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Boden continues to knock it out of the park with washable dresses, and I like this ponte dress with a chic gathered waist. It’s lined (huzzah), and has a lovely work-appropriate length. It was $118, but is now marked to $82; it’s available in navy and brown, regular and tall sizes 2-18. Boden Ellie Ponte Dress
Here’s a ponte dress that’s available in petite, tall, and plus sizes (as well as regular sizes).
(L-3)
Sales of note for 12.5.23…
(See all of the latest workwear sales at Corporette!)
- Nordstrom – Holiday sale up to 50% off; 5x the points on beauty for a limited time
- Ann Taylor – 40% off your purchase & extra 15% off sweaters
- Banana Republic – Up to 40% off select styles; up to 40% off sale styles
- Banana Republic Factory – 50% off everything & extra 20% off purchase
- Eloquii – Extra 60% off all sale
- J.Crew – 40% off your purchase with code
- Lands’ End – Up to 70% off everything; free shipping (readers love the cashmere)
- Loft – 50% off your purchase with code (ends 12/5)
- Summersalt – Up to 60% off select styles & free scarf with orders $125+ (this reader-favorite sweater blazer is down to $75)
- Talbots – 40% off your regular-price purchase; extra 50% off all markdowns
- Zappos – 34,000+ women’s sale items! Check out these reader-favorite workwear brands on sale, and some of our favorite kid shoe brands on sale.
Kid/Family Sales
- Crate&kids – Free shipping sitewide; up to 50% off toy + gift event; free monogramming for a limited time only (order by 12/15)
- J.Crew Crewcuts – 40% off your purchase with code
- Pottery Barn Kids – Up to 50% off toys, furniture & gifts
- Graco – Holiday savings up to 35% off; sign up for texts for 20% off full-price item
- Walmart – Up to 25% off top baby gifts; big savings on Delta, Graco, VTech, Fisher-Price & more
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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?
JEB says
My daughter is 9 months today (can’t believe it!!), and we have done absolutely no baby proofing. This weekend, we intend to put a gate at the top of the stairs, secure the TV’s, cover the exposed outlets, and put locks on the cabinets containing cleaning supplies. We also got an 8-panel gate that forms a play pen, which gives her a safe place to play.
I’m a little confused as to how much is necessary. As I’m looking at products online, it seems like you could endlessly baby proof. For example: refrigerator and oven latches, toilet latches, doorknob guards for every door, etc. Is all of this necessary? Should I wait to see how much my baby tries to get into things? Do I need to secure every single piece of furniture? The bookshelves are already anchored, but it seems more likely that she’d pull lighter pieces onto herself, like a side table or a dining chair (which obviously can’t be bolted down). We tend to watch her pretty closely, but I’m pretty amazed at how quickly she’s moving these days.
I’m curious to hear what others have done. I’m leaning towards the “wait and see” approach with a lot of this, but I’m already feeling the unspoken concern of my in-laws, so I hope I’m not being negligent.
Meg Murry says
Yes, you could baby proof indefinitely, and someone will always come up with another product to sell you. I think a huge part of it is whether baby is being cared for at home or is she at daycare most of the day and only at home a few hours, and how much time you need her to be able to be left on her own – do you only need a safe place to set her when you run to the bathroom for 5 minutes? The play pen will probably work. Do you need a safe place for her to play while you cook dinner or go down to the basement for laundry besides the playpen? You probably need more childproofing.
One thing I’ve discovered though is that my children take childproof devices as a personal challenge. They never cared about the electrical outlets until we put covers in them, and then they were intent on picking them out (apparently my older son is the first kid they’ve ever had at daycare who could get one out in the 20 seconds a teacher’s back was turned – I don’t think I can even get them out in 20 seconds. And the teachers weren’t lying, we watched him do it once.) Same with doorknob covers – the kids figured them out, but grandma couldn’t.
In our case, we found mitigating was better than childproof devices. For instance, put a lock on the cabinet under the sink. But move all the cleaning products that don’t absolutely need to be under the sink (for instance, keep dish soap and dishwasher soap there, everything else out) to a high shelf in the laundry room, bathroom, basement or linen closet. Same with putting outlet covers all over – you can do that, OR you can put up a gate to the rooms that you haven’t put on covers so the kid doesn’t go in there. We took the advice of some of our friends and made sure our kid’s room was as safe as possible, using all the childproofing devices we could find, and then put a gate on his room – so if he needed to play somewhere alone while we showered, that was the place.
One thing we overlooked until we saw our kid almost hanging out of the window – we have an older house, so the bottom of the window is only a foot high. We usually opened the top half of the windows, not bottom, but one day my son was able to actually open the bottom half of the windows and hang half out – scared the crud out of me. That day we installed sticks in the windows so that the bottom half wouldn’t open, only the top half. There are also devices you can put in so they can only open a small amount, if you wanted that. Most newer homes have windows that are much taller, so it isn’t so much of a concern, but it was for our older house.
rakma says
We did most of our baby proofing on the fly, as DD showed an interest in things, we baby proofed as needed. The cabinet with the cleaning supplies got latched first, the one with the tupperware we never got around to. We gated the stairs, but also taught her how to crawl/walk up and eventually down them, which means I’m less worried about stairs in other places.
We don’t have toilet latches (she’s more likely to close the lid than open in, and is never in a bathroom unattended) she can’t open the fridge herself, we haven’t done any doorknob covers… If you try to do everything you’ll drive yourself nuts, and end up living in a bubble wrapped house.
We did change the face plates on all of the outlets in her room to ones with sliding covers, and consider her room a fully baby proof area–no choking hazards, no cords she can reach, etc. But the rest of the house is less so, and I’m ok with that. Yes, she has pulled down a chair, and the noise more than anything scared her, so now she doesn’t pull at the chairs.
All this to say the wait and see approach largely worked for us.
Shayla says
This is exactly what we did, and how we went about it. I will say that with both kiddos I’ve left the tupperware cabinet (a lower cabinet kind of out of the busy kitchen footprint) purposefully not latched, as it’s permissible (& encouraged) to play in the tupperware at our house. It’s helped that there’s a designated place the kids can explore and go nuts in, tupperware strewn across the first floor of our house. Sometimes they care and sometimes they don’t, but when they do notice it it’s at least 20min of fun.
Lyssa says
We’ve done the same, and it’s worked pretty well. Our outlets are the fancy new ones that don’t need covers, and we’ve put latches on the cabinets, but that’s really all, other than just generally trying to be careful and keep an eye out. He didn’t learn how to open doors until pretty late, and there was really not much time between when he could open them and when he could understand not to, so it didn’t wind up a problem, and he never really showed interest in the toilet.
Most of what we did do was probably more for our own sake (it gets annoying to cook when you’re constantly trying to keep the kid out of the cabinet), really.
Philanthropy Girl says
We’ve done a bit like Meg said. We’ve babyproofed the living room and the nursery, and baby has free reign in those two areas. In the rest of the house, doors are shut or there is a baby gate. We have one permanent gate, and one portable gate, plus lots of outlet covers. All of my breakable items are either in a secured curio or out of reach. If the front door is open we have to keep the screen door locked to baby can’t push it open. Doors are shut to bedrooms (other than the nursery) and the bathroom and the gate prevents entry to the dining room, kitchen and den. We’ll eventually have to get something to go over door knobs, but until baby figures out how to turn knobs we’re in good shape. With no access to bath or kitchen, there hasn’t been any need to babyproof in those rooms. It’s been simple and affordable.
I know the toilet latches are important for a long time, if you allow baby access to the bathroom. Babies and tots are pretty top heavy, so if they reach into the toilet for something they can actually fall in.
mascot says
We did magnet locks on lower kitchen cabinets, hard-mounted a gate at the top of the stairs, and completely baby proofed his room (furniture strapped to the wall, tamper proof outlets). I liked having one completely safe place to stash him while I was in shower or whatever. We also enabled the door chimes on the alarm system.
NewMomAnon says
I have now baby-proofed three homes! The “necessity” of babyproofing changes as your kiddo gets more curious/mobile and taller. The babyproofing we did at 7 months old for a crawler is laughable now with a walking, persistent, independent toddler.
Outlet covers are annoying, but were an absolute must-have for my kiddo. EVERY single outlet that she can reach, and power strip covers for any exposed power strips. In our previous house, I latched every cabinet except for the ones with pots and pans or tupperware. Now, I have a couple latched cabinets with chemicals/medications (put these in upper cabinets if you can) and breakables. Fingers have been pinched in cabinet doors a few times, but somehow she seemed to learn that and now keeps her fingers out of the way when slamming them. I’m putting some latches on drawers she always empties for my own sanity, but I wouldn’t say it’s necessary; the contents are safe, just messy.
I was lukewarm on the gate at the top of the stairs – it was the best toy my kiddo could imagine, and therefore it broke a few times and she tumbled while playing (but never while climbing). Vigilance was the best prevention.
A lot of my babyproofing was and still is moving things to higher shelves/cabinets if they could break or be ingested. I replaced any furniture with sharp edges because the foam corners were way too much fun and never stayed on, so we had some serious head bonks.
The biggest babyproofing issue I experience now is that tupperware lids and books left on the floor are serious slipping hazards, so they need to be picked up ASAP even if we’re still playing.
In House Lobbyist says
After I almost killed myself stepping over a baby gate we decided to ditch it and teach her to crawl up the stairs and sit and scoot to come down. We shut all doors except the tv room and kitchen and would put her in the crib if we needed to run outside or take a shower. Outlet covers and moving cleaning supplies other than vinegar, baking soda and Castile soap is all we did for the second one.
JEB says
Thank you all so much for your responses! I really appreciate it.
Jen says
One thing we did is switch out the floor-level electrical sockets, all sockets in DD’s room, and all bathroom sockets (step stools!) for tamper-proof ones. We only used the socket covers for outlets in out of the way places. This substantially cut down on my level of annoyance with baby-proofing.
We also have a dog that we’ve used baby gates with since the baby was born, so we just added a few more. As she’s gotten older (she’s almost 2) we’ve had to put bumpers on corners that have come to be head-height and put locks on drawers she can reach and we don’t want her in.
I don’t think you have to go crazy all at once, but know that as they get bigger and smarter (I can move chairs! And climb them!) you’ll have to add more proofing.
Tunnel says
I thought I posted this yesterday, but now I don’t see it…I need more books for my almost 5 month old. Any ideas on where to get a good deal on a bundle, or a few books in general. I would also love to know your favorite titles/series/authors. Thanks!
lkl says
Powell’s has used as well as new, so it’s great for cheaper prices. My 6 month old loves anything with a sing-song or rhyme-y pattern — the Pout Pout Fish is a HUGE hit right now (apparently it’s a whole series, but we have only the first one), as is Dr. Seuss (The Foot Book) and Sandra Boynton (loves Hippos Go Berserk and Blue Hat Green Hat). He also loves Brown Bear Brown Bear and Panda Bear Panda Bear. All the Eric Carle ones are also great for just looking at by himself — very colorful. And anything with fish, generally, is a big hit with him (we have a counting book that’s all fish, or this baby Moby Dick book).
I’d love more recommendations of rhyming or chant-y books!
Meg Murry says
It wound up on the second page of the comments – go to the bottom and click on “newer comments”
Tunnel says
Thanks!
lkl says
My reply was eaten! Right now (about 6 months) our baby loves rhyming and sing-song books like Pout Pout Fish, Hippos Go Berserk, Dr. Seuss (the Foot Book), etc. Powells has used as well as new, so it’s a good spot! Thrift stores also.
lkl says
Brown Bear Brown Bear and Panda Bear Panda Bear are also big hits, if you read them in a singsongy way. And any Eric Carle book, really, for quiet playing on his own — loves the illustrations.
lkl says
Philanthropy Girl’s response jogged my memory — our baby is also loving Brown Bear Brown Bear and Panda Bear Panda Bear right now, really anything you sort of sing or chant. Any of the Eric Carle books are great for him to look at quietly by himself, too — great illustrations.
lkl says
Also loving Brown Bear Brown Bear, Panda Bear Panda Bear, and other Eric Carle books — also good for quiet “reading” on his own (i.e. smacking the book and waving it around).
lkl says
HA HA HA all my “eaten” replies evidently eventually came through. I guess I didn’t exactly say the same thing each time!
Philanthropy Girl says
We have the board book version with the little windows that slide open to reveal whatever is on the next page – the slides are tricky for little fingers, but baby knows there are more pictures and likes to try to open them. I like it because it doesn’t damage like pop-ups or lift-the-flap books.
Philanthropy Girl says
Anything by Matthew VanFleet has been very popular in our house – you can buy Lick! Munch! Sniff! in a boxed set pretty reasonably. He also has a fabulous alphabet book.
Philanthropy Baby’s other favorites are Farmyard Beat and Dancing Feet (both by Lindsey Craig/Marc Brown), any of the DK popup books, Ten Little Fish by Audrey Wood, and anything by Dr. Seuss (we found a set of about six Dr. Seuss early readers at BJs Wholesale Club). He also loves anything by Eric Carle – The Foolish Tortoise and The Very Hungry Caterpillar have been favorites for months. and at 12 months is just now getting into Brown Bear, Brown Bear – I think it’s the bright colors. Little Golden Books are wonderful and you can find whole sets of them on Amazon. Some are a big length for little ones – but my little guy will listen to The Boy with the Drum two or three times. He also likes anything with pictures of real things – so actual photographs instead of illustrations, particularly if they involve people or children/babies.
Most of my books came from retired elementary school teachers, either as hand-me-downs or at garage sales. Also library sales can be a great resource. Half.com is a favorite resource for used books, as is Half Priced Books (they will also buy your used books).
JJ says
My reply was eaten, too. I recommend the sets of Sandra Boynton books – Amazon sells them and I’m sure you can find them at Half Price Books and the like. Those are my favorite and are my tw0-year old’s favorite books to read at night.
mascot says
My reply was also eaten. We loved the series “That’s not my …” Cute, durable touch and feel books.
Boynton’s books are great- I can still recite The Belly Button Book and the Going to Bed book.
JJ says
I feel like Happy Hippo, Angry Duck is really life lessons book for adults.
Shayla says
The library! There’s usually no checkout limit with library books and you don’t have to feel guilty if kiddo doesn’t like them. Most librarians understand that kid/baby books will come back with some additional wear, so don’t worry about that.
CHJ says
Marshalls has a surprisingly good selection of board books in their kids section. I’ve found many books by Sandra Boynton, Dr. Seuss, and Eric Carle, along with random alphabet and animal books that DS loves.
In addition to the recommendations above, he also likes Little Blue Truck, Baby Bear Baby Bear What Do You See, and — not even kidding — this version of War and Peace that I got as a gift at my baby shower (he also likes their Les Miz):
http://www.amazon.com/Cozy-Classics-Peace-Jack-Wang/dp/1927018226
Anonymous says
Thanks to everyone for the advice and encouragement about letting my 12 month old cry it out. It took about 90 minutes (with me stopping in a few times, and then sitting in his room for 30 minutes while I read my book, then leaving and watching him on the monitor), but eventually he fell asleep on his own. Here’s to hoping I can get him down faster by next week!
D. Meagle says
Sorry, my name did not auto-populate the first time…
Westraye says
Any baby-wearers here? Specifically soft structured carriers? I use one everyday (BECO Gemini) to walk my toddler to daycare, but am now pregnant (very early) and wondering if it’s still safe to wear it (not seeing my doctor until next week) seeing as it sometimes slides up into the tummy area even if fastened around the hips. Wanted to know if others have confronted this issue before.
EB0220 says
Congrats on your pregnancy! I was wearing my 18 month old frequently when I got pregnant with #2. We used an Ergo Sport for hiking, walks, and travel. I know that many women are able to use their soft structured carrier through their pregnancies. If it’s very early and you aren’t showing, there shouldn’t be any issue since the baby is protected by your pelvis still. That being said, the SSC got very uncomfortable very quickly for me. I started using woven wraps instead of the SSC around the beginning of the 2nd trimester. There is definitely a learning curve and trying to figure it out with a 30 lb wrappee (+ pregnant belly) was challenging, but so worth it. Wraps are very supportive and infinitely flexible, so you can use carries that avoid your belly and hips. Now baby #2 is 1 and I use wraps probably 75% of the time (SSC for the other 25%).
Westraye says
Awesome thanks!
Anon says
Do you have any recommendations for wraps? This is what I am leaning towards but it’s harder to find reviews on them.
EB0220 says
Hi – is this OP (looking to wear a toddler)? If not, Anon, will you be wearing a baby or toddler?
Msj says
I had a good experience with a girasol wrap but the best is to find a local store that sells them or a local chapter of baby wearing international. There are also large Facebook groups dedicated to the subject. It’s definitely a passionate subculture and can get overwhelming quickly