Congrats! Enjoy every moment. They grow up fast!

Congratulations!!!
I'm so happy for you. And a girl too. Fantastic!!

Thanks for all the warm wishes! Two months on, we've decided we'll keep her. She's pretty cool.

I'm trying to take plenty of pics, but even so it's hard to really capture how fast she changes! She seems so big already. And since I take all of the photos, I think the last pic of me with her was in the hospital. We'll try to correct that.

In financial news, things keep moving on. I think we've paid almost all the medical bills, which is good. I find it frustrating how they just keep trickling in one by one though. How do you ever know you're done?

I picked my day to go back to work, so I've got three more weeks home with the cub. I'm now unpaid and will only work part-time through the end of the year, so I'm glad we saved as much as we did. I'm so fiscally conservative, it still makes me nervous, but I know it'll be fine and I'm thankful to have more time with my daughter.

Update:
1) 401K up to employer match - $5801/$7140 (81%)
2) Max IRA - $3601/$5000 (72%)
3) Emergency fund - $9002/$10,000 (90%)
4) Baby fund - $8855/$10,000 (89%)

Man it's been a while! (I'd blame the cub, but really it's just not being at work. I do all my best internet-ing at work.)

Life with the cub is brilliant. Really entertaining and sometimes exhausting. I feel reasonably well adjusted to being a mother, but still very much trying to figure out the whole working mother piece. Only working part-time right now is also odd.

Update:
1) 401K up to employer match - $6496.4/$7140 (91%)
2) Max IRA - $4440/$5000 (88.8%)
3) Emergency fund - $8014/$10,000 (80%) - Took a hit to increase the pad in my checking account. Variable partial paychecks make things odd.
4) Baby fund - $4923/$10,000 (49%) - Now on the draw down piece of this account. We never managed to hit a balance of $10k due to the timing of payments, but did set aside a little over $10k.

2012 Recap:

1) 401K up to employer match - $6902/$7140 (97%)
2) Max IRA - $4859/$5000 (97%)
3) Emergency fund - $8019/$10,000 (80%)
4) Baby fund - $2631/$10,000 (26%) - Draw down completed. Return to full paycheck!

Overall I'm very happy with how 2012 went. Not as big an increase in net worth as in previous years, but have a beautiful cub and am still climbing. I feel very optimistic for our future and very thankful and proud of where we are now.


2013 Goals:

1) Bump 401k percentage up to 10%.
2) Emergency Fund - Get to $10,000.
3) Open 529 acct for cub.
4) Travel - $5,000

So this year is an odd one so far. Every year I make an updated budget, but we've never really felt that we had to abide by it all that closely. It was more just a mental exercise of prioritizing goals, values, etc. Set the right automated savings amounts and don't worry about it.

But this year with the cub in daycare and my partner not yet having a permanent job, we're definitely having to watch the budget much more closely. Which part of me finds fun... and part of me worries that I'm going to become overly obsessive and burn out. We'll see.

Biggest challenge this year is a stricter food budget for all of us (and my work lunches in particular) and reduced clothes shopping. Which is unusually challenging because I'm losing weight fairly steadily and have had to replace parts of my work wardrobe.