Postpartum Tuesday: Nylon Biker Diaper Bag

I have to toot my own horn here for a minute. I did something and it happened so fast that I didn’t have time to be self-conscious about it in the moment. But I aggressively befriended another mom and got her phone number so we can go on playdates with our kids. We’re in jr. league together and she knows a couple people I know so it’s not like she’s a total stranger, but she just moved to town last year and I don’t know her that well. Both our husbands work on Sundays so I was like “we should hang out on Sunday! What is your phone number!” Yay. Hopefully she didn’t think it was weird.

Working Mom Struggles: To my knowledge, I am the only working mom with little kids at the AVP level in my company. It is isolating in the best of times. There are working parents with SAH spouses or working moms of older kids (high school). There is one other working mom in my department, who works part-time (20 hrs) so she can take the kids to school everyday and pick them up. Her kids span middle to early High. We had a bit of solidarity on the working mom front, but a comment yesterday made me feel attacked/shamed as a wife and mother. After talking about dry cleaning, it came up that my husband and I do our own laundry and our au pair does the kids. She quipped that she does all of her family’s laundry because she “wants them to feel taken care of and loved.” I think I stood there with my mouth awkwardly open for a moment.

This was followed later in the day by a conversation with my coworker (female, older, unpartnered with no kids) about working from home. We were talking about making sure our department always has someone around, and I said that I fully understand the department policy (someone in office during business hours, including 5pm on Friday when we are the last ones around). She commented that a lot of people like to work from home. I said that it can be nice and incredibly convenient but that I also enjoy my time at work and break from my kids. I immediately said that I love my kids but that I also like talking to adults and being engaged in the office. I guess I feel like I need to downplay my role as a mom frequently in my company.

I’m not really sure what I am looking for here. Just feeling a bit unsteady in my working mom role today.

Since our current daycare can’t/won’t make room for our younger kid, we are switching to a new daycare. How do we explain the change to our toddler (age 2.5)? We definitely don’t want to say that it is because of the baby (Big Sister is already not a huge fan), and much as we are angry at the daycare (they have dropped the ball over and over on this), we don’t want to trash-talk it in front of our toddler, especially while she is still attending. We also don’t want to tell her that the new daycare is better, since she probably won’t feel that way in the early weeks when she is adjusting. Thanks for any tips!

My cousin had a baby boy last night. I’d like to send a small gift. Budget is only $40-50. It’s their second boy, so I doubt they need a lot of baby stuff–maybe some new burp cloths, or a gift certificate they can use to buy diapers etc. They live in a pretty rural area, so I doubt there are many local options for takeout/food delivery, but I could buy some food basket/arrangement to be shipped. What would you do?

My nearly 3 year old had an awful day yesterday. Tantrum after tantrum from the time I picked him up until after midnight. In general, normal two/three y.o. stuff. But around 9 pm he had a total meltdown the likes of which I have never seen. Running around, throwing himself into walls, jumping on beds, slamming doors, hitting me. Screeching, screaming, crying. And I still have no idea what it was that set him off. I felt so bad for him.

Then, once he calmed down and went back to bed, he woke up crying that his leg hurt. He said it hurt up and down and all over. We did kisses, bandaid on the leg (no cuts or bruises), lotion on his leg. Each of those things would get him back to bed for half an hour or so. Finally I gave him some Tylenol and let him sleep in our bed from and he was still and slept from about 1:30 am to 5:30 am.

thoughts? i think he was legitimately in pain. Maybe growing pains? Is there anything to do to help with that?

iamsotired

Speaking of bags, I got the lo & sons seville for my birthday about six months ago and have been in love with it. However, the leather straps have horribly frayed! I’m not normally one to email customer service, but for the cost of this bag and the fact it’s only been 6 months I thought I’d give it a shot. They were VERY polite and are going to replace the bag with no hassle to me. I was very impressed with their customer service, and this has me hopeful that this was a defect or from a bad batch, and not their usual quality.