Silver Linings

A few silver linings to some stressful situations at home:

Now that my daughter comes into our room to sleep on the floor every night, I can write and/or meditate in her room on the rare occasions when my son doesn’t interrupt me with an early wake up. I’m especially appreciative of that right now, because the “sun room,” where I would normally spend the early mornings, doesn’t have insulation or access to the central heating and is so cold in the mornings you can see your breath. My daughter’s room is warmer and has a lot more space. I like having somewhere pleasant to go in the mornings.

When my husband and I fought about me being miserable at my job, one of the points I kept coming back to was that I didn’t know if we could even afford for me to take a salary cut. While it’s true that we no longer worry much about money, and always seem to be able to pay our bills (even the big ones that come up annually or bi-annually), we don’t have any idea how much we’re spending every month and on what. We still don’t track our expenditures, nor do we have a budget we even aspire to. So I used his own insistence that I shit or get off the pot when it comes to a finding a new job to request that we track our spending for 3-4 months, to see what our finances look like and if there is any room in the budget to shave off discretionary income. The last thing I want to do is take a job with a massive pay cut and find we’re both so miserable living on less that neither of us is happy. 

Mostly I’m excited to see how much he spends on lunch every week (yes, he eats out for lunch EVERY DAY), or better said, I’m excited for him to see what he actually spends on lunch every week, in the hopes that it will inspire him to bring lunch at least a few times. I know I need a similar motivation to stop spending in some categories. I hope the exercise is a positive one for us, and I’m grateful that I have the “we need this information so I can shit or get off the pot about a new job” line to get him to participate (so far he has not added anything to the goo.gle sheet I shared).

I’ve been waking my son up before I go to bed to have him pee, a strategy I balked at when we first started potty training. I hate doing it (even though so far it’s been a relatively painless process), but I hate having to change his pajamas, sheets and mattress protector at 3am even more, so I keep doing it. The good news is that now he wakes up dry. The bad news is he’s still up at least once a night between 1-3am. Some day I’ll get an uninterrupted night’s sleep. Some day.

I really am shocked, though, that waking up to pee is not a shit show every night. He barely wakes up and goes right back to sleep when it’s done. I’m so thrilled that it’s not a shit show, and we’re done waking up soaked through to the sheets in pee. 

So those are some silver linings lately. Thought it was worth putting them out there. 

8 Comments

  1. Can your son just wear pull-ups to bed? My C is almost 4, and she wakes up wet every morning. I’m just waiting it out. With J, I stopped nighttime diapers as soon as I could, and it resulted in a lot of sheet changes. I can’t see doing that this time around.

    1. I forgot to mention in the post that he is wearing a diaper! A size 6 night diaper. We’ve also tried night pull-ups but he was peeing right through both! I would be totally okay with him waking up wet in a diaper, but I didn’t know how to prevent him from peeing all the way through and having it leak everywhere. So I started waking him up at night. I’m so glad that is working because I didn’t know what else to do.

  2. Tracking expenses to get a better sense of what you’re really spending is a great idea. That was a huge eye opener in my household. I recommend YNAB if you’re looking for some software to help. We’ve been using it for a year + and it’s totally changed our finances.

    1. I’ve used YNAB and really liked it, but I’m not sure we want to spend the money on it right now. Maybe if it looks like we’ll actually keep it up, but but for now we’re just going to use a spread sheet and track.

  3. Why not use Mint.com? It’s free and it tracks your spending for you (sometimes you have to move items into other categories) but it will tell you your average/month in each category and that information can really help with putting together a budget.

    1. Also a vote for Mint! All you have to do is link your bank account and then neither of you have to really expend any energy on it, other than occasionally putting something in a category.

      Whatever you choose – best of luck and I hope you get a least some of what you’re hoping for!

  4. Love your using a spread sheet and seeing your husband doesn’t want to enter data even there. Discussion point for when you are both calm and not over tired so not a fight about talking WHY? Seems like it should be straight-forward… which means it is really a murky deeply emotional topic! Good luck.
    Dry beds are so much easier to deal with. Glad son wakes enough to drain and goes back to sleep easily! Sending hopes for a holiday weekend that is joyful and not pressured for you.

  5. Is your husband’s job not up for discussion? If you switching jobs because you’re miserable, and that means a pay cut, can he switch to something that makes more? I only ask because I thought you had mentioned once that he used to make a lot more money?

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