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Sales of note for 9.10.24
(See all of the latest workwear sales at Corporette!)
- Ann Taylor – 30% off your purchase
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- Lands’ End – 30% off full-price styles
- Loft – Extra 40% off sale styles
- Talbots – BOGO 50% everything, includes markdowns
- Zappos – 26,000+ 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 – Birthday sale, 40-50% off & extra 20% off select styles
- Hanna Andersson – Up to 50% off all baby; up to 40% off all Halloween
- J.Crew Crewcuts – Extra 30% off sale styles
- Old Navy – 40% off everything
- Target – BOGO 25% off select haircare, up to 25% off floor care items; up to 30% off indoor furniture up to 20% off TVs
Anon says
1st day of summer break and camps don’t open until Monday, so my 1st grader is home while DH and I WFH. It’s not even 9 am, and we’ve already played a card game and made popsicles. Now she’s playing with legos and I’m crossing my fingers I can get in a few hours of uninterrupted work. Send good vibes!
Cb says
Oof, fingers crossed. We have early release every Friday and I started making my son a list of things to do. But we’ve got the threat of having to go to aftercare to help us.
Anon says
Good luck! If you need a distraction, my 6 year old loves activity books (with word searches, mazes, things like that) and Walmart does same day delivery.
GCA says
Oh man, word search books are the Water Wow of the elementary crowd. In my son’s Covid Kindergarten year, our babysitter got him a bunch of those word search/ puzzle/ maze activity books and they were a huge hit.
Anon says
“the Water Wow of the elementary crowd” is the perfect description!
AwayEmily says
This made me remember about a monthlong period where the kids would request me to make them themed word searches every night for like a month (“make mine about animals!” “I want mine to be Harry Potter!”).
I got EXTREMELY fast at making them (though in retrospect I should have just caved and bought graph paper).
TheElms says
You made them from scratch?!! That is amazing to me and you clearly deserved an award for that effort.
Anon says
Yeah that’s impressive that you made them from scratch.
All of you know about the NYT’s Strands daily word search game right? My 6 year old loves to help me do it, and I bet many slightly older kids could do it alone.
OP says
Thank you! Just found one we had forgotten about, and after rejecting every other idea I gave her to entertain herself, she perked up when I suggested this. Hooray!
Rekindling says
My 10 year anniversary is coming up next April and I’d love to surprise my wife with a romantic trip. We are in the middle of the country, near a major airport and are looking at 4 days. We have very young children and would love to…rekindle the adult part of our marriage. We like outdoors, and good food, don’t really winery at all, and queer. Where would you go?
Anon says
Congrats! I don’t really drink but love Napa for the food scene and relaxing vibe. Charleston, Nashville and NOLA are amazing food cities with mild weather that time of year. Chicago also has great food scene (assuming this isn’t the major city you’re coming from) and you can easily day trip to southeast Michigan for a day of nature stuff, although it may be pretty cold in April. If you like spa stuff, Miraval is amazing and the Tucson, Arizona location would have pleasantly warm weather in April and has fun nature stuff like horseback riding.
YMMV but be careful with planning a nature-centric trip if the goal is reconnecting with your spouse. The worst trip my DH & I took together post kids was Iceland. It’s a beautiful place with a ton to do, but we were exhausting ourselves physically every day, driving a couple hours to a new destination every night, and I got badly bruised falling on a glacier trek, so the trip wasn’t very conducive to romance. We’ve enjoyed cities, beaches and spa resorts much more for couples trips.
OP says
I totally hear you on Iceland – we took our honeymoon there and had to call a mulligan and redo it a couple years later. Least romantic trip ever!
Anon says
I’m glad I’m not the only one! I see it recommended for honeymoons and anniversary trips all the time on the main page and I think NO WAY.
Pogo says
ha I just posted below on an outdoorsy trip. I guess maybe we are just super outdoorsy people? all of our outdoor trips have been very romantic…. looking at the stars, cuddling around the fire, skinny dipping….
least romantic is any time we travel with family. it kills the vibe for me when your parents are two rooms over, sorry.
Anon says
I think there’s outdoorsy like “do a short hike, have a great meal, get a spa treatment, go stargazing” and outdoorsy like “spend 8+ hours a day hiking, kayaking and climbing until you’re sore and dead tired.” Our Iceland trip was more of the latter and that’s what I recommend avoiding (unless you are hardc0re outdoorsy :))
You totally could have a more relaxed trip to Iceland, but it’s far enough away that I felt like I had to see a LOT and I think many people would feel similarly. I think domestic trips are easier in that sense that you don’t feel like it’s a once in a lifetime thing and you can just chill. Also I was kind of shocked by how much time we spent driving in Iceland. For such a small place it takes a long time to get around, and it was very tiring spending all that time I the car. For a short trip where the goal is reconnecting with your spouse I think it’s easier to stay in one home base.
Pogo says
Austin? Had a fun girls trip there not too long ago.
For our 10 year we actually went to Moab (we are VERY outdoorsy). We did mountain biking, hiking, and were able to hit both Arches and Canyonlands. Just driving the jeep trails in the parks and surrounding areas is awe-inducing. I booked a night photography tour (husband’s hobby along with the mountain biking) where we were also able to see the Milky Way.
Also – treat yo self. We booked premium economy and on our layover the very first day had champagne at brunch at the airport. It feels like skipping school or something to do stuff like that when you have young kids and most vacations are just ‘parenting elsewhere’.
I think a bit part of rekindling is having those shared experiences that aren’t like, cleaning puke off a carseat together. We have so many great memories and photos from this trip and remember it often. I’m smiling just thinking of it!
Anon says
Colorado Springs, Lake Tahoe, Asheville, Cabo
GCA says
Would something like Seyon Lodge in Vermont appeal to you? Less rustic or more rustic? If you’d prefer a better chance of drier, warmer weather, maybe Sedona or Santa Fe?
OP says
I love the sedona/santa fe suggestion. Any specific places you like?
GCA says
Alas, no, but I’ve been dreaming about an outdoorsy trip to the Southwest ever since we went climbing in Nevada years and years ago, plus Meow Wolf in Santa Fe is on my bucket list. Pogo’s Moab suggestion sounds amazing too.
Anon says
Banff or Lake Louise! Good food, beautiful outdoors, no wineries and queer friendly!
Anonymous says
Santa Fe. Specifically here. It won’t be obscenely hot in April so you can explore leisurely during the day, hit up the amazing spas, and get busy by the fire at night. https://aubergeresorts.com/bishopslodge?utm_campaign=BL%7CGoogle%7CNB&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_term=santa%20fe%20resort&utm_content=RSA-001-spring&utm_adgroup=&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw1K-zBhBIEiwAWeCOFxhU7SzLhxEd7_J9J_XfWDxEUx_3BR_e0VcVu_CKcFZfxdiz9VROHxoCq6gQAvD_BwE
Mary Moo Cow says
A second plug for Charleston. April is typically warm but not super humid, and you can be outdoors at the beach, touring the city, touring historic sites, eating on rooftops, but in a relaxing way. Charleston has so much good food. If you are more into beer and spirits than wine, it is a fledgling industry. You can stay downtown or at a beach resort and water taxi or drive into downtown, or stay downtown and drive to the beaches and suburbs.
OP says
We love Charleston and used to live in the South. It’s a great idea to think about going back
SC says
DH and I just went on a “rekindling” type of trip. We drove to a small town 2 hours away from our home and spent a very relaxing weekend at a B&B/ historic inn that cost 3-5 times more than what we usually spend on hotel rooms. We hung out in our room and in the hotel (lobby, bar, pool, gardens), walked around the town and popped in and out of the small shops, got massages, and had a nice dinner at the hotel restaurant. If there’s anything near your home that would allow a similar experience, I highly recommend. You save time and stress by driving, can put what you save on airfare toward luxury, and don’t have to feel bad about staying in the room vs going out exploring.
Anon says
For April and not too far away, maybe southern Arizona – Tucson, Phoenix, or even Sedona if you can avoid exhausting yourselves.
anon says
We went to Sedona for our recent big anniversary and had a good time. It was nice to do random hikes as the mood struck us, without needing to plan for kid snacks and stamina, and eat at restaurants without anyone trying to crawl under the table.
AwayEmily says
I found the discussion yesterday about graphic novels to be really fascinating (one commenter asserted that graphic novels were “terrible” and “brain candy”). It made me think about WHY we want our kids to read — the implicit assumption in a lot of the discussion was that the reason we want them to read is so that they become better writers/spellers/learners — all of which are indubitably critical life skills. And the concern was that graphic novels are less effective at that than regular books. This may or may not be true (or, more likely, may be true for some kids but not others).
But missing from that discussion is something else that reading can provide — empathy. The experience of thinking about things from someone else’s perspective, and considering other points of view. I think that’s easy to lose sight of in our achievement-focused culture but reading isn’t just about academic learning. And I do think graphic novels can be extraordinary at transporting kids into someone else’s world.
Anon2 says
Great point! And one that comes to mind is “When Stars are Scattered.”
I’m also going to add that reading should just plain be FUN. It’s an alternative to screens, it’s a positive way to deal with boredom and loneliness, and it works your brain and imagination in ways that can’t be quantified.
I recently saw a statistic that half of US adults did not finish even ONE book last year. That is appalling and so sad to me. Of course I want my kids to love a variety of “great works”, as I see how they’ve enriched my life, but my ultimate goal is to form lifelong readers, who choose books for pleasure, whatever material they enjoy.
Anon says
This is interesting because our kids librarian is big on graphic novels – he just wants the kids reading – but he does think they are a little less effective at the one thing you flagged: teaching empathy. You get less interior thoughts and discussion of feelings – more dialogue and action just by virtue of how they are written – with graphic novels as a whole (I’m sure there are exceptions), so he’d say that’s the one thing he sees as a drawback. He’ll still encourage them, but food for thought!
SC says
Interesting. I find that graphic novels can convey feeling and foster empathy through their visual techniques – color, font, facial expressions, body language. As with anything, it depends on the story and how well it’s told. I also think it depends on what you’re comparing it to. My son loves nonfiction/ science books and poetry, and he usually doesn’t like books focused on feelings and interior thoughts, even when I’m reading to him. I see graphic novels are a good bridge toward more complex storytelling, including (hopefully, one day) stories about feelings, relationships, etc.
Anon says
This really depends on the genre. Some books are quite weak on empathy. And it’s hard to imagine more interior thoughts and feelings than a shoujo manga!
Librarian says
I’m a librarian and I really disagree with that take. Empathy building is all in the storytelling. Many graphic novels offer inner dialogue and discussions about feelings. It’s dependent on the book as a whole, not the format.
Anon says
Excellent point. But I don’t even understand what’s bad about books that are entirely brain candy and don’t teach us anything. I read 100+ books per year, but a solid chunk of them are spy novels and chick lit because…they’re fun. One year I read a dozen books based on the TV show Monk and those books are basically slightly better than average fan fiction. I didn’t learn a single thing from them, but you don’t have to learn from a book to enjoy reading it.
Kids work hard in school. I think it’s totally fine if they want their home reading to be just for fun.
AwayEmily says
TOTALLY agree. It sounds dumb but I try to just listen to my heart about reading — sometimes it is telling me to read Henry James, sometimes it is telling me to read twenty romance novels in a row. There is nothing that brings me more comfort than getting into bed early with a cup of tea (or sometimes, tumbler of whiskey) with a super, super engrossing book. I hope my kids are able to get that same sense of joy from reading.
Anon says
+1
Boston Legal Eagle says
Agree. A lot of the revered classics ARE boring, frankly! I don’t want to work that hard to read some of these long, dense books. I read to escape and have fun, and get in someone else’s head, like AwayEmily says. I love that my second grader (technically rising third grader now!) is into Dogman and Catkid and Captain Underpants and all that. He seems to have so much fun reading them.
Anon says
Schools have such a narrow definition of “classic” which is a huge part of the problem, imo. In my high school English classes (less than 20 years ago, at a “good” public school) I think we read nearly 100% white authors and probably at least 90% male authors. A Raisin in the Sun, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and My Antonia are literally the ONLY books I can think of reading in school that weren’t written by white men, and I can name dozens and dozens of books we read by white men. I spent most of my life thinking I hated “literature” because of that. Ironically I now read tons of literary fiction but it’s mostly written by women, many of them women of color. If schools would just accept that great literature isn’t all 100 years old and written by white men, I think more kids would be interested in it. And I’m white! Can’t even imagine how WOC feel about being told only white men write great books.
Anonymous says
There are zero books written more than 20 years ago or by white men being taught in our middle school or high school.
Anon says
Wait, NO books written more than 20 years ago or books written by white men are taught in an entire high school?!? How…. how is that possible? No Shakespeare, Dickens, Fitzgerald, Joyce, Hemingway, etc!? I find that impossible to believe — all the current AP English Lit book lists I see online are filled with old books written by white men. Not that every kid takes AP English, obviously, but most high schools offer it, and in my experience the books for the less advanced classes are often just a subset of the books for AP classes.
Anon says
I read fun books and classic literature but they’re definitely not interchangeable. I don’t appreciate it when schools act like a book is a book is a book; I felt pressured and incentivized as a kid to just read more books total, as if finishing ten light novels were the equivalent of finishing a 19th century novel or even a single Shakespeare play. The classics are 90% not at all boring to me, and I’m glad I was familiarized enough with them to enjoy them fully.
Anon says
People used to insult Harry Potter for not being “true literature” – ignoring the fact that it inspired literally billions of people to love reading and continues to do so more than 20 years after the first book was published. I don’t know enough about how the brain processes graphic novels to know if they’re any different, but I do know that love of reading is something that shouldn’t be discouraged, whatever form it takes.
Anon says
+1
Anonymous says
I am the anti-graphic novel poster from yesterday. The difference is that graphic novels tell the story through pictures and books tell the story through the written word. Reading builds different skills than interpreting pictorial stories. To read you must decode the words, comprehend their meaning, and build the world being described in your imagination. You don’t have to do any of that with graphic novels. I have much less of a problem with my child’s reading junky books with words in them for entertainment than I have with graphic novels. Once they read a graphic novel, they never want to take the effort to read a real book again and lose comprehension skills. At least that’s what happened to my 2/e kid who was a very strong reader. For kids whose reading skills lag behind their ability to understand stories, graphic novels may be more appropriate.
Anon2 says
I see what you’re saying, and as someone who has reluctantly jumped on the graphic novel bandwagon, I agree that the imagination/world-building qualities are lacking with GN. And it does take more “work” to read books without pictures.
But I don’t think it’s a given that it makes kids lazier. In my own 8yo son (the younger is just starting to read so he’s not a good case study yet), he has been deep in graphic novels for two years, and it’s progressed to books like 13-Story Treehouse and Wimpy Kid, and just last night I walked in on him reading Percy Jackson…not our big illustrated version, but the mass market paperback. He’s also asked me to get chapter books at the library this summer. His comprehension and reading skill level has always been great, but he needed to develop a love of reading and a confidence with easier/quicker books first (IMO).
My younger has just started wanting to read to himself in bed at night, with the Narwhal and Jelly series. He’s also 2e so we’ll see, but with a comparatively slower processing speed I can see how graphic novels are a better gateway for him, too
Anon says
I learned that I have hyperphantasia and that some people are on the opposite end of this spectrum, and I’m still trying to understand what it’s like to read a book without being immersed in an imaginary dreamspace the whole while!
Anon says
FWIW, my son’s reading level has never taken a dive and he was pretty much exclusively graphic novels for a bit, but I’m sure there is a range of experiences. I wonder if your kid’s peers just caught up a bit?
Anon says
I don’t agree that “graphic novels tell the story through pictures and books tell the story through the written word.” Graphic novels tell the story through both words and pictures, but predominantly words. If it was pictures alone, young children who can’t read fluently would be able to “read” them and that’s definitely not the case. And kids *can* follow graphic novels without looking at the pictures, because the words alone are enough to follow the story.
We have a whole bunch of the Babysitter’s Club and BSC Little Sister books in both graphic novel and regular form and the dialogue, which is the core of the story, is very similar. The graphic novels have pictures in place of text for additional exposition (e.g., a picture of Karen crying instead of “Karen started crying”) but you can easily follow the story without the pictures. In fact, when we read them to my daughter she frequently doesn’t even look at the pictures. And to be honest (as someone who earns my living through writing), there are many books, including the BSC series, where cutting out a large chunk of the exposition improves the book.
Anon2 says
Good point, my son turns the pages so fast he can’t possibly be staring at the pictures too long (so maybe that’s the worst of both worlds, lol?) I think he likes that the text is grouped into smaller chunks so it’s less overwhelming, but he is mostly reading and not so much looking
Mary Moo Cow says
I’m slightly amused at all the attention to graphic novels for kids: like, of all the things, this is what we’re giving our rage attention to? That said, I was slow to embrace them as even a part of my kids reading diet, but now, I see them as part of their whole reading diet: some challenging texts, some comfortable texts, some graphic novels, some magazines. But if they binge on graphic novels for a period of time, shrug. Everything in moderation, including moderation.
AwayEmily says
Eh, I don’t think it’s necessarily rage attention (at least not for most of the people in this thread). I feel it’s more intellectual curiosity — there’s thing new thing that didn’t really exist when we were kids, and so we are feeling out what it might mean for learning. I find it super fascinating to consider! And in many ways much less fraught than conversations about screen time or whatever because people aren’t super moralistic about it, more just genuinely curious.
Anon says
Comic books have been huge for nearly a century, but I guess girls didn’t read them when I was young (we read manga).
Anon says
I agree. My mom hated when I would check out Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley Twins books. She wanted me to read “better” books, and it was just a battle. I would check them out from the library but bury them under other books to make it look like I had something else. My mom is wonderful generally, but it’s funny to think about her approach to this.
anon says
I am mildly opposed to brain-candy books. I think reading this is one (of many) arenas where we can teach our kids to keep trying and do their best. In sports we generally accept the idea that kids benefit from being challenged. Sure, some (many) parents apply too much pressure, but there are also lots of reasonable parents who expect their kid to keep a good attitude and finish out a tough season.
There’s a lot of middle ground between maximizing academic skill and reading only for fun. One path might be choosing stories that teach empathy, or non-fiction that teach cool info. Another might be encouraging your kid to set personal goals, or work towards the new bike the library is giving away at the end of the summer. Or maybe it’s explaining to your kid that summer is for light reading (beach reads, anyone?) and when school starts he needs to try chapter books again. But I really don’t think letting kids choose all their own books is the only way to encourage lifelong reading.
Good Energy says
Has anyone read the book Good Energy? I read a review (somewhere? NPR maybe?) and I’m interested in the concept but unsure how actionable or realistic the recommendations are. I don’t want to read something that’s just going to make me feel hopeless and stressed.
Cb says
Someone mentioned Percy Jackson yesterday but I was late to chime in. We are 75% of the way through book 1 and enjoying it but the chapters are so, so long?! We’ve been reading a chapter at bedtime (and this afternoon when I got tired of working) and I timed chapter 17 – 35 minutes to read aloud. My husband refills my teacup at the midway point so I can keep reading.
On graphic novels, we mix them in and find them good for bedtime reading when the focus isn’t as sharp. My son is a strong reader in assessments but I think it’s still quite taxing and the stamina isn’t quite there.
Mary Moo Cow says
Kudos to you for reading that long! DH and I are taking turns reading The Mysterious Benedict Society series to our newly 9 year old. We thought she would pick it up and read it herself, and she has a few times, but mostly it’s us, and reading a chapter a night is about 30 minutes and feels like I’ve accomplished so little since it’s a big book!
Cb says
Haha, my husband does the dinner clean up and gets laundry off the line while I do the reading, so selfishly it’s in my interest to read for awhile. And luckily, I’m a prof so used to talking for ages. We somehow ended up with a long bedtime routine – 30 minutes of stories, 15 of audiobook, 10 of solo reading – but it’s broadly a calm routine and I don’t have to clean counters.
Anon says
I just stop books mid chapter when the chapters are too long for the reading time available. Spy School, I’m looking at you.
Anon says
My son loves the graphic novel version of Spy School :D :D
Anonymous says
Ha! My son just turned 12 and finally moving out of his graphic novel phase but still enjoys books that aren’t super hard to read and likes to be read to. We just had a parent teacher conference and he is reading about a year ahead of his grade level, so I DNGAF. I personally don’t like to spend my leisure time taxing my brain either. Middle school is enough stress for him.
Anon says
A librarian told me you can never read to your kids too much or for too long. I hope my daughter still wants me to read to her when she’s 12 :)
Anonymous says
Sometimes I am ready to be done because he’s going to bed much closer to when I need to go to bed as he gets older, and I want some downtime, but he opens up a lot more about things that are bothering him during our evening snuggle/reading sessions. So I’m grateful for the opportunity to connect and trying to appreciate it while it lasts! We’ve foisted a lot of independence on him in other ways.
Anonymous says
Ditto– we call them “stopping points” and aim for stopping at double space between paragraphs. When we read Percy Jackson aloud, it’s about a half-chapter per night.
And here’s my plug for the Greeking Out podcast if your kid likes Percy Jackson! PJ is a bit too scary for my 6-year-old, but she and my 8-year-old (who does read PJ with me) both love Greeking Out. I also enjoy it!