Food, parks and taxes

Right now the cleaning lady is downstairs while B & I are in the playroom. How freaking great it is to have a completely separate, private space away from the rest of the house! B is going to love it up here when he's old enough to need privacy. When I was that age (jr high, high school) I had to hide in the closet in our tiny studio apartments, ha ha!

Thank you all SO MUCH for your helpful comments on my last few posts. I've learned a lot from them and I'm so glad I'm not the only one stressed out about sharing a dinner table with a toddler! It reminds me of a conversation I had with a married friend some months ago about her husband trying to force their (I think?) two-year-old to sit nicely at the table and have adult table manners, with resultant tantrums and tears. She felt he just wasn't ready for that and instead let him wander around, which her husband disapproved of. And I can see both sides of that argument. But for me I think you're right - at just one, I don't think B needs to be locked in to a proper dinner at a table. At least, not right this second. We've got breakfast nailed; I'm working on lunch. Dinner can wait. Today I put little naked B in the cold high chair and his teeth started chattering so bad I immediately took him out and put some clothes on him. Poor thing! It's all such a learning curve. I find this vintage high chair is a pain in the butt because with no plastic wedge holding his legs in place he tends to slip down to a reclining position which I can only imagine makes it difficult to swallow, so I have to keep pulling him up to sit up straight. I have also found he tends to play with the food unless I just start shoving it in his mouth; then he eats nearly all of it. It could be because he had a full breast feed right before and just wasn't hungry. I'll just have to figure all this stuff out.

I keep reminding myself that when he's fifteen all of these concerns will be so forgotten - then, I'll be worried about college, grades, that skank who keeps sexting him (if texting is even a thing in fifteen years!), how to talk to him about drugs, etc. Him slipping down and being cold in his high chair is going to seem like such ancient history, you know?

I have really been enjoying my silver lake walks. It's a rare area in the middle of the city which actually has a body of water, so you get that wonderful moist air coming off of it, plus the sound of the seagulls that hang out there, and a grassy area which also is hard to come by in east LA. All of it gives me fond memories of my east coast childhood. I really want grass, lakes, and water sports to be a part of B's childhood. I may start bringing a blanket and umbrella for us to have long stays in this grassy area as the weather warms up. With a reclining stroller he could even nap out there. Could be a nice springtime activity for us.

My bandleader friend called this morning to tell me he's discovered he's really unhappy with the recording we made a few weeks ago and may want to re-record it all. So as much as I was pissed to have missed the recording because of a cold, boy am I glad I did! I'd be pretty annoyed if I had to pay a sitter for all that time, twice.

This week is all about taxes. Every night this week I have to sit down and organize and calculate receipts. Why don't I do this throughout the year? Well, for me I'd rather have the freedom to just throw receipts in a pile all year and then suffer one week instead of having to enter them into a computer system every week or month. Also doing it all at once gives me a better sense of how the year went and which receipts I need to use and which I don't. But this year with all the tax credits expiring and all my non-deductible expenses (kid stuff, hospital stuff) I think this year is going to SUCK for taxes. Even though I made an advance payment I think I'm going to owe thousands more. I'll know on Saturday!