Splurge or Save Thursday: Leather Blazer
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Instead of a leather jacket for spring, I like the idea of a chic leather blazer.
This relaxed leather blazer costs less than many faux versions. Made of top grain sheep leather, its classic and timeless silhouette will look fresh for years to come. Wear it now in place of a traditional suit jacket and later as a spring jacket.
Quince’s leather blazer is $250 and comes in black or brown. It’s available in sizes XS-XXL.
Sales of note for 3/2:
(See all of the latest workwear sales at Corporette!)
- Ann Taylor – 30% off the Weekend Collection + extra 30% off sale + 30% off your purchase with extra 15% off $200+
- Banana Republic Factory – 40% off + extra 20% off
- Brooks Brothers – Up to 70% off clearance + 25% off select jewelry
- Express – 30%-70% off everything + $69 all Editor pants, jeans, and chinos
- J.Crew Factory – Up to 60% off everything + extra 70% off clearance + 40%-50% off the Weekend Shop
- Lo & Sons – End of winter sale, up to 50% off — reader favorites include this laptop tote, this backpack, and this crossbody
- M.M.LaFleur – Try code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off
- Nordstrom – 4,000 new markdowns for women!
- Talbots – 25% off entire purchase
In search of over ear headphones for my 4 & 6 year olds to use when plugged into Yotos or tablets on planes (or other very loud environments). We have the Onanoff buddyphones wirecutter pick, but my kids complain that they are too quiet and can’t hear anything when on a plane and they’re right. I’m not sure whether it’s the volume limit or the lack of noise cancelling features. I know nothing about sound tech.
Do we need a pair with noise cancelling qualities or just no volume limit or both? Anything that you like for your elementary aged kids? They need to be able to be plugged in for listening because we are not going to be able to stay on top of charging headphones regularly – it’s hard enough to keep the Yotos and tablets charged while traveling. Bluetooth would be fine if the cable works when the headphones aren’t charged.
I always get amazing kids book recommendations here, hoping to get some help…
I’m looking for a read-aloud chapter book that will be interesting for my 9yo, 8yo, *AND* my 3yo (who is almost 4). I want to combine our nightly read-alouds — we’ve been doing them separately and it’s just not working logistically.
And now let me up the difficulty…
1) I’ve already done much of the low-hanging fruit with my big kids. All of Beverly Cleary, E.B. White, Popper’s Penguins, Dory, Ivy and Bean, Roald Dahl, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Catwings. They say they don’t want to do them again (sigh).
2) I know many of you here have super gifted kids who were chuckling at the wordplay in Phantom Tollbooth at the age of 2. My 3yo is not like that! She’s just a regular kid who is only just to the point of not needing pictures to follow along. Her fave chapter books are the horrible “Rainbow Fairies” books (which my older kids, understandably, cannot stand). My goal right now is to keep her interested and excited during reading time, not to expose her to advanced vocabulary by reading The Secret Garden or the Hobbit. Those will come soon enough, but not yet.
For those of you who’ve done IVF, how did you explain to your boss that you don’t know which day you’re taking off for the egg retrieval? Maybe I’m overthinking this but I can’t figure out how to explain the situation without sharing the IVF part.
For other medical procedures that have me unavailable all day I know the exact date in advance so it’s no big deal. When I take an unexpected sick day I usually check email periodically. In this case the FET is happening at a spectacularly bad time work-wise and my absence will make my colleagues’ job harder. I had to warn my boss that I can’t travel for a few weeks so I can’t pretend this is an unexpected illness.
How much do you care about your kids’ grades? And more specifically, how much do you push your kids?
Kid 1 is in 7th grade and a straight A (often A+, esp in STEM) student. She’s a bright kid but really, she is highly organized and responsible always does her homework, all recommended practice tests, extra credit offered, etc. Even back in elem school she was always a “fast finisher” who scored very highly on all her tests with absolutely no assistance from anyone at home. Her best friend is similarly internally motivated and I think they just have this general vibe of “doing well in school is important.”
Kid 2 is in 5th grade and…not at all like her big sister. She’s young for her grade, has mild adhd and has been tested as gifted. She’s a B student. She will often struggle to understand concepts as taught and will often end up with a 75% on tests because she just…doesn’t understand how to respond in the desired format (this shows up a lot in rubric-style assessments where they literally spell out what they want to see and she does it her own way and loses points). When we work with her at home on concepts she absolutely gets it. Her state level testing is fine (but not 99% like her older sister). She is also guilty of not paying attention because she “totally understands” and yet…does not entirely understand.
In life, they will both turn out great in their own ways. My parents never pushed me or my siblings on grades. I ended up being a straight A student and went to fancy college. My sister was really bright but never did homework and graduated with a B average and a 1250 on her SATs that she took once. She ended up going to our flagship state school after a year at a slightly less competitive college. My brother skipped class all the time in high school, dropped out, got his GED and at 29 owns multiple car repair shops and is a very well respected local business owner. My parents love us all the same, and we all get along very well as adults. I think my parents gave my brother some money for a downpayment on property in lieu of college money but am not 100% sure (and it doesn’t matter). Brother owns a duplex and lives in half and rents the other half and also property manages another duplex on his block.
If you were my Kid 2, would you prefer your parents pushed you more/got you more support so you had better grades in school? Or would you prefer the approach my parents took? Or is there a good Option 3 in the mix? I really, really don’t care if Kid 2 gets all As. I want her to be happy. But I also think there might be a chance that she would be happier with better grades in the long run (eg. when she gets to middle/high school she’ll have good study habits and school won’t feel hard).
DH was an only child but a lot like my Kid 2. His parents sent him to Fancy Private School where he had the same problems but the school was so elite that a B average still got him into Fancy College.
Would you rather work 35 hours a week and have plenty of time to manage house and be with your kids OR work 45-50 hours a week so you can afford to live in the richer part of town with better schools?
I think I prefer the former, but I haven’t actually gotten to that part of parenting yet (currently pregnant, first is 2). With my current career trajectory, it looks like that’s the trade off I’m headed for.
Inspired by the post on the positive moments of parenting, what cute or funny things have your kids done recently?
This morning walking my 2 year old to daycare I asked him to come walk on the pavement instead of the icy snow mound he was trying to climb and he told me: “I know what I doing Mommy!”
Help me navigate this issue with my husband? I have an activity planned this weekend with the mom of one of my daughter’s friends for a little while, and I was hoping to enjoy this, both for exercise and to deepen the friendship. My husband just found out he’s working that day, so I was going to ask my in-laws to watch our kid but the other mom offered to have her husband watch both her daughter and mine while we competed. This sounded fine to me but husband is against it since he’s never met this guy. I’m frustrated because I’ve met the husband multiple times, when I arrange play dates for my daughter – carving pumpkins, going trick or treating, birthday parties, which my husband hasn’t attended (not that I’ve asked him to! I doubt our husbands would make great friends). I’m also mad because husband is very unhappy at work and has been working long hours and is grumpy and basically checks out as soon as he gets home, so while I’d like to be mindful of his legitimate concerns and this is probably misplaced anger about other stuff, I also thinks he’s blowing this out of proportion. If it makes a difference, daughter is almost five.
Oof I feel so bad for Melinda French Gates. Maybe that’s a silly thing to say because she’s a billionaire but I just can’t imagine being in her position right now, learning about all these things from the files. The cheating is one thing, I’m sure she had an awareness he wasn’t faithful but all this stuff about secretly slipping her antibiotics for the STIs he contracted? Just absolute scum of the earth behavior and has to be insanely hurtful for her to learn about even though they’re long since divorced.
I’d like to shout out to this board (and myself) to helping me get to a better place in my parenting. I joke often that with my 2 kids, at least one will wake up grumpy on a school day. Today it was my younger one (5) because he thought we were having donuts for breakfast (which we are….tomorrow), and didn’t want to eat what was planned. I stayed calm as he cried and yelled, but also made sure we moved through the routine. When I offered him options, he declined (“FINE I’M NOT GONNA EAT THEN!”), and I stayed firm (That’s fine, those are your options, otherwise you can eat at school.”). Finally, when it was time to eat, he asked for the other option, but it was too late for me to get that ready…but then he asked for a different option that was readily available, and I said “Ok sure” – and then we went on to have a fine morning.
This has taken a LOT of patience on my part to get to this (firm but willing to be reasonably flexible)! Also proud that he problem solved.
Someone asked about house swaps yesterday but I didn’t see it in time. We use Home Exchange and love it. 9/10 of our exchanges have been A+++ and the final one wasn’t catastrophic, they just left the house a bit mucky. We’ve done true swap, but the rest were having people stay for points whilst we were elsewhere. We’ve been able to take much longer/nicer trips than we could have if we had to stump up for a hotel, it doesn’t have the impact on rental markets that Airbnbs do, and it is just such a nice vibe?
Do you feel like you have anyone in your life who you can talk to in person about the positive parts of motherhood? I participate in another online community (just on R3ddit) that has been getting complaints for being consistently negative all the time. I wasn’t part of the thread that started it but apparently women who ever did have something positive to say or report (like their babies finally sleeping well) were getting consistently attacked right away. It made me think about how I feel like I have a lot of support for when things are going badly, but literally only one friend I could call to enjoy a success with.
Seeking vacation inspiration for the last week of July, coming from the Chicago area. We have a few other bigger trips planned this year, so hoping to keep the budget reasonable and probably stay in the US or Canada.
I don’t like heat and humidity so don’t really want to head south. We go to Maine every summer so not there. Potentially open to other places in New England, although I’ve done a lot of travel in that region. People in our area typically go to northern Wisconsin or Michigan for low key vacations but I haven’t loved our trips there, and it’s also a pretty long drive so not necessarily the easiest vacation (I’m one of those people who would rather fly if the drive is going to be more than a couple hours). I was thinking about Seattle or Victoria Canada? Or maybe Montreal or Quebec City? Any thoughts on these or other ideas? We have one kid who’s 8.
If your school uses Lifetouch for school photos, they have a 50% off code plus free shipping right now through 2/8 to order prints – FEBPRINT.