No mother is just a mother. We all have hobbies and interests, even if they’ve been on the back burner so long we’ve about forgotten them. Some of us have side gigs; some of us have little projects we fit in here and there.

I have a few of those, but the one that takes up the most of my time these days is probably the business bookkeeping. I won’t lie, there are quite a few days when I ponder how much extra time I would have if I wasn’t always filling in the cracks with paying bills and entering data and filing invoices.

I could blog. I could write. I could work on photo projects. I could wash my windows. I could watch a show. I could literally just get caught up on something, anything.

But I do actually really enjoy doing the bookkeeping most of the time. Not the bills—I hate paying bills, especially the ones that have less-than-precise secretaries on the other end. There’s nothing more annoying that having to sift back through old paid bills to make sure you’re not paying a company twice, and even then it still happens sometimes, but anyway . . . not a fan of the bills. 🙂 Somewhat a fan of everything else though! I love typing, and I love data-entering, and it’s something that has to be done, so I don’t feel guilty about tackling it while my counter sits full of dirty dishes and my laundry basket is overflowing.

I used to always do it over naptime—turn on some music, get a cup of coffee, be alone (kind of key when there’s always someone asking for something the rest of the time!), and start entering. I kind of looked forward to the Quickbooks days.

But Emmett hasn’t been napping much at all (I’m not complaining cause he’s finally doing better at night after literally months of either being up 7-9 times a night and/or being up for 1-2 hours at a time during the night). But with him not napping much, it means I have to try to get it done while he’s around.

Let’s just say there’s nothing like a freight train of a baby roaring toward you to make you type Construction Materials Costs at lightning speed, especially when you know said baby is headed straight for those keyboard keys. His nifty little fingers just pry those things right off. One day I was down on my hands and knees looking everywhere for the “windows” key, only to find it later stuffed down the front of his shirt.

Whenever it’s not in use these days, the desk is covered with a blanket to ward off my little keyboard bandit. Emmett used to sit at the computer and turn it on and off until someone stopped him. Or the mouse would be missing. Or the keyboard. Or a bunch of keyboard keys.

I’ve done plenty of bookkeeping with him right here on my lap, which is actually how and where this blog post even started. I was literally right here, baby on my lap, trying to get the last of the February data entered, and for some reason I threw open a Word document and started typing.

So while I’m not sure what the point of this post is, I took the time to write it, so here it is. 🙂 And here’s me and my little bookkeeping buddy, in a spot where we’re both happy and both slightly frustrated, him that he can’t dismantle the keyboard, me that I can’t just enter credit card transactions in peace. I wouldn’t trade it though. He’s already growing much too fast for my liking, and I can’t say I don’t dread the days when I’ll do Quickbooks in an empty, quiet house.