Makeup & Beauty Monday: D-Bronzi Anti-Pollution Bronzing Drops

Help me solve this dilemma. I enrolled my son for a FT preschool starting 8/3. A better one ended up having a spot (I just liked it a lot more and it is walking distance to us vs. a 15-20 minute drive, so totally worth the hassle), but it does a school year thing and starts on 9/1.. Unfortunately I already told my nanny the 8/3 date and she found another job starting on 8/3. Help me figure out what to do with my three year old son for a month (I also have an 8 year old daughter if it matters, but she’s doing camp). Here is what I thought of so far, what would you do/any better ideas?

1. Both my partner and I take a few weeks off, and we both take a one week vacation all together. This is not a huge issue for us with our jobs, totally doable, just slightly inconvenient (e.g., we may need to work weekends and stuff for a bit to catch up).
2. The preschool is OK with him starting with the previous class (they have a school-year calendar). I am not keen on this because it would mean him switching teachers/classmates (and he’s only 3 / never been to school before). They confirmed the classmates would be different and the teachers *May* be different.
3. Try to work out a nanny share for that month with the new family. My nanny is cool with this and it would be my first choice, but I can see the other family not wanting that (Idk if I would in their situation).
4. Find someone else for a month (e.g., a local college or high school student). May be hard but the advantage is then I have a back-up/date night sitter. But may be too confusing for him.

I’m in need of some of your excellent advice! I have to take my 17 month old on a 4.5 hour road trip, by myself (so nobody in the backseat to assist the LO with activities, food, etc.). I’m planning to start right when her usual morning nap is (usually an hour), plan to stop halfway for lunch/get wiggles out, and hopefully part of the remainder of the trip will be an afternoon nap (which she does not always take). What about the rest of the time? How do I keep her entertained/not fussy? Should I stop more often (may have to be the side of the road- most of the route is through forest and not towns). I was thinking about getting some sort of mount for a table to play Sesame Street but we’ve never done that (and the few times we’ve had the TV on with her around, it only keeps her focus/engagement for about 5 minute or less bursts, and then she’s off doing something else). I’ll bring toys but she’s big into throwing toys right now, then will fuss if she can’t reach them from her car seat. Help!

What’s popular for bookbags for elementary school boys?

My about to turn five year old is obsessed with octonauts. Any good octonauts toys or products I could get him for his bday? I was sort of unenthused by just searching Amazon – he’s not super into action figures.

I’m a regular poster and this will out me, hence the anon. This weekend DH and I took our just 2 year old to her first soccer practice. We have been very covid cautious and she hasn’t been around many other people other than us and our nanny. We tend to go to the playground when its empty, have been to the garden center once, the shoe store once but no other stores/places really. She started going to the splash park but mostly watches the other kids and doing a few outdoor activities in the last couple weeks. Soccer was about eight 2-3 year olds and their parents in a new location. She refused to participate. She would only be carried. She is perfectly capable of kicking a soccer ball and running between cones (we do it in the field by our house). But I think all the people caused her to shut down and she kept screaming pick me up, pick me up, and then tantrum-ing face down legs kicking in the grass if I or my husband tried to put her down and hold her hand instead of carry her. It didn’t help that she got carsick on the way there (she is frequently carsick so that’s just going to be part of the ordeal I think).

We talked about going to soccer before we went, explained there would be other kids, she watched kids play soccer in the park, and we practiced kicking the ball. What else can we do to make this a better experience for her? In our house / yard / the field she is very confident and happily runs away from us and does her own thing. She’s a daredevil and climbs and jumps off stuff when she is the only kid at the playground. She is starting preschool in the fall and it will be “at the door” drop off. Part of doing this was to get her more comfortable around other people. Obviously we’ll keep trying but is there a better way to approach it? Should we sit and let her watch practice rather than carry her through practice? I think her reaction is probably within the range of normal, but she was the only kid that had to be carried the entire 30 minute practice.

Combo feeding question – I have been mixing some formula in with bm because I don’t pump enough, but haven’t given LO a full bottle of formula, because I don’t really need to. He doesn’t seem to care about the taste of the 75% bm 25% formula mix.

He’s 10.5 months, so we could start introducing cow’s milk soon. Would you discontinue formula at that point, and do the same level of mixing with the bm? I know when kids are like, full formula people will mix formula and cow’s milk to get them used to the taste, but he doesn’t do full formula at all.

Our daycare teacher has reached out and offered to babysit for us. We’re thrilled — she is great and our kid loves her, and we’ve never used a baby sitter before (kid just turned 2). But now we can’t decide how it should go — should we have the babysitter come over just before bedtime, and help us put kid to bed, and then we go out to dinner? If so, she’ll just be sitting in our house for a while. Instead, should we have her come over in the afternoon to play with our kid, so we can go see a movie or something? We’re way overthinking this but let me know what y’all think.