Makeup & Beauty Monday: Anti-Fatigue Products

I’m a longtime reader of Corporette, but became a foster mom a few weeks ago so here I am! It has been wonderful and joyous, but work is really getting me down. Any tips or encouragement? HR refuses to let me have time off since he’s a foster (which makes sense from a legal standpoint, but it’s hard). DH has been great, pitching in a TON, but we both need to get back into a 40 hour work routine. I am super unmotivated at work, I miss baby, and feel like HR and my colleagues are treating me like “so you have a baby now – BFD.” I’m really discouraged and tempted to lean out. How do I combat this feeling?

How much do you pay a babysitter?

We’re in a MCOL suburb I guess. And this is the meet-and-greet, like babysitter is going to come over this afternoon while we’re there, because Kiddo is pretty anti-stranger right now, so that seems like a good way to get the ball rolling. But still, it’s her time, so I think I ought to pay her. But I have no idea where to even start?! She’s in high school but apparently has a decent amount of experience, and we have one kid just over 2.

20 month old climbed out of crib this weekend so we converted to a toddler bed. I don’t feel safe letting her climb out of the crib and potentially falling. But now there is no way to get her to stay in bed and fall asleep – someone has to sit with her and she demands mama. Mama is tired and misses having time to herself that is not sitting silently in the dark waiting for someone to fall asleep. Naps are worse than night time. Any tips? I know she’s way too young for a toddler bed but what can I do?

Ladies, I’ve got mad baby fever right now, but we’re putting off TTC until after a trip to the Caribbean this summer with extended family (darn you, zika!). Any suggestions for chilling out on this for now?

DH and I had a pretty miserable Easter weekend and ended up arguing a lot about holiday expectations. I get stressed and overwhelmed with attending to all the details, and he ends up feeling left out. To make matters more complicated, he worked all day Saturday when I needed help the most. I was trying to make desserts and dishes for our family gathering on Sunday, stuffing eggs for the family egg hunt, and several other things while watching our two kids, all so we could have family time when he got home. It backfired spectacularly. I was exhausted and crabby for the rest of the night, and silently resented him for not having to worry about any of it. Which led to a big argument in front of the kids about who does more, which is pretty terrible. He accused me of being a control freak who tries to outdo herself on every holiday. (Which I really disagree with; even keeping things simple requires some thought, planning, and execution. And we weren’t even hosting this time!) I realize that I’ve gotten into a bad habit of keeping the running to-do list in my head, which is all too easy to do when I’m the one getting all the text messages/emails/phone calls from the other women in my friends and family circle who are doing the planning.

I don’t know how to break the cycle. His family, at least, has gotten better about including him on the emails about holiday plans, so he’s at least aware that things are happening and he needs to help. I love that we have family nearby, but it does ratchet up the expectations about How Things Are Done. In my family, for example, it is sacrilege to bring store-bought anything to a holiday gathering — which is what DH would do if I put him in charge. We have a big home-cooked dinner for 20 people, every time, and believe me when I say that nobody is going to budge on that plan. And when it comes to the neighborhood Easter egg hunt, of course it’s the moms who do every bit of the planning. When I suggested that we get the dads involved, it went nowhere and I’m pretty sure my neighbors think I’m nuts. They’re the moms who love love love every bit of holiday planning and see it as their domain. Unconsciously, I’ve been letting the same pattern with my DH and I kind of hate myself for it. We see each other as partners, so why is it so hard to reverse our conditioning around the holidays?

I have a question about attachment and/or separation anxiety. My toddler is 27 months. I was under the impression that by this time, kids would be more independent and wouldn’t struggle as much with attachment and/or separation anxiety. To this day, my toddler still cries and holds on tight any time he thinks I am leaving (specially at daycare drop off). Do you ladies have any tips for handling this situation? Any reading resources that can help provide some insight as to what he may be struggling with?

Good morning ladies! I need some gift ideas for a 4 year old girl and her 2 year old brother. They live abroad in Europe and we are visiting soon. Should I ask my friend (their mom) what they are into these days? I know she likes a particular princess (from a cartoon?) but I forgot the name. Can anyone suggest some gift ideas or should I simply ask the mom? I feel that I should know these things but then DS is only an infant..Thanks!!

So I got to experience my first set of full on toddler tantrums yesterday. What a treat! I really like the point where they go boneless and drop to the ground, followed by the writhing around like a salmon that accidentally jumped out of its stream. That plus the bloodcurdling screaming? Such a treat!

Everything is a season, eh?