Feeding Tuesday: Lollacup Sippy Cup
This post may contain affiliate links and CorporetteMoms may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Oooh: I’m excited to see that Nordstrom has these Lollicups — while on the hunt to see what else I like better than our old standard the Zoli, I had read good reviews of this one, but at the time it looked to be in such dwindling stock in Amazon that I wasn’t sure it was still being sold. So I’m psyched to see that Nordstrom has it in red, blue, green and pink! Another bonus: it’s Triple Points Day if you’re a Nordstrom cardholder (actually, you get Triple Points through 3/26) — great time to stock up on basics like this affordable blazer, these comfortable pumps, and (my favorite) all the kids’ shoes on sale. Pictured: lollaland ‘Lollacup’ Sippy Cup
(L-all)
Sales of note for 12.10
(See all of the latest workwear sales at Corporette!)
- Nordstrom – Beauty deals on skincare (ends 12/14) including La Mer, Kate Somerville, Dior, Sunday Riley, Dyson, and gift sets — the deals include reader favorite lip balms Dior Addict, NARS Afterglow, and Clinique’s Black Honey, as well as Too Faced mascara and Sunday Riley’s Good Genes.
- Ann Taylor – 40% off your purchase, up to 50% off outerwear
- Banana Republic Factory – 50-70% off everything + extra 20% off
- Eloquii – Extra 50% off all sale + extra 25% off 2+ items
- J.Crew – Up to 60% off everything, with 40% off their newest styles
- J.Crew Factory – 50% off everything + extra 25% off when you buy 3+ styles
- Macy’s – 15% off beauty, including Tarte, Clinique, Dior and gift sets
- Spanx – Lots of workwear on sale, some up to 70% off, plus free shipping on everything (and 20% off your first order)
- Talbots – 50% off everything + extra 25% off when you buy 3+ styles
And — here are some of our latest threadjacks of interest – working mom questions asked by the commenters!
- The concept of “backup care” is so stupid…
- I need tips on managing employees in BigLaw who have to leave for daycare pickup…
- I’m thinking of leaning out to spend more time with my family – how can I find the perfect job for that?
- I’m now a SAHM and my husband needs to step up…
- How can I change my thinking to better recognize some of my husband’s contributions as important, like organizing the shed?
- What are your tips to having a good weekend with kids, especially with little kids? Do you have a set routine or plan?
I am a fed and starting to plan for my maternity leave over the next few months. Has anyone received Advanced Sick Leave? I can cover a few weeks with my sick and annual leave, but hope to utilize this option too (it seems like President Obama supported this option last year in a Presidential Memo). My boss says that she has never signed-off on this and of course HR won’t get back to me. Just wondering if anyone has successfully secured this and what “strategy” you used.
Is there anything that you can do to help her on the work-front? Is there a loaner laptop that she can have for this flu/germ fest season so she can get some work done from home? Do you know of a back-up care service? Can you offer any type of flexibility to help her make up hours? Have you sat down with her and talked about how hard this is (sick season with a new baby), that it will get better and how can you two be a team on taking care of her short and long term projects?
Not everyone can afford a nanny. Not everyone has family nearby, and some jobs (her spouse’s) may not allow for paid sick-time.
I am now in the new-to-me position of managing an employee who is a new mom and who is taking a.Lot. of time off! Her baby is in a daycare and gets sick a ton of the time. She gets sick a lot also. I know! I’ve been there! And my kid is home with a nanny for precisely that reason – daycare germfest. I’m in the same position (sick me, sick kids, two working parents) but I have backup options lined up (nanny, backup nanny, grandma, husband shares the care load) and it may not be her fault that she doesn’t.
I know I should try and be understanding. And I am. (I saw another email this morning and only replied “hope you feel better.” I restrain my impulse to give advice.). But whenever she takes a sick day (for her or her child), someone else on my team has to fill in – it’s either me or one other person. Her job has a daily component, and a medium-term projects component, the daily component doesn’t take a lot of time but needs to be done. I feel that she should at the very least ask nicely (“I’m out today, can you take over x for me?”) as opposed to just stating it. I think she manages to catch up with the medium-term projects part, but I’m not monitoring closely enough to detect slippage. A coworker made a comment to me recently (“she is out sick for a day every week!”). My direct reports may think the same or say something to me. I don’t want to be perceived as partial to her. FWIW, she is very similar to me (ethnicity, woman, mom) and we are both dissimilar from the rest of the team so I was conscious of perceived bias while hiring her. But I told myself that white guys don’t think that way when they hire other white guys!
I don’t know what my question is. I guess I’m just waiting for this terrible flu season to blow over. Feel free to give me the smackdown and say that I need to be supportive and understanding as a working mom myself.
I thought I’d ask the hive-mom mind for advice on this situation — my cleaning lady is pregnant and due in June — we’ve chatted about her pregnancy briefly, she’s says she’s feeling great, etc. etc. We haven’t talked about what happens when she gets closer to her due date/has the baby.
She’s not through a service, and while she has an assistant, all my contacts are through her. I’ve been happy with the work, on the plus side, she’s very flexible with her schedule and hasn’t had a problem if I’ve had to reschedule due to a sick kid or travel. It’s probably a little more expensive than it would be with a service, and I debated shopping around for something cheaper, but that was right before she told me she was expecting and I realized the (possible) extra expense is worth the flexibility and that the money was going directly to her.
Anyway — advice for what to do/say about her pregnancy?
I don’t want to assume she’s not going to keep on, but I also don’t want to sound heartless like I expect her to continue on, esp as her pregnancy progresses. I was going to give her a bonus closer to the date regardless of what she does.
I think I know the answer to this, but I’m stuck in the what-ifs and could use some wise advice: my landlord asked me if I could terminate my lease at the end of May. At first, I thought that would be OK because I could move in with my parents for a few months, and maybe buy my own house. But then she shifted the deadline to end of April, and the process of getting loan approval got harder, so I’d end up living with my parents for 3-4 months at least.
On the one hand, they have a big house with a nice yard, and I wouldn’t have to maintain any of it; my kiddo would get some time with her grandparents; I would potentially get some help with kiddo. On the other hand, my commute would go from 5 minutes to 45 minutes (with kiddo in the car), her dad has indicated that he would want to dramatically shift the parenting time schedule because we would be so much farther away, and I would have to do two moves (including moving all my furniture into storage for 3-4 months).
The biggest issue – I don’t know if I can handle living with my parents for more than a few weeks. My mom tends toward “toxic” when she is tired, stressed, inconvenienced, scared, annoyed, etc. – which is guaranteed to happen with another adult and toddler moving into her home. My dad is a perpetual motion machine who doesn’t understand why anyone would want to be alone, and I’m now used to being alone a lot and kind of enjoy it.
The easiest answer would be to ask my landlord for a one or two year extension on the lease, and possibly offer to pay her a little more in rent to make up the difference between my rent and market rent. There are some downsides to my current situation (cost, trek to my car, distance to green space), but it would be so nice to just stay in place for a while longer. I’m feeling guilty because she already has another tenant lined up, though.
Alternatively, I could try to rent a house somewhere – that would mean a move, but I could do it by end of April and it would resolve several of the concerns I have with my current place. I have no idea whether the cost is comparable, and whether the commute would be comparable.
Between living with my folks, staying in place, and looking for a house rental – which would you do? I think I’m leaning toward staying in place, but part of me feels like that is the “easy way out” and I’m just too scared to move forward.
What do you all feed your toddlers? My 15 month old son will eat yogurt, fruit (raspberries, blueberries, banana, clementine, melon and apples) and tomatoes, but not really anything else. He eats yogurt and fruit every morning for breakfast, but I am really struggling with meal ideas for lunch and dinner. He shakes his head no or just doesn’t eat anything else that I put in front of him. What’s worked with your kids? Please help me brainstorm!
My 3.5 month old twins are doing pretty well with sleep. They go to bed easily and tend to sleep from 7:30ish to 3am. I know this isn’t bad in the scheme of things, but I’m still exhausted. They’ve made it to 5/5:30 a handful of times. I’d of course like this to be the norm. Any ideas of how to help them regularly sleep to this more reasonable hour, which I know they are capable of?
They seem to wake up when they Houdini an arm out of a sleep sack or when clearly very hungry. I’m thinking of getting them used to sleeping without arms swaddled, and we are working on increasing food intake.
Please help – I will be forever grateful if you can help me get an extra couple hours of sleep!
I want a new dress to wear to an outdoor graduation in late May. I want to be able to nurse in it. I do not want a maternity/nursing dress because nursing has been the miracle diet for me so maternity dresses look strange. Is this a thing that exists or do I need to resign myself to skirt + blouse rather than a dress? (I already have the one nursing dress from Isabella Oliver, which was my go-to for maternity clothes.)
For those living in a city, does the current state of the world make you re-consider where you live? Hearing about Paris, Brussels, and all the other world-wide attacks make me sick, but also make me worry that it’s only a matter of time before it comes stateside (again). Before children, I never would have considered leaving my major East coast city (I lived in DC during 9/11), but now I think about the possibilty of an attack and being separated from my family. My husband takes public transportation, and we (two kids and husband and I) are all spread out over our current city. Sometimes I wonder about moving back to the small Midwest city where my parents are just for some distance from a target geographic location. There’s not much back there for us, and leaving for fear seems ridiculous. But, I don’t know. Our city shuts down when it snows. I can’t imagine what would happen if people panicked and needed to get out for terror-related reasons.
I’m curious if anyone uses or likes these cups? We use straw sippy cups both because it is better for oral development (so I hear) but mostly because little one couldn’t get the hang of tipping traditional sippy cups initially.
But I have yet to find a straw cup – zoli, lollacup, munchkin, thinkbaby, etc that will not inexplicably shoot milk or water out of the straw at random times. Doesn’t seem to matter how tight or loose the cap is on or what we do with the cup, sometimes liquid will just come out of the straw. Does this happen to others? If not, what am I doing wrong? Are there brands where this doesn’t happen?
My 18 month old went from sweet, chill baby to a tantrum monster overnight! Tell me it wont last. Just lie to me. I think her canines are coming in and she has been sick, so I am really hoping this wont last. If it does, any advice on how to cope? Which books on toddler communication have been helpful? I have been trying to communicate with empathy and compassion, which has been working.
Thanks for all the great advice yesterday about toddler separation anxiety!
Need some reassurance from the hive even though I know logically everything will be fine. I am in Canada where we get a 12 month mat leave. My LO is 9 months and I am just done being home. I am thinking of going back to work earlier than the 12 month mark although I am feeling guilty just thinking about it. I know I have been so fortunate to get to take this amount of time off but I still feel guilty if I don’t use 100 percent of it. Most moms here do use the full 12 months. If I do go back early my husband will take a bit of pat leave so childcare isn’t an issue. I know I am being crazy but…. Help reassure me!!