Accessory Tuesday: Alexandra Bow-Tied Flats

Now that DH and I have a child, we need to get serious about getting our house in order.

What are the documents we need to have an attorney prepare and what sort of cost should we expect to be quoted? Certainly we need wills that contemplate guardianship in the event we both die. Is a power of attorney necessary? Anything else?

Once we get this done, we’ll be exploring life insurance policies. Anything else we should be considering or planning for?

Talk to me about au pairs! I think I need one, but I’m worried that I’m going to be outsourcing too much child care and too little housekeeping work. As I’m in biglaw with three little kids, I really would like the flexibility of having an au pair — leaving my husband home with three kids under six with little notice for long stretches of the weekend or several evenings in a row (which doesn’t happen frequently but is the nature of my job) is not good for anyone. I could hire extra weeknight or weekend babysitters, but the issue is that my work schedule is not always predictable. However, part of what we are overwhelmed with it housekeeping (the usual, laundry, dishwashing, etc), and I’d much rather be spending time with my kids than cleaning the dishes, obviously. So, any thoughts on this stream-of-consciousness description would be appreciated, but particularly — if you have an au pair, do they pitch in for housework as a member of the family would, or do they really stick with only cleaning up the kids’ stuff? E.g., if we’re finished with dinner and both parents are home, could my husband and I reasonably expect to go upstairs and get the kids ready for bed, etc. while the au pair does the whole family’s dishes and cleans up the kitchen? (We have a weekly house cleaner, the au pair wouldn’t be scrubbing the toilets or anything — I’m talking more about daily chores that we’d like to get off our hands to the extent possible.)

Also, we don’t have a separate suite for an au pair to live in. They would have their own bedroom, separate from ours, but it would be downstairs next to the living room, and would share the bathroom with the rest of the downstairs rooms. My husband and I are fairly introverted, so this is not ideal, but it’s not a deal breaker. Does anyone have wisdom to share from a similar experience?

We just realized that my husband has a work trip the same week as our kid’s 3rd birthday that is very close to Disney. His work thing is like a Wednesday/Thursday/Friday thing…

Would it be totally insane for us to take the kiddo and do a day (or maybe two?) at Disney? Maybe having one of them be his birthday? Our only costs would be airfare for Me + Kid which won’t be too much… plus 2 nights of a hotel and Disney tickets.

Should we wait until he’s older and do like the big multi-day Disney vacation or is this a doable thing? Husband joked about it when he found out where the work thing was… Also relevant: husband has traveled a TON this year and it’s 98% to places we can’t feasibly visit or tag along to and it would be nice to see more of him.

So, my child is almost 3, and I really think she is ready for some serious potty training. In the past, we’ve just had her sit on the potty periodically, but she doesn’t go. We’ve definitely not been in the mood to push it, especially because we’ve had a lot of travel over the summer so were worried about how consistent we could be. At school, they take all the kids to the potty regularly. She sometimes goes there, but it’s not that common. Recently, she’s shown an interest in underwear and is having more obvious physical signals that she probably has to go. We take her to the potty at those times, but she doesn’t go. Potty training tips? I am definitely not desperate enough at this point to read an entire book devoted to it. Honestly, I’m pretty tempted to just put her in underwear for a weekend, be ready for accidents, and see how she responds.

Can we talk about iron supplements for b-fed infants? My baby is 6.5 months and primarily but not exclusively b-fed (I can’t quite pump enough for her, so she gets 2-4 oz of formula on weekdays). We started solids at 5.5 months and she’s been a little slow to take them. Purees are going better than finger foods and she does fine with chunkier purees. Her favorites are yogurt, avocado and applesauce. She’s not eating anything with iron to speak of – we’ve tried fortified cereal but she doesn’t like it and it wreaks havoc on her bowels. We mix a hard-boiled egg yolk into avocado or yogurt, but it would take a lot of eggs to meet her daily iron needs. I think she needs an iron supplement and asked our doctor about it. Our doctor diagnosed her as a “bad eater” (which I think is kind of unfair – she hasn’t even been eating solids for a month, of course there’s a learning curve!) said she really needs a multivitamin as well as iron – she told us to do Enfamil Poly-Vi-Sol. I (probably stupidly) fell down a rabbit hole of online reviews and am a bit freaked out by the all the stories of kids vomiting or having terrible digestive issues from it, and how terrible it smells and tastes. Does anyone have personal experience with this supplement? Or other strategies for getting infants iron? Our doctor seems to think our kid should be having a giant slab of red meat every night, but 1) DH and I don’t really eat red meat ourselves – we’re mostly pescatarians who eat chicken maybe once a week, and 2) even with a high-iron food like steak, it takes an adult-sized portion to meet an infant’s (super high) daily iron needs. Every baby I know gets more food on the floor and in their hair than in the mouth, so I’m really skeptical that she could get enough iron even if we handed her a big piece of steak every day.

I just found out my son’s daycare hired a male teacher for his room. I’m struggling a bit with this news, because I know rationally there is nothing about that news that should be of concern or bother me in and of itself. In fact, I would likely have railed against anyone else who told me they were uncomfortable in a similar situation. And yet, I feel uncomfortable. Part of it is just the transition in general. First day in new room and just found out there’s one new teacher hired so I think they could have done a better job with advance communication, but I’m also strangely uncomfortable and simultaneously disappointed with myself for the thought.

I almost had a panic attack last night because of legos. They are just everywhere in my son’s room. I can’t deal with the total chaos and struggle before bed each night. I’ve done a pretty good job of just ignoring the mess but it is spreading further and further. We’ve kept them confined to his room to keep them out of our 1.5 year old’s hands.

I know storage options have been discussed here before but what actually works with how your kids play with legos? It just doesn’t make sense for us to sort/store by type or color. Right now we basically pick up every two weeks before the cleaners come.

What parameters do you use to keep them under control? Is there a storage or play table option that works for your kids?

They are his absolute passion and he plays so creatively with them. I just need them slightly more under control. Help.