Splurge or Save Thursday: Jamie Essential Cashmere Travel Wrap

Post-daycare nap question. I pick up LO (13 months) around 4:30/5, and most days, she falls asleep in the car on the way home or when we nurse first thing at home. I’ve been letting her stay asleep (either staying in the car with her or on me), but then there’s a short wake time until bed (7:30ish). I guess I’m asking if this is normal, if I should be trying to keep her awake/wake her up, and/or if it makes sense to try to drop that nursing session and just nurse before bed? I’ve normally not been one for much of a baby schedule but I’m feeling the evening crunch.

Ugh, this. Like you, I am the only non-white member of my DH’s white midwestern family. I played nice with casually bigoted comments or jokes for years (one thanksgiving while serving the turkey, my BIL joked that my DH preferred “dark meat”– oh come on, it’s just a joke!) and would either laugh it off or excuse myself or gently correct. I never tried to put a stop to it until my little brother came out as gay. Then, any time my FIL would start to tell a joke (many of which, I had learned over the years, were homophobic or transphobic) I would stop him and say, “wait, is the punchline of this joke that the person is gay? Because I don’t find that funny.” It was amazing how I was able to stand up for my brother (who, mind you, was several states away and had only met them maybe once!) but not for myself.

I think becoming a parent changes you in so many ways, and for me one of those ways is the level of supposedly lighthearted casually racist $#!+ I’m willing to put up with. Our kids are biracial, bicultural, and bilingual. My in-laws find them anomalous at best and love to marvel about how they could “use” my kids to talk to their Mexican house cleaner (actually, your house cleaner is Salvadoran. It’s an entirely different country than Mexico. And her English is great so it’s strange that you can’t understand her). They are kind to the kids but they are absolutely objectified and subtly demeaned and it is painful for me to know that they are walking through this life with their intimate relations normalizing that– even though it would SHOCK my in-laws to hear that these comments and behaviors are rooted in racism.

I have it lucky, we live several states away and only see them once or twice a year (or zero times, this pandemic year) and because my DH is so fundamentally different from his family, he doesn’t have much of a relationship with them beyond these annual visits. They send gifts on birthdays and we video chat to say thank you and tell grandma about what you’re learning in school, etc. I don’t know what will happen when my kids get older and can see what grandma posts on FB, or their phone conversations graduate to actual conversations with grandpa. We have not cut them out, but we take advantage of the physical distance.

I’m sorry you’re going through this too, OP.

How do you approach discussing family mental illness with children in an age appropriate way, especially if the illness is stigmatized? Several generations on my dad’s side of the family w similar issues. I deal with this issue. Kid is exhibiting signs of same issue. My mother dealt with it through complete denial that there was any kind of a problem and shutting down and punishing me when I told her I needed help. I don’t want to do that, obviously. Child is in a lower elementary school grade and has an age appropriate lack of judgement re: what information you can tell people.

What are your everyday drinking vessels with elementary school aged kids? DH still has heavy glassware from his bachelor days, and I’m tired of the random assortment of sippy cups and the like in my cupboard, so I’d like to get something that looks nice and that everyone can use but isn’t too precious.

Anyone used the Freemie hands free breast pump? If so, thoughts? I am preparing for baby #2’s arrival and looking at my covered breast pump options. Last time I got the Spectra 2 (the pink electrical/plug in one). I liked the suction/power, but I didn’t like having to be attached to an electrical outlet. I would happy pay a supplemental fee for the battery operated/rechargeable blue Spectra 1, but it is not offered by my insurance. Recommendations welcome and thank you in advance!

MOM HACK: My 7 y/o 1st grader is a pretty good reader. She’s big into Magic Treehouse books, but still reading them mostly out loud. Problem is, these books and others at this level have words that she is able to sound out, but are beyond her vocabulary level (she recently read on on the revolutionary war and another on Egypt (“what’s a pharaoh?”). She is perfectly content to sit in her room and read but will EITHER come out 1000 times asking us what a word means/how to pronounce it or she will just gloss over the word and then not really comprehend the meaning of the sentence.

Surely, there must be an app for this, right? I googled around.

Ladies, I GOT HER A DICTIONARY and taught her how to use it. A hardcover (seemingly 600lb) children’s dictionary. And it warms my little nerd heart to see her reading it to learn new words. And now she can look up a word, mostly get the pronunciation, and also read what it means and NOT BOTHER ME.

We have a large meeting (virtual) coming up that will have representatives from several healthcare facilities/agencies in our area (potentially 100) and it will have been one year since we last met as a large group (that time in person). Several of the facilities and agencies involved have lost healthcare workers in the past year. I’d like to take a moment at the end of the meeting to acknowledge that, but a moment of silence in a virtual meeting seems awkward (what if someone is unmuted and shuffling papers?) so I thought of having the appropriate member of leadership say a few words followed by a “moment of remembrance” with soft instrumental music?
At the national memorial event, they had someone sing the Rufus Wainwright hallelujah. 1:30 of a string version of that, maybe, since it would tie in with the choices made for the national event? Or too close to being religious? Would love suggestions or experiences if anyone you work with has done anything similar. It’s so difficult, with the lack of a defined “one year” point.