I feel like my life is a series of trying lately. Trying to keep up with housework. Trying to teach my son new skills. Trying to give the pets attention. Trying to adjust back at work. Trying to relax. Trying, trying, trying...

It's a wonderfully difficult adjustment.

Financially, I paid off the Navy Fed loan that I had taken to help my mom several years ago (which I think I had mentioned). I'm also budgeted to pay off a 0% interest balance transfer to one of my credit cards this month. We still have student loans, a car payment, and 5 credit cards with balances (1 is a 0% interest transfer and another doesn't have interest since we're on the float). I'm hoping to have 3 more of those paid off by the end of the year. So far this month, I've been better about eating out. I'm trying to be more conscious of my diet in general, so that somewhat helps to temper the temptation.

Today is my first day back in the office. I started work on Tuesday and have worked out an in-office/telecommuting schedule with my company. My brother (the one who hasn't worked in years) will watch the baby while I work. I give him a small monthly payment in addition to him living with us. Plus, he has a part-time position working security at a concert venue. It works out since it's mostly nights and weekends.

Financially, we've had both successes and failures these past few months. Some of the wins include paying off the personal loan that I'd taken out to help my mom and transferring part of my remaining cc debt to an interest-free card. I now have 2 credit cards with small interest-free balances that I set aside the appropriate amount to have paid off in time (one should actually finish next month). Additionally, we've been saving a bit towards the new car and DH's goal. I'd been planning a 30th birthday Disney extravaganza to see the new Star Wars land and have some much needed together time with just us. However, once our son arrived, it really hit DH hard how much he was missing, so he asked if he could instead take advantage of the 90 day grace period that the military provides upon deployment return and be a stay-at-home dad for a bit. Long-term, we definitely need both incomes, but if we forgo the trip, we could get by with mine. So far, we have $1600 set aside to put towards the car and $600 set aside for DH's leave. I don't really have concrete goals for these, but I'm thinking that I should set numbers to help me stay on track. One last big win is that other than 2-3 newborn packs, I have yet to buy diapers and don't foresee the need for a bit. DS is now in size 1's, and we still have 2 packs of those. By the time they're gone (and maybe earlier), he'll be in 2's. We already had 2 boxes of those, and my friend just gave me another box of them as well.

In the financial failures category, the big one is eating out. In May alone, I spent $230 eating out. While my son is fairly easy, I'm struggling with accepting that I can no longer do things on my own time. I don't need much sleep, but the fact that I can't go to bed whenever I choose bothers me. I've always turned to food for comfort, so whenever I'm running an errand or feeling overwhelmed, I go for the easy solution with the rationalization that I should 'treat myself' for handling this 'single' mom thing like a champ. I think the mentality is reasonable, but I definitely need to limit it. My goal is to set a $100 budget for June and stick to it at all costs! The other failures include owing for taxes and not saving as much towards our goals as I'd like.

I am super grateful that despite the lack of saved funds, we made it through my leave without much of a hit.

Baby boy D arrived 3 weeks early on March 26. It's been a process to adjust, but we're so happy that he's with us. Everything went about as smoothly as it could. Due to potential complications, my husband was brought home, and I was induced. 7.5 hours later, our son was here. I'm recovering well, the baby's healthy, and my husband got to spend some time with his son.

I'll hopefully get back to the financial side of things in the coming weeks as things normalize.

Life has been insanely busy. My family and friends threw me a surprise shower, the nursery is just about finished, and tomorrow is my last day in the office. I was supposed to stop driving a few weeks ago due to my size and belly positioning, but pushed it to term because we have a new person that I'm training.

Financially, thanks to the surprise shower and my work shower, we only have a little left on our 'buy' list. I also have about 35 meals in the freezer, so groceries should be minimal as well. I need to file our taxes too and check the calculations on this year's. I transferred a small amount of my bigger interest-bearing cc to a 0% interest card and have set up a YNAB goal to pay that before interest starts. The other interest-bearing card had its rate dropped to 6% due to SCRA, so I'm still paying the full balance and just having more of it work in my favor.

DH and I are doing well despite the distance. I wish he were here, but we've been lucky enough to be able to keep in touch almost daily.

Just a few more weeks left. I'm cautiously excited, but also not getting my hopes up.

So, it looks like the busy weeks are every other week. This week, there's nothing on my calendar, so I'm looking forward to plenty of relaxation and rest.

Yesterday, I was involved in a very minor car accident. I'm still not entirely sure what happened, but the best I can tell is that I switched into a right hand lane on a pretty busy 3-lane street and a car turning into the right-hand lane didn't notice me switch and turned into the back of my car. It seems like they realized it mid-turn and tried to avoid me because they were halfway up on the curb when I felt the impact and saw them in my passenger mirror. I think if they were actually in my blind spot, and I had merged into them, a few things would have happened differently: 1) the car would have much more damage as the speed on that road is 45-55 2) they would have honked before I came over or after and 3) (most importantly) they would have stopped. I pulled over at the next turnoff and they drove right on past. Fortunately, I'm completely fine, baby movements are normal, and the car has zero damage.

I did most of my taxes. I'm missing a few forms, so I haven't been able to file yet, but I'm not in a rush because for the first time in years (if ever)...

I owe money - about $680. At one point, it was $3k, so I'm not too vexed about the amount. I was hoping to get a refund to beef up my maternity leave fund, but ah well.

Even though we haven't started saving towards that, I think we're actually completely fine. We're now living on last month's income. Plus, DH will continue getting paychecks, and I'll have STD at 60% of my regular pay. His bigger paychecks more than cover the remaining 40%, and I'll have PTO saved up if I really want to extend my leave past the 6 weeks that I get of STD. Right now, I'm leaning towards 8 weeks (provided it's not a c-section). I want to keep some of my FMLA for the end of the year, and take another month/2 month-long break when DH gets back, so we can bond as a family.

The exhaustion is really setting in. I think it's just a matter of trying to do too much and not giving myself proper breaks. I haven't turned my TV on in about a week which is absolutely unheard of for me! Tonight, I don't have anything planned, but tomorrow is brunch with some friends. Sunday is an all day project with FIL doing the hardwoods, and MIL and I sorting, washing, and organizing clothes, packing the hospital bag, and whatever other small projects.

I cashed out my Ibotta account for $35 and got a statement credit on one of my credit cards for $20. That particular credit card is one that I don't use. My mom and brothers were all authorized users on it, and I've slowly taken everyone's away except for my mom's. The last stand help (what I've started calling this final time) should wrap up this month, and we'll be getting her card back too. There's a 3k balance on that card, and it's one of 3 cards remaining that are accruing interest at the highest rate, so I'm trying to get that balance down to something reasonable, so I can transfer it and be done.

I haven't done a 'once a month cooking' session in a long time. I want to do a month-long plan next month, but I did a 2-week plan this past weekend. I spent about $320 of our $400 monthly grocery budget, so it's definitely not the most cost efficient, but considering how much less I'll eat out with food in the freezer, it's worth it. When we had previously done these plans, it's worked out really well.

I did the 2-week plan that I'm somewhat familiar with. DH's best friend came over to help, and together we did all the meals but 6. The last ones were beef/turkey/steak meals, so definitely faster than all the chicken ones. I can definitely tell the pregnancy is wearing on me because I was in a lot of pain by the end of the day. After he left, I went ahead and knocked out 3 more meals. I have 3 left to do this evening including the one planned for tonight's dinner (meatball sub cassserole). All told, this plan will likely last a month because I split a lot of the 4 person meals into 2 since my brother isn't the biggest leftover person.

As for the big expense, with the baby on the way, I decided that I wanted to change the carpet in the nursery and guest room to hardwood. We expected it to be between $1500 and $2000 for the materials (based on Home Depot estimates), and my wonderful FIL would do the actual work. He found us a similar style flooring at Lumber Liquidators for $1450, and since the manager is a good friend of his, he gave us an additional small military discount. So this weekend, I wrote a check for $1390 to FIL to pick up all the materials and then work should start this weekend. Once the flooring is done, the nursery will be ready for set up and decoration! We are redoing the flooring in the guest room and also installed overhead lighting/fan, but we decided not to paint that room for now since it will eventually become the baby's big kid room and they'll likely want to choose their paint/theme/decor. I do feel incredibly lucky that we're able to write a $1400 check without batting an eye or worrying about it.

On a separate, but related note, when we were doing groceries, my mom was shocked that I wasn't being overly stringent with the amount things cost. She was shocked when I purchased 2 $20 packs of the chicken breasts from Costco because the cost per pound was $2.39 which she thought I could beat elsewhere. She's probably right, but I needed 24 and was already at Costco which I told her. It really struck me how far I've come when she said that it must be nice to buy groceries without worrying about the bill. While I still have an incredibly long journey ahead of me, it made me realize that we have made great strides and just need to stay the course to continue moving forward.

I slipped up these last few days with the eating out and game purchase. I also used a gift card that had some money left to support my half sister by buying Girl Scout cookies. Overall, I was incredibly pleased that we started February with almost $6k ready to be budgeted. It's not last month's income since I did pull some for our bigger bills (namely the car and termite payments), but it's more than enough to cover our expenses for the month.

One thing that I was hoping to be able to do, but couldn't was pay off the loan I had taken for my mom. It has about $700 left on it. While I technically could pay it off, it would mean clearing out some of our savings categories which I don't want to do. Whatever DH doesn't spend of his allowance will go towards it this month.

Day 29: Amazon ($25.48 for cleaning supplies); Money In - Healthcare Premium Refunds ($656.76)

Day 30: Panera Bread ($32)

Day 31: Amazon ($4.99 for game coins);
Money In - Dividends ($1.97); Mom Payment ($25)

All standard monthly payments except for Home Depot. We got some lightbulbs, paint for the nursery, and a big storage box for DH's Army gear. We've been meaning to organize our big storage closet in the basement, and I finally went ahead and got him this storage box. I was thinking it'd be a few hundred bucks from the way he kept talking about it, but it was only $50.

The money in is the first of 3 or 4 refunds for health insurance premiums. In the midst of the whole insurance debacle, we were still paying all of our normal premiums. So once it all got worked out, I asked about refunding those payments (this was mid-December). They kicked off the process and told me it'd be 30-45 days. So I followed up a week or so ago when I had to call for something else anyways, only to find out it had gotten hung up. They were able to get it worked out, so we should have about $780 coming back in various payments over the next few weeks.

What I'm struggling with is YNAB. It's going back into Health Insurance. However, I'm using those refunds to just pay down the CC balance (we now pay it in full, but we ride the float, so we accumulate more as we pay it). There's no option to assign it to the credit card, but moving the money from Health Insurance to the card increases the payment available which isn't accurate since the money's already on it. If anyone has any thoughts for handling it, I'd be open to suggestions.

Day 25: NSD

Day 26: Hulu ($5.99); Home Depot ($105.23)

Day 27: Money In - Health Insurance Premium Refund ($162.35)

Day 28: Verizon ($84.99); Car Payment ($401.59)

My in-laws came over this weekend to help with some of the projects. My FIL got the whole nursery painted and my MIL helped me clean out and organize two of the rooms in the basement. They both look worlds better, but still need a bit additional work. Next up should be the hardwoods in the nursery and guest room. I'm eternally grateful to have a FIL who happens to be a house contractor.

Bonus: he ordered us pizza while here, so I didn't have to cook!

There was some other spending, but I need to organize before posting the UFMC days.

I caved a bit this week on the eating out, but tried to keep it reasonable.

Day 22: Cinnamon Roll ($2.43); Pest Proof - 2nd termite payment ($870.53); CC Payment ($144.48); Boxed ($54.16 for groceries); Gas ($24.95)

Day 23: $5.18 (Burger King); CC Payment ($140.52); Mom Loan Payment ($207.33); Dog License Renewal ($10); Walmart ($54.83 for groceries)

Day 24: Student Loan Payment ($169.70); CC Payment (124.15)

Today's anticipated spending is 1 scrambled egg at the cafe at work.

The two grocery shops should get us through the end of the month. I did go slightly over the grocery budget by $33.33 (budgeted $150). However, that includes about $18 worth of Ibotta rebates. For anyone using YNAB, do you all put rebates like that back into the category?

I haven't updated this in a bit. The 2 credit card payments are the card that I use regularly and pay off. The Etsy purchase was a coming home outfit for baby. Since I don't know the gender, I tasked DH with picking something out. Since he was headed somewhere shortly, he went ahead and purchased quickly. I will keep said outfit in the package and bring it to the hospital. There's been some spending today, but not too bad.

Day 15 Update: Student Loan Payments ($386.61, 100.65, 35.20); Car Insurance ($116.24)

Day 16: NSD

Day 17: Vet Appt. ($58)

Day 18: Credit Card Payment ($1110.85); Groceries ($30.58)

Day 19: Credit Card Payment ($1090.17) Money In - My normal paycheck

Day 20: Gas ($22.09); Etsy ($36.94); Pest Control (2nd payment for termite treatment - $811.50); Air for Tires ($1.47)

Day 21: NSD