We have a winner for our first VeganMama giveaway! Congrats Jean Ju – I’ll get in touch soon about where to send your prize!
Vegan Goodness:
Today we ate:
- Breakfast: Blueberry smoothies and waffles for everyone!
- Lunch: Leftover setian pot roast
- After nap time LP snacked on some crackers
- Dinner: Drunken Black Beans from Color Me Vegan and salsa rice. Also, we had collard greens on the side – yum!
Money Matters:
Today we spent the following:
- $27.00 at the Somerville Winter Farmer’s Market. It was so fun – I can’t wait to go back!
Mom Musings:
I was talking to a friend recently about how the G-man and I are trying to avoid driving each other crazy during this Year of Family. It is a fair question, and one I didn’t think about very carefully before summer. Basically, we went from spending nights and weekend as a family to being around each other 24 hours a day. Some days we don’t leave the house. That is a lot of togetherness, especially for a couple of control freaks.
So, how do we cope? I cope the same way I coped with a lot of time by myself with a baby when LP was born. The G-man copes the same way he coped with the time he was unemployed. We each have our projects. We have things we want to do that are our own things. I have this blog (and my other blog when I can get to it). The G-man is setting up a grow-light shelf for starting seeds in the winter. I am working on a literacy assessment project and trying to draft an article to submit to a professional journal. The G-man cut down a tree and is prepping our yard for fruit bushes. I create recipes. He reorganizes the dining room.
One thing we both realized in this time together is that it is good for us to have projects that are our own. We are both used to trying to find things to do together in our rare and precious time as both a family and a couple. But, when we are around each other so much, we are realizing that we need to give each other more space than we are used to. So, some nights, after the kids go to bed, we each do our own thing. And some nights we watch TV or play card games together. We plan ahead for our time to work on our projects. The G-man got the last two days to focus on yard work, since the weather was decent. Monday and Thursday next week are work-days for me. The nice thing is that this time can be punctuated by lunch with the kids, or a story with LP. But we still have our projects, and that is nice too. It gives us a chance to be something besides Mom or Dad. It gives us something to escape to for a while. Heck, it gives us something to talk to each other about!* It’s nice to have projects, even when they stress us out sometimes, and it is especially nice to have projects that help us enjoy each other instead of making us want to smack each other!
*I mean, come on. We can only talk about poo so much, even with two little kids!
