Accessory Tuesday: Envelope Card Case

I have this card case and love it. I use it as my primary wallet, and it’s so easy to slide in my pocket and go.

What do you do with your hair when swimming to prevent it from knotting? I don’t mean swimming laps but just horsing around with the kids in the pool. Nothing seems to work for me! Additionally, when do you take it out of whatever hairstyle you have it in? Do you wait for it to dry?

Y’all I am drawing a BLANK on introducing solids to DS #2. He turned 6 months on Saturday, and so far has had baby oatmeal and sweet potato puree. I know it’s a new food every 3 days for a while, but when are these given? 3 meals a day? Also, when the he** do they start eating more of what we eat? I am agnostic between purees and BLW (did a combo for DS #1). My babies are totally shrimpy until solids, and then they fill out and become even cuter, so this was a really fun time with DS #1 but I just…can’t seem to remember what I did last time.

Seeing our very young, smart, by-the-book ped today for the 6-month check-up but wanted to get some suggestions from those in the field. TIA!

My three-yr-old is really focused on whether not I am “happy.” She is really sensitive to my emotions — although I feel like I behave “normally,” I’m generally pretty balanced, I don’t yell, etc., I am concerned that I am somehow damaging her and giving her the idea that my happiness is dependent on her behavior. She is three — I would characterize my moods as occasionally “slightly exasperated” or “a little impatient” — like when she does normal toddler things like dump a bowl of crackers on the floor or, this morning, she was dawdling and refusing to put on her shoes, and I told her “I’m feeling a little impatient — can you please put on your shoes so we can go to school?” Then she says “Mom, are you happy? Why aren’t you happy? Are you happy now?” etc. I keep telling her that I love her, that even though I sometimes feel frustrated or impatient, I’m still happy and love being her mom, etc. I try to always recognize good behavior. But I feel like her concern/sensitivity about whether I am happy might be unusual, or a sign that I need to do something differently. I am an older first-time mother, so any advice would be appreciated!

Another class gift question: our kids (8 and 10) go to private school. Their mom has proposed splitting the cost of end of year teacher gifts, so there’s one gift from our collective family. In general, we have been trying to present more of a united front at their school, so I like the idea…but she’s proposing more than $1000 worth of gifts total(for two teachers and a coach). Maybe I’m out of step with private school norms but $300-400 gifts seems, honestly, pretty over the top to me. I checked and the school doesn’t have a policy on teacher gifts, and I don’t have anyone IRL I can ask.

She gave their teachers gift baskets at the beginning of the year (she said she thought it would help build positive relationships for our kids), and those were $150 each, which already seemed like a lot but at least when split that was a little more palatable than $500+. Last year we did separate end of year gifts – we had our kids make cards for their teachers and we got them Target gift cards for $50. Now I’m torn between worrying that we were the cheapskate family last year and feeling like surely what she’s proposing isn’t normal. Any thoughts? We’re in Atlanta.