Sending 2013 out in style!

Because of the generosity of some wonderful friends, BC now has a lovely new bed! It's a loft bed. This one, to be exact. And the sheer giddiness of it all . . .

We recognize that the warning on this bed says no children under 6. We also recognize that this is an assumed risk. However, we recognize yet further that our child is sort of the inverse of Frederick in Pirates of Penzance: somehow, our child is markedly older than the number of her birthdays might indicate. Perhaps this is poor planning on our part, but I feel pretty safe about the whole thing. This is, after all, the same child who, for the first year and a half she was in a big girl bed, never got out of bed without Daddy's or my coming in to get her. Because we told her she couldn't.

Now, of course, I'm kicking myself for not realizing what an easy child she was when she was her brother's age.

On that topic, her brother now has her old bed. We have an insomniac 22-month-old in a big boy bed. I think we need to have our heads examined.

While BC has had an ongoing commentary about the advent of the cottage loft bed (which was a total surprise to her, and her daddy gets huge kudos for taking the kids to the sitter's, going to pick up the bed from our friends, bringing it home, rearranging all of the bedroom furniture for the kids, and assembling the bed -- all while the kids were at the sitter's house and I was at work), she has made time for other commentary as well. Tonight we stopped for Chick Fil-A, where we discovered that, not only could we not get the kids' meals free on New Year's Eve, but we also couldn't get them free if we went through the drive-thru, which is not the case at the Chick Fil-A we normally frequent. BC became terribly concerned that, because we couldn't get the meals for free, we wouldn't feed them. I thought that betrayed a serious underlying lack of trust.

All the way home, I spent time putting receipts into our budgeting app, a task on which I was far behind. Matt and I discussed the use of money for much of the ride home. As we pulled into the driveway, BC piped up, "Um, that little promote control car [read: remote control car] that you bought for my brother was a waste of money because now it doesn't work. So you spent money on that toy but now that money is wasted and you can't get it back." I felt as if I was being lectured for poor spending. I was inputting the last receipt, and congratulated myself aloud for doing what I should have done two weeks ago. BC piped up, "Mommy, why do you have a budget?" I told her that we had a budget so we didn't spend money we didn't have, because we all know she hates wasting money. She asked incredulously, "Mommy, do people spend money they don't have and *like* it?"

Here's to a new year of good budgeting practices, frugality, and new beds for free! The year of the Scot! Happy 2014!