Winter= suckage in Life as a Mom of 2 boys.....and a girl!!

I managed to make $95 last week when I made a goal of making $100 extra money so that was pretty good. I sold a used gift card ($20), sold some baby stuff ($20), made some money on swagbucks that I cashed out ($25) and sold some baby clothes to a lady with an online used baby clothes shop ($30). This week, I’m once again trying to make some extra money of course as my mat leave money is pitiful. I got an unexpected tax bill saying I owe $200 the other day which I should have been expecting but I forgot about it. Last year, when they sent us our tax information, Jamberry sent us Canadians our T4’s but the income stated on it was in American by accident. So I did my taxes using that amount....and then 2 months later they emailed saying whoops, your income should have been in Canadian, here’s your updated T4. I didn’t do anything about it because I know nothing about fixing your taxes and they found out of course. It sucks but what can you do?

I hate feeling like I often have to try to find ways to make extra money in order to pay the bills and if I want anything extra at all but it’s necessary since I’m saving 70-80% of my child tax benefit these days so I can stay off work longer than my 1 year maternity leave. Summer’s birthday is in April but I will start looking for a job in September once Miles goes to school so I will only have to pay for daycare for one child. I still can barely stomach the thought of her being in daycare. Cody is 5.5 now and none of my kids have been in daycare for a single day. For 10 days I had a night job where I worked 6 hours a night and then took care of my kids during the day. I was laid off in November 2015 while pregnant and only recently am I realizing how perfect that job was for our lifestyle even if the 1 hour commute each way wasn’t very convenient. Bleh.

Winter is so boring. I don’t have extra money to do much with the kids so I play with toys with them and feed them endlessly and do this and that. Yesterday I looked on pinterest and made some baby snacks since Summer eats nonstop lol. One of them just involved putting little blobs of yogurt on wax paper and freezing it as a way that Summer can eat yogurt since she can’t figure out a spoon yet. She loved it! And so did the boys lol. Another snack was what I call easy baby pancakes.....you mash up one banana and one egg and mix them and cook them up like tiny pancakes. It’s a great breakfast for her. She loves them. And the last one was easy too but she didn’t really like them. 1/2 cup of applesauce mixed with 1 cup of rolled oats. You make small little blobs on wax paper. Then you bake at 325 for 8-10 minutes. It’s oatmeal applesauce bites. She was like meh....lol. I like experimenting with baking. I’m going to try some more stuff out soon. She goes through the puffs I buy her at the store in no time so why not?

I got a book at Christmas, read it and decided to sell it on amazon since I won’t likely ever read it again. I listed it as the cheapest price someone could buy it for off the site and it sold so I have to ship it today. It’s Anna Kendrick’s book, “Scrappy little nobody.” It was interesting but I have a whole bookshelf full of books that I rarely look at so- hooray it sold! lol

This is why winter sucks. My parents have been back in Florida for 3 weeks now. And yet it feels like 2 MONTHS! Not being able to enjoy the outdoors blows.....2 months to go until I can start getting hopeful about the weather.......... :/