How Does The Baby Affect Going To Restaurants? - 11 Month Update

How do our restaurant habits look roughly a year after having a baby?

Earlier this year, I wrote about going to restaurants with a baby and noted that our restaurant spending had dropped a bit but it wasn't very dramatic. We have much more data now, and looking at the plot at the top of this post, we do spend a good bit less on restaurants now than we did before the baby. Maybe interestingly, I haven't really noticed a change in our frequency of eating out, so I think we just go to more casual places now as they're usually faster.

To maybe provide a clearer picture, here is the year over year difference in spending on restaurants:

I don't actually know why we had such a big change YOY in the winter, but it is might be related to:

• My wife went back to work in January, so we had less free time and didn't go out as much.
• We ate out more in that time period in 2015 because that was early in the pregnancy but before morning sickness and gestational diabetes became issues that made us eat less

 Converted to percentages, we're averaging ~20% less YOY.

I'm curious now when the extra amount we have to spend to buy him meals will offset this drop and result in us spending more at restaurants than we did before. I'll probably check this again in six months or so.