My baby boy turned FIVE! It is hard to believe, but, on the other hand, not really. He is tall, lanky, and looks Russian, like me. He is in Brazilian jiu jitsu, skates, and gymnastics. He loves Star Wars, transformers and Legos. He is a builder, a breaker, and a fixer. R is also a sensitive child and gets frustrated easily. In that aspect, he takes after me since I remember my mom mentioning how sensitive I was at that age.
R’s party was on Saturday and it was small but perfect. Four of his buddies came to visit, played, had pizza and chicken fingers, sang happy birthday, and had ice cream cake. Ice cream cake had a Bumblebee on it since R loves transformers and his favorite colors are yellow and blue. Also orange. He wore a blue hand-me-down dress shirt from one of his friends who attended his birthday party. He looked so cute.
I have nothing but good wishes for my boy on his birthday – I know he will go far, very far, with his creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. He is a pain in the butt but we love him dearly. I honestly cannot wait to see him grow and transform, and learn, and make mistakes, and learn some more.
So that was Saturday.
On Sunday we went for a lovely winter walk at the Great Swamp. It was chilly but pleasant and sunny. A perfect winter day. Crisp. Quiet. We waddled around the swamp, then hit the playground. I achieved my goal of being outside! For one day. 😜
I also saw my Russian friend and her baby boy this past Sunday- they came to visit! We chatted, the baby slept, and the “big” kids played. It was awesome. We had holodets and rassol’nik. We forgot to have our weekly family meeting that night.
Finances
Signed up for Monarch money app. We tried doing the Excel spreadsheet for budgeting for the past two years and could not be disciplined enough to enter and categorize all of the transactions. T was better at it while I was terrible. Monarch costs $99 per year but, hey, it does ALL of the categorization for you. It shows you your net worth, your spending, your expenses, your income, everything in one place. It’s amazing. I scoured the Internet for budgeting apps and, while there are many, with all kids of bells and whistles, I settled on Monarch. T goes “but now you can see what I spend money on!!” Me: “it’s for your own good. It may hurt a little at the beginning but you’ll be thankful at the end.” 😘
Focus / habits / screen time
Every morning I come back to my word of the year: focus. It helps me center the days around things that matter. Email stays closed after contractual time. Work stays at work. Money is being spent on what really matters. Every day is some kind of movement: yoga, or weights, or a walk. Timers are set for weights – 20 minutes. Meditation is every morning, first thing.
Phone use averages about 2 hours per day, but Sunday was bad since I couldn’t find my Kindle! That is why I want to read more paper books. Those are harder to misplace.
In general, I think I am doing well with habits. Just a reminder for self to NOT lose my kindle. Also I replaced “water” on my habit tracker as “hydrate” since I eat soup often and I drink tea, in addition to water.
Mom of Children 