as long as he needs me. It was worse when he was younger, because he woke up all the time, and now I feel like he sleeps a bit deeper than before, with one parent on either side.
Spent: $0
DAY FIVE
??:?? — Little Bun roundhouse kicks me in the face in bed and I wake up gasping. At least he missed my eye.
5:45 a.m. — I wake up early and end up with Little Bun, going on the balcony and colouring with chalk because it isn’t too hot or sunny and it’s quiet.
5:45 a.m. — I continue watching my new favourite series on the sweetest people – Love on the Spectrum, these people who are on the spectrum of autism. They’re so honest, innocent and open… and funny and WONDERFUL. My partner says that he thinks in some way, they are the truly normal people who cannot really lie, who see things for as they are, and are innocent, good people… and the rest of us are the actually odd ones who like to lie for social reasons. But as we are the majority, we are the ones who are accepted and they are not. Anyway, LOVELY show. Very highly recommended. I want them all to find someone, I’m rooting for them.
7:59 a.m. — This absolutely makes me angry when men don’t realize that they have a wife at home who is actually doing what he is unwilling and/or unable to do, and then penalizing other women for not having/making the same choices. It’s… disgusting, really. Just to penalize women for motherhood but men get a boost from being fathers and praised for the littlest things.
8:08 a.m. — I finish my tea (I heated it up twice so I could drink it).
11:15 a.m. — I have lunch, and then Little Bun cuddles with me as he does a few pages of his workbook my mother sent over with matching letters (easy for him), reading a page and having the comprehension of what happened (again, no issue), and I try to encourage him to write more. He is reluctant because he knows I do it much quicker and faster, but he has to practice and I am working on having him do it more often so he gets faster at it.
4:11 p.m. — Little Bun builds a new car / stroller for his smallest Stuffie… and the Biggest Stuffie has to push him around in it.
5:12 p.m. — My partner is out on the balcony with Little Bun and this happens:
And now I shall chug his wine to teach him a lesson!!!!
Yeah. I don’t drink alcohol, so it is safe, but I would have. HAHA!!!
6:37 p.m. — We have dinner together, making “burgers” which is what Little Bun calls these sandwiches stuffed with chicken and salad between homemade bread. He’s so cute I can’t stand it.
7:26 p.m. — I do all the dishes and laundry, just to get it out of the way and I don’t need to stare at it tomorrow morning.
9:12 p.m. — Time for bed.
Spent: $0
DAY SIX
??:?? — I wake up really really tired because it is early.
5:00 a.m. — I make tea. And Little Bun is a bit grumpy too, as he woke up early.
7:59 a.m. — I end up taking another nap mid-morning. I have to do a presentation today for my Investing 101 Course, and I need to record it so I can just give it to people (I say the same thing each time), and then do a quick call afterwards for Q&A.
8:08 a.m. — I get this comment and I try to respond diplomatically but it just makes me angry enough to do a post on it:
During the pandemic, women are meant to stop spending on shopping because it was a frivolous past time to begin with for these men.
Not only that, it was supposed to ‘show us the light’ in the ‘error of our wasteful ways’, and we should do more practical pursuits like make clothing out of used burlap instead. I think it is ridiculous to expect women to get rid of everything and change overnight just because they are in a pandemic and unable to really go out. Does that make me love fashion and style any less? Not at all.
To get MANSPLAINED because his ex-wife was a shopper and he felt he had to police her by saying she was wasteful, is just beyond abhorrent and rude. I always advocate shopping and doing all of that fun stuff AFTER YOU HIT YOUR MONEY GOALS. Hit your money goals first.
It became a huge long conversation, which ended with him lecturing me on my money, and how I was spending it. He told me he was “new to my IG” but that the real path to wealth was saving my money, not spending it, living below my means, bla bla bla.
I lost it. I basically responded back: “Since you’re new here, these are the facts. I am a millionaire at 36, I’ve worked 50% of the time, I became work-optional at 35, and have 11 side incomes that are on track to be $50K this year (up to $75K actually). I love shopping, style, fashion and won’t apologize for it.”
If I want to buy an expensive designer bag, that’s my money and my problem. Look at the rest of what I actually earn and do with my money – I don’t just spend it all, and to pigeonhole women into “oh they’re all wasteful spenders” or “virtuous savers who don’t spend a penny” is ridiculous and insulting. The Instagram Post with the comments (some are gold), is here:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCJRgG2HCHb/
9:13 a.m. — I played HARD with Little Bun to give him maximum Mommy Time before the presentation. I read with him, played Stuffie Games, coloured, made up stories… the whole shebang.
10:30 a.m. — I log into my presentation early and start admitting folks. If you’re interested, the course is $100 CAD and comes with a 15-minute Q&A call / email afterwards.
11:12 a.m. — I am in a groove, things are going GREAT… and then I hear Little Bun outside my door, tapping. Then banging, then knocking. Then WAILING. Straight up serious crying and wailing. I am torn. Do I stop? Do I go to him? ARRRGGHHH… I end up pausing and saying: Sorry, one moment please. …. and I open the door and let him in. He’s all red-faced, bawling, crying, sniffling on the side, and I give him serious “WTF KID” Mommy Eyes, and direct him to stay on the bed QUIETLY and play, all the while STILL PRESENTING.
11:17 a.m. — I hear him sniffling on the side, I am desperately throwing my phone at him with a reading app on there and Snapchat to keep him quiet. I JUST NEED HIM TO BE QUIET UNTIL THIS IS OVER. To his credit, only a bit of crying, and he calms down, stays on the bed, and reads by himself, plays on the phone and waits VERY VERY patiently.
11:22 a.m. — I finish the presentation, turn everything off, scrap the recording (it’s useless), turn to Little Bun and just say very calmly: … What happened?
He bursts into fresh tears, sobbing and hiccuping, and all I could get out of him were the words: “Mommy. Mommy you missed our Crêpe Time!!!”
Then it dawns on me that every Saturday at 11 a.m. my partner makes crêpes, and it’s Little Bun’s happiest time of the week (one of his favourite foods in the world), and it makes him extremely excited about it, so he likes to enjoy it the most with the person he loves the most (it’s true, I am #1 in this household). All he wanted to do was sit with me, and eat crêpes together happily on the counter while making yummy noises. I thought he would have forgotten about it, knowing I was on a call, and he would have just eaten his crêpes and waited for me to eat mine later.
NOPE. He is so sensitive, he just wanted to eat his favourite crêpes with Mommy.
I finally calm him down (he bursts into more tears sporadically as I get the story out of him), and I tease him that all the Stuffies ate every crêpe already, so they must all be gone!… and Little Bun lights up, distracted with the idea that Stuffies could eat crêpes, and exclaims: NO! I WOULDN’T LET THEM!!!
We head out to the kitchen, and I honestly thought he ate his crêpes and then started crying when I wasn’t there, but it turns out that he waited the whole TWO HOURS from the presentation to the calming down period, and didn’t eat a single crêpe. He waited for me the entire time, because he so wanted to sit beside me and eat them together.
He turns, red-faced and pink-cheeked, eyes still wet with past tears, and smiles as we eat our crêpes together happily and asks: Mommy? Do you think Daddy made the best crêpes today? Are they yummy? Do you like them?
I reply back that I do, and he smiles: “They’re so good!” he tells me. He just wanted to share this moment with me.
He melted my heart so much in that moment. I felt like the worst mother as well, but then I realized (as other people also told me), that I had created an expectation that when I say something I do it, and I DID promise him crêpe time every Saturday, and he didn’t forget at all. He absolutely knew I would keep my word, and he wanted very badly to have Mommy + Baby Crêpe time every week like I had promised.
And, he loves me so very much. And no more scheduling or doing anything during Crêpe time.
1:12 p.m. — He goes down for his nap, and I promise him I won’t ever schedule anything on that day again. (I had mistakenly though the crêpes would have distracted him while I was on the call, to be honest.)
2:30 p.m. — I prep for the second session of it tomorrow.
4:10 p.m. — Loving the mix of prints here, and the tie details. Very beautiful, cool style ideas:
5:22 p.m. — I go through my bank notes, and I decide to take out $25K and convert it to USD using Norbert’s Gambit.
6:18 p.m. — I do all the laundry, and Little Bun sits and helps me fold it afterwards. I make sure to extra kiss/snuggle/hug him today, and to spend more time with him. Poor baby. And he was so good during the last hour of that call, just being quiet in the room with me.
7:00 p.m. — Light dinner, then dishes.
8:35 p.m. — He goes through his routine with his father – reading, a little art project after each page he learns about or reads, and then brushes his teeth, and we do a little shared reading together to the Stuffies. He LOVES his Stuffies so much, and reads to them constantly to teach them.
Spent: $0
DAY SEVEN
??:?? — I wake up, a little tired.
5:13 a.m. — I play with Little Bun, having my tea on the ground, sitting cross-legged with him (I kind of like it, the kitchen is SO HOT in the mornings with the sun streaming in).
6:00 a.m. — We go out on the balcony and he colours with chalk, doing letters, numbers, and I draw fruits for him to colour in.
9:00 a.m. — I do some yoga but can’t continue. I just don’t have the energy after 20 minutes or so.
10:12 a.m. — I drop off for a nap. I can’t hold it in while he plays on his iPad and reads books beside me. He’s converting binary to decimal while I sleep, but then I think he forgot how to do it, and checks on me sleeping to ask, but decides to play something else. If you’re interested, this is how I taught him about binary & decimal numbers.
12:48 p.m. — I wake up just in time for a lunch, and then he goes down for his nap. I feel SO REFRESHED.
3:34 p.m. — He’s up from his nap, and I snuggle him. I also prep him that I am on a call in half an hour. THIS TIME it should be fine, because he just napped and there is no special Mommy + Baby event happening in the household.
4:00 p.m. — I start my second Investing 101 course and I am happy. It’s completely done.
5:45 p.m. — After the course, I breathe and then play with Little Bun, who spent the afternoon with his father playing games, reading, laughing and chatting VERY LOUDLY… and I ask him what he’d like to do.
6:17 p.m. — We end up coming up with a game with the Stuffies, and then I tell him we should do some workbook, so we do some activity sheets together on math and English. His math is pretty good, I would like to work on multiplication drills now (he gets the easy ones like the 5s and 11s), but I need him to nail the other ones, so that his division can advance.
7:06 p.m. — We discover that France has education online for students during COVID under Lumni.fr, and we watch a few of the videos. I think we will use them for homeschooling.
7:40 p.m. — I read a bit of my book, and then we go through his routine, he goes out on the balcony with his father to play “I Spy”, and then bedtime.
Spent: $0
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Want more? Read all of my previous Week of Money Diaries.
6 Comments
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Gail
Please don’t pay attention to anyone who says you shouldn’t sleep next to LB, etc. Look at the child: he is brilliant and adorable! You are doing better than most parents by far. Keep listening to your instincts and knowledge. People are motivated by jealousy, as I have said before. I love the Thursday posts so much.
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Anne
Love the crêpes story – and the pink-red outfit!
Christine
Your Instagram encounter reminds me of when Marissa Mayer (self-made tech star via Google and Yahoo) was first becoming publicly prominent as a young woman. She got so much &%#@ on the blogs from men who criticized and chastened her for indulging her love for beautiful designer clothing WITH HER OWN MONEY. These same commenters would slaver admiringly over tech bros who spent $$$$ on cars or watches or other boy toys. Somehow it’s only immoral when a woman does it and/or when it’s something you yourself would not be interested in.