My house is full of plastic tut!

When I was pregnant I thought we would have beautiful wooden and educational toys which would fit seamlessly into our country cottage style house.  How wrong could I be?  Little J likes nothing more than a brightly coloured piece of plastic tut which usually takes lots of obscure sized batteries.  I need to teach that lady about style.

No where is the off switch...

The pesky mortgage

As we enter a new phase in our lives, we have decided to start trying to pay off the mortgage in as little time as possible.  I've played about with the figures many, many times (bordering on the obsessional) and have come up with a rough plan to have an overall goal of ten years - 01/07/2022.  The overpayments seem reasonable for this goal (extra £425 per month) and we could manage even with the extra cost of childcare.  But once you start playing with the figures...

So I started wondering if we could do it quicker, perhaps have my 40th birthday as a target which would take it down to 7 years and 6 months.  This gives us an overpayment of £750 per month which would be incredibly challenging and would mean looking for savings in just about every area we spend on.  But if you are going to take on a challenge then you might as well go for it, eh?

Say yes, yes, yes to second hand!

We were incredibly lucky when I was pregnant and was offered lots of bits and pieces that friends and family who had older children were getting rid of.  Not to look a gift horse in the mouth I readily accepted anything and everything.  So much so that practically the only thing we really need to buy for little J was a pram and car seat!

I know that some people would shudder at the thought of hand-me-downs for their brand new baby but it honestly saved us a small fortune.  And the little ones wont remember or know if their tiny babygros they wore twice were preloved!

From memory, here is a list of things we have been given so far (we are still getting things now!):

• Clothes (lots of!)
• Vests
• Babygros
• Socks
• Blankets
• Books
• Bumbo
• Toys
• Teddies
• Baby shampoo
• Growbag
• Leapfrog learning table
• Baby walker
• Door bouncer
• Cot mobile
• Stair gate
• Potties (wont need these for a while but every little helps, eh?)

Thanks to everyone who gave us stuff - we realise we have been very lucky.  To return the favour we will be passing it all on to the next unsuspecting victim!

M

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Back to work....Boo

Just found out that I have to go back to work full-time, I'm disappointed to say the least.  Trying to look on the positive side though...we can have a cleaner (because of course I would have cleaned the whole house on my extra day off ;) ), we can focus on paying off the pesky mortgage and we can focus our weekends solely on spending time with little J.

How does everyone else cope working full-time and looking after children and the home? I've probably got a couple of months maternity leave to get myself in a routine!

M
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