Learning to walk before I run

savingholmes

Well done for all your juggling. You are doing amazingly well by the sound of things!

edinburgher

Mrs E was an absolute heroine last night and did an overnighter after napping several times during the day. She said it wasn't too bad, although tiredness and loneliness kicked in at about 12-1:30. I felt very guilty when I came down at 5:25, although I can appreciate her mentality of better to wreck 1 person's sleep than 3. Now that I'm rested, I'll be able to stay up later with her in the evening so that she only has 5-6 hours "alone". Looking forward to DD2 understanding the difference between day and night

I had hoped to get back to my exercise class today, but it was not to be. Took DD1 to school, followed by a learning assembly at 9:15 during which we got to watch a "best bits" review of the year. It was entertaining, informative and generally lovely, but could they not have knocked 20 minutes off it? I also had brief chats with a few of the parents, which is a nice change for a "Friday dad" who doesn't usually manage that sort of thing.

After that, I processed a couple of loads of laundry, tidied up for my parents coming to visit this afternoon and nipped out to the shops and to pick up a nice breakfast as a wee treat for Mrs E from my referral monies. Sometimes we need to take stock of how lucky we are - I picked up a basket for my pedigree cat, went to our local cheese shop (at the risk of getting sent to Psued's Corner, it's so ***** you can ask for recommendations based on arbitrary "likes") and then had my breakfast cooked by me by some of the finest hipsters in the Southside) I am home now and my beautiful baby daughter is gently breathing in the background

No finance news (well, bar 66p from TCB), but I'm going to ask Mrs E to complete the Ch@se referral this evening and I'll start her down a very long pensions referral chain that will turn £25 into £150. We have 19 years of patience still to come.

Karmacat

Be as pseud-y as you like, Ed, you're both absolute stars, as are your little DDs.  You know the routine, though - *nothing* matters as much as getting some sleep.  

Ooh, so-called pseudy bit: in the last 6 months, I've been watching amazing homework from a "sensitivity" class - it's wonderful!  A safety mirror, different tactile surfaces, different sounds, whistling later on, touching chin and nose with a single finger, "swimming" too.  I'm sure you've got your own version of what appeals to you - enjoy  

SuperSecretSquirrel

Late to the party - congrats Ed and family! 👨‍👩‍👧‍👧

And thanks for the reminder of what those first few days and weeks are really like, best contraceptive known to man! 😁

edinburgher

@SuperSecretSquirrel - you're telling me! One of the midwives was talking to us about contraception, we laughed and she told us she'd recently visited a woman who'd had a cesarean section but was having sex again 4 days after she'd given birth!!! 

Inspired by chat on @savingholmes diary, I'm exploring regular savers more. Once DD2 has a birth certificate I think we should be able to shuffle £600/month into accounts at 2.5%. Small beer, but seems to be the best we can get currently.

edinburgher

I have been run ragged today with laundry, tidying and friends coming to visit. If I'm entirely honest, I'd rather the latter had stayed for less time, but they were close friends and it was lovely to see them. I'm actually averaging far more steps than before the baby arrived

I have now opened 3 Regular Savers and can stash £500/month between them @ 2.5%. This was the most we could obtain prior to DD getting a birth certificate. The plan is to either recycle our EF into these accounts, or to try and grow our general savings for other home-related projects.

Paternity leave has given me a lot of time to think about the future and I realised that now that we had managed to fund at least part of our extension plans, I was no longer happy to ignore the concept of investing nest eggs for the girls. We have decided to try and be a mite more sensible with these and are now trying to make sure that we have enough set aside to provide the expected parental contribution for both of them when they are old enough to go to university (should they decide to go). This is currently £3,000/year for students living at home and as Glasgow has some of the best universities in the country, it's realistic that they might stay at home. Without going into too much detail, my parents were not prepared to accept that we were adults when we were students and their paternalistic attitudes led to me leaving home at a young age. This not only damaged our adult relationships for 5-10 years, but led to the parlous state of my finances when I joined the MSE forums. Water under the bridge now, but if the girls want to stay at home when they are young adults, I will try my darndest to not be "that guy"

I don't have any wonderful method for predicting investment growth, so my approach will be to use a simple "FV" formula in Excel, update the figures once a month and make single payments to keep us on track. It's not a crazy amount of money (less than £80 in total each month at present). My lovely parents gifted DD2 £350, so I'll send this to the ISA and will add another £38 for a total of £388. Mrs E will be paying this into Vanguard Target Retirement 2040. I can't do it as I already use this fund for our mortgage "endowment", as 2041 will be the year I retire, as well as the year DD2 launches into the world

Happy weekend all, I hope it's a happy one

pavlovs_dog

congrats on the safe arrival of you new bairn Ed

Busy_Mee

Just catching up Ed. Congratulations on your new addition. They are such a joy. 

As a new Grandparent I realise how much I missed as a parent  in the midst of it, literally just trying to survive the sleep deprivation. We are trying to help our DD as much as we can so she can get some sleep and enjoy her little one.

Try and enjoy it because it does pass so quickly x

savingholmes

Good luck with all your plans.

It's natural for different life stages to help you re-evaluate life and what you want from it. It's good that you are giving yourselves options.

killerpeaty

I think a lot of whether a child status at home is up to the kid. I went away for uni but I hung around with mum for ... Ever since. My brother however never came back from uni. Same upbringing but completely different.