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This well-reviewed, machine washable zip cardigan is calling my name — the gray looks nice, but it also comes in black and three different stripey colors. Reviewers note that it’s super soft, “comfortable but not frumpy,” and generally fabulous. The sale is great too: it was $68 but is now marked to $23. Caslon® Drape Neck Zip Cardigan (L-2)Sales of note for 4.18.24
(See all of the latest workwear sales at Corporette!)
- Ann Taylor – 50% off full-price dresses, jackets & shoes; $30 off pants & skirts; extra 50% off sale styles
- Banana Republic Factory – Up to 50% off everything; extra 20% off purchase
- Eloquii – 50% off select styles; 60% off swim; up to 40% off everything else
- J.Crew – Mid-Season Sale: Extra 60% off sale styles; up to 50% off spring-to-summer styles
- Lands’ End – 30% off full-price styles
- Loft – Spring Mid-Season Sale: Up to 50% off 100s of styles
- Nordstrom: Free 2-day shipping for a limited time (eligible items)
- Talbots – Spring Sale: 40% off + extra 15% off all markdowns; 30% off new T by Talbots
- Zappos – 29,000+ women’s sale items! (check out these reader-favorite workwear brands on sale, and some of our favorite kids’ shoe brands on sale)
Kid/Family Sales
- Carter’s – Up to 70% off baby items; 50% off toddler & kid deals & 40% off everything else
- Hanna Andersson – Up to 50% off spring faves; 25% off new arrivals; up to 30% off spring
- J.Crew Crewcuts – Up to 60% off sale styles; up to 50% off kids’ spring-to-summer styles
- Old Navy – 30% off your purchase; up to 75% off clearance
- Target – Car Seat Trade-In Event (ends 4/27); BOGO 25% off select skincare products; up to 40% off indoor furniture; up to 20% off laptops & printers
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And — here are some of our latest threadjacks of interest – working mom questions asked by the commenters!
- If you’re a working parent of an infant with low sleep needs, how do you function at work when you’re in the throes of baby’s sleep regression?
- Should I cut my childcare down to 12 hours a month if I work from home?
- Will my baby have speech delays if we raise her bilingual?
- Has anyone given birth in a teaching hospital?
- My child eats everything, and my friends’ kids do not – how should I handle? In general, what is the best way to handle when your child has some skill/ability and your friend’s child doesn’t have that skill/ability?
- ADHD moms, give me your tips to help with things like behavior in the classroom, attention to detail, etc?
- I think I suffer from mom rage…
- My husband and kids are gone this weekend – how should I enjoy my free time?
- I’m struggling to be compassionate with a SAHM friend who complains she doesn’t have enough hours of childcare.
- If you exclusively formula fed, what tips do you have for in the hospital and coming home?
- Could I take my 4-yo and 8-yo on a 7-8 day trip to Paris, Lyon, and Madrid?
Considering Three says
We have two wonderful kids, and DH and I are in the “not sure” camp regarding having a third. I’ve heard a lot of the pros and cons, but would love to hear from moms in the trenches. Why did you decide to have a third (or more) vs. stopping at 2. I know it’s possible to have 3 with two full-time jobs, but how hard is it really? If I have a third should I expect to lose the little time and sanity I have?
For background, kiddos are 4 and 18 months. My job is 40 predictable hours per week. DH’s hours vary quite a bit, and involves several evenings a month and some weekends. He may be able to transition to a more predictable schedule, but will have to keep the evenings and weekends.and we both like our jobs and would not plan on changing or reducing hours.
Thought from the hive?
eh230 says
I don’t have any advice because I am in a similar space (kids are 5 and 21 months, but DH stays home). For me, I am trying to objectively look at the desire to have a third and wade through baby fever versus truly wanting to parent 3.
EB0220 says
I am in a slightly different place, and was about to come post about it! My kiddos are 3.5 and 11 months. I would LOVE a third but my husband absolutely does not want another. I do understand his argument. With more than 2, you have to split your attention/time even more and there are suddenly more kids than parents. I’ve struggled enough splitting my time between two, so I do think that having three would be an even bigger challenge. I hate not being able to comfort #1 because #2 needs to nurse (or whatever), and I imagine that would be magnified with 3. I am trying to focus on the logical side, because I am really sad about being done with babies.
TK says
I have 2 school-aged kids, 6 and 8. No nearby grandparents, no nanny, so your situation may vary – but I can say that the time requirements of 2 school aged kids are very challenging to navigate – I don’t know any 3-kid, 2 working-parent families, either because daycare costs for 3 was too much or because the school-aged needs of three is more than 2 working parents could handle. My experience:
(1) I’ve definately taken more sick days since the kids started school. Typically one is out for 2 days, then the other gets sick and I’m out for 2 more days. With three kids, unless you can magically train them to get sick all at the same time (and if you can, please share) you are looking at being out for a full week or more every time a bug goes through the school.
(2) My kids have different interests and activities. Ballet and swim club both start at 3:30, at opposite ends of town. When we can’t find another parent who can volunteer to drive (always tricky, since I can rarely reciprocate), one or both of us are on driving duty. Not sure how we’d manage with three.
(3) Related, it’s a full time job to coordinate summer activities for kids whose parents work year round. Every week is a different camp, in a different place. Between researching camps, coordinating deposits / payments, puchasing supplies, and attending ‘end of week’ performances, I’ve take a ton of ‘vacation’ time’ each summer to get the kids where they need to go.
Considering Three says
Good points. The school-aged perspective is really helpful since we aren’t there yet, and neither are most of our friends. I find the concept of summer camps intimidating. :)
pockets says
I know this isn’t really the point, but can’t you just send all the kids to the same camp for several weeks? I went to 8-week camp every summer from age 5 to age 12, at which point I began “working” at camp until I went to college. Is that a NY metro area thing? Do other areas do it differently?
Spirograph says
My family did this, too, and I’m from the Midwest ‘burbs. I went to the same YMCA sleep-away camp for a week or two every year from about 2rd grade on, as did my siblings. I started working full summers there in high school… such fond memories.
I can’t wait til my kids are old enough that I can send them to sleep-away camp and go on vacation with just my husband again.
anon says
Oh my g-o-s-h, the camp/break coordination: it kills me. (I’m the anon at 3:09 who has 3.)
I want to hire an intern a la Kramer on Seinfeld to deal with that nonsense. And while I try to send my kids to one place (really) they have different schedules for elementary school and preschool (like, kid 1 is in school until camp starts, but kid 2 gets out three weeks earlier so you’re scrambling for whatever is available before the official camp season kicks off). Plus once they get a tad older they start having opinions (GAH I know) like: I want to do this awesome one-week soccer camp or I want to just do regular day camp or whyyyyy do I need to go to camp all summer moooooommmm (answer: because I need to go to work sometimes!).
And once I made it through dealing with all this for summer, I peek ahead to fall and it’s just. as. bad (like, one kid literally only has eight days of school in September because of the holiday schedule). SMDH.
anon says
I’ll bite: we have three (7, 4, 1). We also both work FT–DH is super FT plus (think equivalent to BigLaw partner, and add another 100 billable hours and some international travel) and I’m normal FT (40ish hours per week). We have no local family.
This is not, inherently, a good set up for a third, but TBH, after two kids we didn’t really have much more to give up in terms of personal time, social life (we possess neither), or exercising (we don’t, unless you count extreme stroller pushing because we’re late to school). Our kids all go to school/daycare/preschool FT and we now have a part-time nanny who handles pickups, dinner, bath, and lunch for the next day. I am effectively a solo parent during the week, and lately for a lot of weekends.
Lots of people on the same kid schedule around us were suddenly squeaking in a third when my second was in the 18 mo-2 years range, and I was totally the mom who didn’t get that third-kid memo. I mean, we started unloading a lot of our baby gear. But when my second kid was about 2.5 I got some bad baby fever, and we realized that we were sort of at a now-or-never moment for a third biologically. I was one of three growing up, and DH was one of four, and we both had made peace with two kids but also were open conceptually to a third. In one sense, because I am darkly humorous, we sort of figured that things couldn’t get worse–we’d already given our lives over to kids. One more didn’t seem to change much in that respect. Plus we could afford it, not a small consideration.
I’ll say that if things are running smoothly, it’s not too much more to handle the third kid. That feels like the minority of time these days (the last month of school is THE WORST–the holidays are nothing compared to an endless stream of half-days, days off, special end-of-year events, misaligned school schedules, etc., etc.), but there have been weeks when no one was sick and everyone was in school for the normal schedules and those days were fine.
I think third kids are generally easier because parents are more experienced and laid back (I mean, if we run the pacifier through the dishwasher once a week that’s good)–you just learn to get zen about a lot of stuff because otherwise you’d explode. If your third had something that made it harder (a medical issue, feeding or sleeping issues, etc.) that would be rough. We were lucky that our third was by far the easiest and best baby. Also on the con side is that I’m often very worn out and have been sick more this year than ever before. You need to have a certain amount of physical stamina, I think, to make it through that first year of three kids.
So, on balance, I have to say that I love our three. The toddler is so cute (I know I’m biased) and loves (loves!) the older siblings. Siblings have been pretty great with toddler, too (they squabble between themselves but mostly dote on the littlest, and can even do some loose monitoring when I’m trying to get snacks, get dressed, etc.). Suddenly we’re this overwhelming force when we’re all together. I mean, we roll deep, as they say. As with other kids, it slowly gets easier as everyone gets older, and I feel like things will get a magnitude easier once we are a diaper-free house. Someday…
3kids says
We have 3, ages 4, 2 and 4 months. In our case we really wanted one of the opposite gender of the first two (it didn’t work) and both of us come from small families (we’re only children now), so we figured why not. #3 is thankfully an easygoing baby unlike the other 2, so it has been doable, but with help. Both sets of grandparents are in town.
Cons:
1. Much less attention per child. Our #1 does not play well independently; #2 does, but has a demanding personality and is at that age and always gets into conflicts with #1. So in order to keep the peace when I can’t supervise them closely because I’m occupied with #3 or need to cook or whatever, they end up watching TV or playing on the iPad. I don’t like it, but survival. #1 also acts out because he doesn’t get enough attention. Loads of guilt.
2. Conflicting schedules and logistics. This will only be a bigger problem as the kids get bigger and each have their own activities and possibly different schools. So they will probably do fewer activities, and the transportation/scheduling juggle is a huge pain.
3. It’s a huge endeavor to take all 3 out to even the grocery store or to eat at a restaurant, much less to travel. This is sad to me because they will have fewer experiences than they would if only 2 of them existed and we could just pick up and go somewhere with much less difficulty (and cost of course).
4. I’m not as great of a mom as I was with 1 or 2. I don’t have time to make as good lunches or all homemade baby food, or do many activities with the kids or take them fun places. I lose my patience much faster and end up yelling because there are so many demands on me at the same time (and I’m sleep-deprived). I don’t like being like this.
5. Less sleep for everybody. DH has had to step up a lot more in caring for #1 and #2 by himself, which is both a pro and a con.
6. No time for exercise, friends or other free time (other than carving out of my workday when I have childcare) because I don’t want to give up nights/weekend time with my kids. But it was like that when we had only 2.
Pros
1. More of them to love and to love each other. They’ll be siblings for life and have one more person to have a relationship with. One more child for us to love.
That’s pretty much it. Day-to-day life is definitely harder. Looking at my cons list makes it seem not worth it. But there is a whole new person in your family for life and I am glad my baby exists.
TBK says
All this applies to having twins, too. It makes me think that adding a third wouldn’t be so much harder. I know once mine are two I’m going to want another baby. I can feel it already. We literally do not have the space, though (3 br house — one for us, one for the twins, one for the au pair). Not sure my husband feels the same, although if we magically had 50% more income, I think he’d be game. Oh well. My two boys are two more than I thought I’d ever have at one point. (But I think I’d really love one more.)
Meg Murry says
I have 2, and I posted few weeks ago about wanting a 3rd in my head in theory or a perfect worls, but not really being able to go for it in reality – I’m pretty sure I said something about just being a stretched thinner, more stressed version of myself. In my case though, #1 is 8 and #2 is 3, so an ideal 3rd would have been between them or less than a year ago – because I just can’t stomach the thought of starting back over from babies after we’re done with potty training and sleepless nights and we’re on to karate and piano lesson coordination. And my husband always had “just 2” in his mind, while I was thinking 2 or 3, so for him he was d.o.n.e. after #2 was born.
As for the older kid thing – yes, summer camp coordination SUCKS. They are all different weeks, all different times of day, and all over town. Some summers our daycare offered school aged care, but only for older siblings. Maybe in a major metro area you could find a better all day, every day, all summer care option but not in my town. Our daycare director said it also has to do with how our state liscenses day camps vs day care vs afterschool care as to how many hours per day and how many weeks per year they can have the kids before they cross categories and require more regulations. Luckily she has school aged kids of her own, so she is working on creating a reasonable and affordable option in our town for summer and afterschool care, but it will probably take a few more years.
And ugh, +1 to a performance every Friday afternoon at 3 pm. Really? I send my kids to camp so I can work then
Spirograph says
I could swear this cardigan has been featured before… am I losing my mind?
B says
I’m not sure about this *exact* cardigan, but I do get the feeling we’re alternating between wrap dresses and waterfall cardigans. As I look through recent posts, maybe that’s not fair?
Spirograph says
I am not losing my mind (well, maybe I am, but I was right about this particular thing). It was last September. http://corporettemoms.com/caslon-drape-neck-zip-cardigan/
sfg says
I was so proud of myself for successfully navigating plane travel, pumping, and depos. Then I realized when I got home that I left my pump cord in the airport bathroom after my last session of the trip.
Sigh. Thank goodness for Amazon Prime.
3kids says
Better the cord than the milk! At least your efforts were not all wasted. Good job, just thinking about doing this makes me stressed!
KJ says
If that’s the only thing that went wrong on the trip, I’d consider it a resounding success. Good job!