Family Friday: Personalized Name Puzzle
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I feel like every kid needs a wooden name puzzle like this one — and it’s a great gift idea, too!
I think this is a particularly great gift for kids with uncommon names (Ignatius) or names with different spellings (Emilee), who might miss out on keychains, faux license plate signs, and other name decor. Alas, they can’t accommodate special characters, punctuation, or lower case letters.
This personalized wooden puzzle is $26.95 at Fat Brain Toys — and they even have a display stand for $4.95.
Sales of note for 6/30/25
(See all of the latest workwear sales at Corporette!)
- Nordstrom – 2,700+ new markdowns for women — and the Anniversary Sale preview has started!
- Ann Taylor – 40% off your purchase, including new arrivals + summer steals $39+
- Banana Republic Factory – July Fourth Event, 50-70% off everything + extra 20% off
- Eloquii – $19+ select styles + extra 50% off all sale
- J.Crew – End of season sale, extra 60% off sale styles + up to 40% off select cashmere
- J.Crew Factory – All-Star Sale, 40-70% off entire site and storewide and extra 60% off clearance
- M.M.LaFleur – Sitewide Sale, save 25% with code — 48 hours only! Try code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off
- Spanx – Free shipping on everything
- Talbots – 40% off entire purchase, includes all markdowns (ends 7/3)
I hope this is a fun Friday question. I recently got an unexpected promotion and raise, so combined with no more monthly car or student loan payments (happy tears over that one), DH and I will have more than $700 a month in our pockets. What would you do with extra money from a raise or what have you done?
DH and I max out our respective retirement savings, have healthy savings for future college expenses and emergency fund, and grandparents contribute to a 529, so while there’s always savings, it doesn’t feel imperative. I have a high yield savings account that I mentally earmark for travel and contribute about 150 a month to and have thought about bumping that up. I’ve also thought about raising our charitable contributions.
My one and only starts Kindergarten in 3 weeks. I can’t believe we’re here!
I want to start a few simple First day traditions. We do the sign photo and I’m ordering some mama & me bracelets for us to wear (she’s very into those types of things). Any other suggestions? I’m thinking an ice cream run after the first day…or maybe wait until after the first week.
We’re going to a resort in the Caribbean where it is common take a kind of open-air jitney into town from the resort (10 minute drive). We could instead call a taxi, which would be a normal car service, but they’re much more expensive and have to be arranged in advance. We have a 1 year old and a 6 year old with us this year. We would go into town probably 2-3 times to go to dinner. We will have a car seat for the baby but were not planning to bring anything for the 6 year old. Would you (a) avoid going into town this year and just eat at the resort, (b) take the jitney into town as normal, wearing the baby in the Ergo carrier, or (c) take a taxi service with the baby in a car seat and older kid using the regular seatbelt?
What goofy things have you/your kids said lately?
My son just asked me to help him find a giraffe artist in The Week Junior search and find. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise he had misread graffiti as giraffe. “Is it a giraffe that’s learned to paint?!!”
Highly recommend a weekly magazine for more reluctant readers. They do a good job with the puzzles and stories. T takes his to school for when he’s bored at afterschool club.
How old are your kids and when your family goes on an outing to the zoo, a museum, an amusement park, the playground etc. do the kids carry their own stuff or is mom the schlepper?
I know this has been discussed before – but need some feedback. DD is 7 and is an anxious perfectionist. We’ve had a full neuropsych eval done (for other reasons) and the psychologist emphasized that it’s important for DD to do things that she isn’t good at right away/don’t come easy to her bc it’s much easier to learn to deal with “failure” now than always being high achieving and “failing” later. DD played softball this past spring for the first time and loved it. Throughout the season she kept saying she wanted to do it again. She was not so happy when it switched from tball to coach pitch, but they way they did it in their division was if you don’t hit it from the coach, you can still use the tee. Now that she’s 7 she moves up to a division that is fully coach pitch and so kids strike out a lot more. And suddenly today she told me she doesn’t want to do softball in the fall. At the end of season party she was already asking to sign up again, asked for a softball charm for her charm bracelet for her bday. I could care less whether or not she plays softball. But I do care that the reason she doesn’t do softball is bc she doesn’t like it versus being scared of striking out. Thoughts?
Has anyone’s child had their adenoids out? Did it help? Our son (20 months) has ear tubes and unfortunately they haven’t helped much. He continually gets oozing ear infections and his ENT said at the last visit that adenoid removal would be the next step. He is a generally congested kid but an incredible sleeper and he doesn’t snore. We have had five surgeries on three kids in the past year and I am super over it, but obviously want to do the procedure if it will truly help him kick these ear infections
I walked into my 7-month-old’s new daycare yesterday and he was sleeping on his stomach. He didn’t roll that way, but was placed there. That isn’t allowed in our state. I told his teachers that wasn’t ok and am reaching out to the director as well, but I cannot decide what else to do (ie whether to pull him from the daycare). His teachers have otherwise been SO loving and hands-on in the three weeks he’s been there – literally zero red flags. The cribs are set up for safe sleep (no bumpers, stuffed animals, etc). This is a new location for an otherwise well-established and very highly recommended small local chain in the community (we were at another location before this and loved it) and both teachers are new to the center but not to childcare. It’s always the first recommendation to come up on local moms groups, etc. His teachers said they will put him on his back from now on, but they didn’t really seem to grasp that they HAVE to – it was like they were agreeing to a request instead. I’m so torn between this massive red flag and all the other signs of a loving, safe environment and don’t know what to do.
Also, I’m having intrusive thoughts after reading (on the state licensing page) about how “unaccustomed tummy sleepers” who are placed on their stomachs but usually sleep on their backs are at particularly high risk of SIDS. I know the absolute risk is low (thankfully), especially now that he’s over six months and can roll, but it’s not zero and it doesn’t make it ok. What would you do?