The Start of Something New

My job starts tomorrow! Aiiieee! I'm excited and terrified all at once. It has been a sort of ridiculously long time since I had an actual job anywhere, and this is the first time ever that I'm trying to juggle work and baby. I don't know if I'm ready for this. I know it's really silly, that moms do this much earlier than I've had to, and for much longer hours every day, but I still feel so nervous. I spent time tonight making a schedule for the week, where all of us will be going, when Robert is eating, and writing out a sheet of instructions for the neighbors who are going to watch Robert for us tomorrow. It's only three hours, I know it will be all right, but I still feel nervous. M is kind of freaking out as well, which doesn't help. =D I keep telling myself that it'll be okay, that I really, really need this job and the money it will bring in, and that being around other people is good for Robert. Our neighbors are very nice people and will take good care of him. Deep breaths.

In other news, I screwed up today and went over my budget for the month. Urgh. I realized all at once that almost all of my really good diaper coupons expired today, so I went out to Target and spent them all. They had a deal going where if you buy three jumbo packs, you get a five dollar gift card, so between that and the coupons, I saved sixty percent, but I still don't feel sure that I did the right thing. I hate that, knowing that I got a deal, but not knowing if it was good enough, or if I should have let it go and let the coupons expire. The diapers came out to 12 cents apiece, which is within my price point, but I already have a lot of diapers. I bought size 3 and 4, because I have enough size 2. I'm going to have to put these in the attic or something. I guess it's good, because you never want to buy diapers at regular price, but I don't feel quite as good as I would like, especially because of the budget thing. We had money come in from a couple of sources this month, and I added my survey check that came in, but after all my shopping today was done, I'm 6.45 cents over budget, with four days left in the month. Sigh. No more shopping.

My last hurrah, besides the Target trip, was one more jaunt to Walgreens, to do the other transactions I didn't get to yesterday. Man, were they picked over! I went to the one that still had the most stuff at the end of yesterday, but they were cleaned out as well. I still managed to get some of the stuff I'd wanted, and got sixty dollars worth of stuff for six dollars, and now I am done there for the month as well. The lady who checked me out was the same one as yesterday, she is very nice. We joked our way through my transactions. It's always good when you get a friendly cashier on a slow evening.

Oh, and a new step for Robert today as well. He lay on his tummy for almost five minutes, watching Fraggle Rock without crying. Up until this point, nothing I've tried has been able to work that magic. I think my channeling of inner Mean Mommy is paying off. Robert still doesn't like being on his tummy, but he is starting to get used to the tummy interlude. Now he just needs to work out how to get off his tummy on his own!

The Cheese Stands Alone

Robert and I went out shopping first thing this morning. We needed some stuff. I'm going to make biscotti tomorrow, and we were out of butter and vanilla, plus I wanted to stock up on some more cheese at Meijer. I did some research and found that shredded cheese freezes well, plus their block cheeses have July sell-by dates on them. I'm pretty sure they will stay good, especially since we eat quite a bit of cheese. I ended up buying seven and a half pounds of cheese for fourteen dollars, which is pretty much impossible to beat, at least around here. I picked up the butter there too, but headed to Sam's for the vanilla. (It was an icky cold rainy day today, but that worked in my favor since I could leave the cheese in the car for a half hour.)

I haven't been to Sam's in quite awhile. We don't go as often now that I'm couponing, since coupons actually work more effectively with smaller packages. Smaller packages generally equals being able to use more coupons for the same volume, after all. But there are some things that are just cheaper there, like real vanilla extract, and 42 pounds of cat litter. Don't buy generic cat litter, especially if you have a small apartment. Gack. I also picked up a flat of bottled water with sport caps, like I do ever couple months. They are very handy to have around, and if you just rinse out the bottle, you can use it over and over, refilling it from the Brita pitcher, or even from the tap. M and I typically go through a bottle a week each, which means one flat lasts quite some time. One thing they haven't got yet is the big 40-packs of iced tea tubes. I hope they come in soon! That is definitely the cheapest way we get our caffeine, and we go through lots and lots of it. I bought seven boxes at the end of last iced-tea season, but it didn't come close to lasting.

Robert was in a hungry mood today, and alternated being smiley and laughing at my funny faces with being unbearably fussy. He also seemed to have a rash around his neck this morning that went away after a little while, so I'm going to keep an eye on that. I haven't changed detergent or anything, so I'm not sure what it would be from. It's sad when the baby is upset and can't tell us what's wrong. I keep wondering if he's getting enough to eat, but he had three stinky diapers, including one diaper-burster, and soaked through another outfit, so he's got to be getting a fairly decent intake. I kind of wish he'd gain some more weight. I know I'm probably just being a paranoid new mom, but it's hard not to worry sometimes.

After Robert went to bed (went down screaming, was sound asleep in less than ten minutes), I took a look at the coupon deals for the coming week. CVS is totally blah, but Walgreens is looking very good. I will probably be making several trips and spending much of the last of this month's budget there. There's not much left, even though I've been using gift cards where I can. I've done pretty well, I was up to a 75% savings rate for a little while, though now I'm back to 73.5%, after the Kohl's trip. So far I've spent 204 dollars on 760 dollars worth of stuff this month, and have fifteen dollars left to spend over the next five days. Let's see if I can make it work.

Saturday, What a Day!

Big milestone today, Robert and M went on their first big unsupervised outing together! I know it might seem kind of weird that it's taken so long, but M has been very busy, and we were gone on our trip for awhile, and Robert is still not quite twelve weeks old. My nerves about the idea were a part of it, especially when Robert was a newborn, but far more than that was the fact that if there is an outing to be gone on, I generally want to get out! I like our apartment, but it's not very big, and it is quite cluttered, and I love to get out of it. Today, though, the guys went out and left me to relax and do the laundry while they hit up White Castle (coupon!) and the comic book store, and also did things like looking at grass and trees and such. They had a very good time, and there were no disasters. Oh, and I found my phone, which was very good for my peace of mind while they were gone. Still no camera cord, though!

Anyway, here it is, Saturday, the end of the couponing week. It's been very busy! At the end of the first full week of April, there is good news and bad news and good news. The good news is that my saving rate for the month so far is very high! My current saving rate is 74.48%, which means that every dollar I've spent this much has been worth almost 4. That's great, and I'm very happy with it. I've gotten some great groceries and other stuff, and have a bag for the food pantry. The bad news is that with two-thirds of the month left, I have used up two-thirds of my budget already. After rebates this month, I have spent $94.73 to buy $371.26 worth of items. (I love my trusty OpenOffice spreadsheet, can you tell?) That gives me 55.27 to take us through the end of the month, which is... not exactly ideal.

That brings us to the other good news, though! April is my birthday month! For my birthday, I received 30 dollars from my family, as well as a gift card to Target. I'm going to try and stay under budget and on the gift card, and save the money for something nice just for me. But hey, if it doesn't work out, it's really nice to know I've got that little bit of extra wiggle room. I've also got a survey check coming sometime fairly soon, so that might help. Not digging in the sofa cushions yet! :D

As for today's picture, one thing I'm starting to notice is that the more Robert sleeps during the day, the easier he is to put down at night. This seems counterintuitive, but it's true. Today was another very-awake-or-very-sleeping day, where Robert was extremely engaged when he was awake, had very brief fussy periods, and slept like a stone when allowed to nap. He went down at 8:30 with hardly a peep. Happy mommy! I guess it's true that being overtired makes babies harder to calm down. I've also been pumping once at night and feeding him the bottle in the afternoon, which seems to get us over the late-afternoon fussiness hump pretty well. We're learning!