Scam and Beans | How Much Did I Spend Last Week? March 31 - April 6, 2025

I should have known better…

Monday

It’s the first day of Atlas’ spring break and, once again, it is really really cold. Could snow any day cold.

I had some vague notions of going to the zoo this week – it reopened over the weekend for the spring/summer season – but I need to accept that it’s just not walk-around-with-your-baby weather and resign myself to spending the week, more or less, at home.

We get up late (ish), at 8.30am – Roman has been awake, on and off, since around 6am, but I’ve been lying in bed feeding him and praying he’ll go back to sleep – and I make Atlas toast for breakfast, with strawberries and a little yogurt that comes with miniature M&Ms on the top. He loves these, undoubtedly because of the candy on top, but I’m fine with whatever it takes for him to eat… anything, honestly!

I resist turning on the TV this morning, and instead roll out distraction after distraction in the form of kinetic sand, a dinosaur sensory box and some Paw Patrol colouring pages I unearth in the art cart. (I bought this Ikea cart and we keep all of the boys’ markers, crayons, clay, kinetic sand and colouring pages in there.)

This puts in the time until about… 10am (mornings drag when you don’t leave the house, let me tell you), at which point I finally cave and put on Gigantosaurus, which stays on in the background of our playing (Hot Wheels, a lot of dinos, some sword fighting with the Mario Golf clubs) all morning.

Roman is currently in a kind of state of non-stop rotating, from the swing to the mat on the floor to the boob to the bouncer and back to the swing again. He truly only likes being held, and only when you’re standing, so I also spend a lot of time with him in the wrap, which is where he is, fast asleep, when it comes time to put Atlas down for his nap.

I know they just got over the whole breakdancing thing, but the Olympics really needs to add “carrying your toddler up to bed and changing his nappy while your very heavy three-month-old sleeps in a wrap” as a sport because this shit is a challenge.

In a kind of gift from on high, both boys are asleep at the same time, and Roman even manages to sleep through the whole wrestling-Atlas-into-bed palaver, going on to sleep for a further hour, which is just enough time for me to finish the money diary I started earlier when he was asleep in the swing.

I also manage to get pizza dough made (am superwoman!) and proving in the oven (oven’s off, light’s on) when Brandin gets home with the boys, at which point I sit down and feed Roman while he makes pizza.

After dinner, we do bath and bedtimes and then I go into the office to do some podcast editing and scheduling for this week’s main feed episode, a searing investigation chat about egg donation, whether or not kids should be forced to keep doing the hobbies they start, and why, exactly Beatrice’s 10-year-old whipped a banana out of his pocket during a choral performance.

Daily total: $0