Accessory Tuesday: Aureo II Ankle Boot

Question re: buying new clothes, rather than used/previously loved clothes for baby. So, before my son was born last May, my husband and I discussed that we would work to only buy second hand clothes for our son. One, because we know that kids grow fast so we’d need to buy a lot of clothes and this seems more cost effective, (2) because grandparents would buy our baby clothes regardless of whether and (3) it seemed pretty easy to go to consignment sales and second hand stores before baby was born and while I was on maternity leave. However, now that I’m back working, buying new clothes via online shopping while eating lunch at work or after baby has gone to bed seems far less stressful and ultimately results in me buying less clothes. My mother in law also just went to a huge consignment sale in our area for me and bought a bunch of stuff, but the one thing we needed (more footied pjs) she was unable to find there. I just realized that for summer clothes, I can create basically a capsule wardrobe for my son from Primary and spend like $80 and didn’t have to go to the store while I’m getting exactly the right amount of clothes that I need.

I’ve tried online sites like poshmark, but the shipping costs of roughly $6 per item makes that ridiculous amount of money and all of the Facebook marketplace or Facebook buy/sell/trade groups for brands I like seem to be fiercely competitive and take a huge amount of time. Now, if a friend were to drop off a bunch of clothes at my house and I paid them like $100 that would work great. Anyone else feel that it’s just easier to buy new? But also feel guilty about not buying second hand?

Question about crying it out (and feel free to tell me to buy a book! Recommendations welcomed). Our 7 month old routinely wakes up between 3-4 am to take a bottle and then goes back to sleep. We’d love to stop this, since it sounds like he should be able to sleep 10-11 hours straight through. Any tips? Last night, he cried for about 40 minutes before we finally went in and gave him a bottle, after which he happily went back to sleep. I realize this was bad — what should we do instead? Thank you!!

Just an update on my post last week about my partner traveling shortly after my child is born – after I read everyone’s comments, I went to talk to him about it this weekend. When he started giving me a funny look, I realized I should probably stop with my spiel and let him say something – which is when he told me that he’d moved the trip as soon as he realized how close it was to my due date, although it required a seriously unpleasant set of exchanges and a lot of bargaining with his former wife (in the form of giving up holiday time with my stepkids next Christmas). He’s completely sure he told me this, I totally think he didn’t, but either way, crisis averted (and a lesson as to why we need to actually get around to setting up a family calendar with all our trips on it).

To those who asked about my parents – their trip is one of those super-expensive river cruises and they’ve saved up for years to take it; given the timing they would not be able to get back much of the fare and it would be a very material amount of money for them, so I’d encouraged them to take it even though they were feeling pretty sad about being away. However, because of coronavirus they’ve now been offered the opportunity to reschedule it for another time without penalty, which they’re going to take (and they booked flights through the cruise company, so they’re literally not out of pocket at all). So in the end, everyone will be around – partner, stepkids (they’re local, FWIW), and my parents, and by the time I give birth I will hopefully have gotten better about admitting that I might need people to help me instead of telling myself I can tough out anything (even when it’s silly to do so).

Hi all-
Just read all of the responses to my COVID-19 preparation question yesterday, apologies for starting that convo and then bailing, as you can imagine it has been pretty busy at work!
The CDC released guidance yesterday centered on preparing your home for coronavirus. The standard pandemic recommendation to have extra food and supplies on hand has been removed. I imagine that is to mitigate the stockpile that seems to be already occurring (I went into a Costco out of curiosity, it was almost empty, and I’m in a state that does not have any confirmed cases).
That being said, a lot of people were asking for specific recommendations on WHAT to buy. I don’t think we will lose power or water or anything like that, but I would recommend thinking through what you would want on hand if you decided it was best not to go to the store for two weeks. We’re in a HCOL area, so we don’t have a lot of room either, so in addition to our standard emergency food (I am a professional, after all) we got extra:
-Laundry Detergent
-Diapers/wipes
-Dishwasher detergent
-Condiments (god help us if we can’t get to the store for ketchup!)
-Horizon Organic Boxed Milk (the kind that are like juice boxes? Not because I think we will lose power, but because it is shelf-stable and refrigerated milk does go bad)
-A bit of extra pasta and sauce
-refrigerated canned crescent rolls and biscuits
-Stocked up on any frozen items we were almost out of (chicken nuggets, meatballs, microwave veggies, etc.)
-Cereal bars, cereal, crackers, peanut butter
-Tylenol, Advil, Dayquil, Nyquil, Mucinex, Kleenex
-Paper towels and toilet paper
-Lysol wipes in case someone in the house gets sick (back when you could find them!)
The cabinets, coat closet, and bathroom cabinets are now stuffed to the brim, but it is all stuff we will use anyway.
I’ll caveat the power and water thing with the recommendation to think about the hazards in your area. If you are somewhere prone to frequent Boil Water Advisories (looking at you, Houston and New Orleans) or power outages from storms (looking at you, Southeast!), it may be a good idea to take those into consideration. If the virus were to spread in your community, restoration of services lost for non-COVID reasons could be slower than usual. I also recognize buying all of the stuff I listed above at once is not cheap and that this is not accessible to everyone, but I wanted to share what I have personally done. I promise not to spam the board with COVID-19, I know most of us come here to get away from stress not to cause it, but I did want to follow-up from yesterday.