Make My Life Easier Thursday: Plant Parent Set
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Like many looking for a new hobby in the After Times, I’ve leaned into Plant Parenthood — the plant population in my house has grown exponentially.
Since I’m also the parent to two kids, I need plants that are easy to care for and can take a little neglect. The Sill’s Plant Parent Set is perfect for aspiring plant parents looking to jump-start or build their plant collection.
You can choose three, five, or seven easy-to-care-for houseplants shipped right to your door! The plants come in nursery pots (plastic pots that you can pop into nicer, larger ones) and range from 2.5” to 6” in diameter so you can easily fit them into your current space.
I recently purchased a few plants from The Sill, and I’m always pleased by how carefully they’re wrapped and amazed at how good they look after a long and bumpy journey.
The Sill’s Plant Parent Set is $48 to $76 depending on how many plants you select. Want to pick your own plants a la carte? Check out the wide selection of live, faux, and dried plants.
Sales of note for 9.10.24
(See all of the latest workwear sales at Corporette!)
- Ann Taylor – 30% off your purchase
- Banana Republic Factory – Up to 50% off everything + extra 20% off
- Boden – 15% off new styles
- Eloquii – $29 and up select styles; up to 50% off everything else
- J.Crew – Up to 50% off wear-to-work styles; extra 30% off sale styles
- J.Crew Factory – 40-60% off everything; extra 60% off clearance
- Lands’ End – 30% off full-price styles
- Loft – Extra 40% off sale styles
- Talbots – BOGO 50% everything, includes markdowns
- Target – Car-seat trade-in event through 9/28 — bring in an old car seat to get a 20% discount on other baby/toddler stuff.
- Zappos – 26,000+ women’s sale items! (check out these reader-favorite workwear brands on sale, and some of our favorite kids’ shoe brands on sale)
Kid/Family Sales
- Carter’s – Birthday sale, 40-50% off & extra 20% off select styles
- Hanna Andersson – Up to 50% off all baby; up to 40% off all Halloween
- J.Crew Crewcuts – Extra 30% off sale styles
- Old Navy – 40% off everything
- Target – BOGO 25% off select haircare, up to 25% off floor care items; up to 30% off indoor furniture up to 20% off TVs
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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?
So I’m 28 weeks pregnant with (quite high risk) twins, and am having an absolutely terrible time being efficient at work. I know I should be working efficiently to get things in a good place in case I go into labor early or need to go on bed rest, but, in reality I’m highly distractable and reading way too many news articles online. Thoughts of the babies and my shooting-pains aching back are compounded by the fact I’m really not enjoying my job much these days – I have a newish boss who I just don’t connect well with, and it seems like all the fun parts of my job are being taken away, and more and more bureaucratic form writing is being added in (which, is not my strength, and which I then of course get chastised for not doing correctly. My admin used to help with such things, but she moved 9 months ago and HR is completely dragging their feet rehiring). I look at my to-do list for the week, and literally none of the items on the list look fun. I should probably give context and say that I’m early 40’s, these are my first and very long awaited babies, in mid-level management, and up to now I have had a really good career, generally enjoyed it, and had excellent relationships with my bosses and coworkers. Any advice on how to force myself to get some work done until I go on leave? And, how am I going to be able to leave my sweet babies to come back to this? (Or do I?)
How do I get my kid to stay in bed overnight? Dying over here, folks.
3.5 years old. Bedtime is a battle – we have ALL the routines. She gets in bed like a champ, tucked in, good night… perfection to that point. 15-30 mins later she’s yelling for us, yelling she has to go potty, she needs this or that, you name it. If she opens the door and we see her (we try very hard to not go in ourselves unless we see she’s being unsafe on the video camera), she wipes away the tears and then is smiling. The process of getting her back in to bed at that stage is a hot mess. The kid knows exactlyyyyy what she is doing. We’ve tried the “i don’t care if you’re in your bed, but you cannot leave your room” shtick, but last time we did that she played in her tent until about 11:30pm and we intervened finally. She has a Hatch light that is losing it’s effect by the day (she was so good with it for so long… sob). That’s problem #1.
#2 is that 1-2 nights per week she find her way to our room and climbs in around 2am. We’re either both so deeply asleep we don’t notice, or only one of us notices and just gives in because we’re exhausted, it’s 2am and if we suggest going back to her bed at that time she full on tantrums.
The household is riddled with transitions and stress. New preschool, new nanny, I’m in IVF protocol and a basket case 40% of the time (thanks, hormones, miscarriages and general related chaos). I know the regression must be linked to all of that in some way but ohmigod. HALP.
I swear I am a reasonably intelligent person, but FMLA befuddles me. My understanding is that it allows for 12 weeks of leave. I am due in late October and my doctor wrote on the medical authorization that I would be incapacitated for 6 weeks. Does that mean my employer will only approve me for 6 and not 12 weeks of FMLA? Should I ask the doctor to write 12 weeks instead?
DH and I are traveling out of town soon without the kids (wish it were a longer more fun trip but it’s for a family event) for a few days. We’ve never been a flight away from the kids before. The logistics are hard – kids’ are splitting time between 3 sitters because that’s all we could do. All have watched them before. Obviously will be leaving contact info, cash for food, etc but any tips on things I should think of that I’m not? Kids are 4.5 and 2.
I’m looking for a gut check please. I’m planning to go to a wedding in Denver in a week, flying there from an east coast city. It is a dear friend and I’m very excited to go and see her and other dear friends that live states away that I haven’t seen since before March 2020. The wedding is partly indoors, partly outdoors. There will be about 100 guests in attendance, most will be flying in, and everyone has to upload proof of vaccination (picture of your vax card) to be allowed to attend. I’m about 20 weeks pregnant. OB has no concerns about me attending. No kids allowed including fully vaxed kids. I’m planning to go alone. Husband (also fully vaccinated) and unvaccinated kid are staying home. Obviously there is some risk associated with me going because I could get a breakthrough infection and bring it home, but its not completely nuts for me to go or is it? (As a family we’ve been very cautious since the beginning of the pandemic and we are privileged to both work from home and have a fully vaccinated nanny. I wouldn’t be going to this wedding unless it was this person. )
What app or something do you guys use to coordinate logistics schedules with your partner? We both have varying work schedules where we have to be physically at work and we need to coordinate who does the drop off and pick up for both kids. Why we usually do this on Sunday, we don’t have a shared calendar or whatever that we confirm the schedule on.
We both have Android phones and Gmail, And often share calendar invites for other, bigger events but I’m wondering if there’s a better way.
Canadian friend –
Rain suit + fleece would be fine in the snow if you only get a week of snow a year (e.g. would be fine where I grew up in Vancouver). I would be skeptical if you are somewhere really cold like the prairies / Quebec etc. It is also more pieces for the kiddo to get on himself at daycare vs. snowsuit.
YES MEC toaster suits hold up well for hand me downs. They fit large – LO who is tallish wore the 18 MO size for his second winter and until actually almost 2.5. It looks great. We switched to a size 3 pants + coat toaster at ~2.5 YO (when we toilet trained) and it lasted him until end of snow season at 3.5*. The jacket looks great. The pants look a little worn at the knees, but this kid played hard through the entire pandemic and including twice daily wear outdoors at all day preschool last winter, some bike crashes and “lockdown Christmas” where we literally spent hours everyday at the park skating and sledding in sub zero temperatures because there was literally no where else to go! Money very well spent for our family when you consider cost per wear (vs. say the cute gap sweater I can wrangle him into one time). They also go on sale at the end of the season (about 30% off). For toddler sizes I liked the Sorel boots we had last winter. My sister always liked Kamik for her kids. Just getting into bigger sizes now so I guess I should get on that ASAP.
*where we live that basically means daily wear from November 1 – April.
PSA: A small NYU study indicates that if you get vaccinated while pregnant, you can pass some immunity to your newborn.
Burnout help needed. I am WFH for the foreseeable future and so is my husband. Work is insane. Because Zoom has replaced travel, I now have the “capacity” to handle three times as many projects. Where I used to have one major meeting at a client site a month, with prep time beforehand and no other work during the actual trip, I now have multiple such meetings per week, often on the same day as four or five smaller meetings. I have three times as many clients all demanding my exclusive attention and immediate turnarounds. We lost most of our support staff, so I am having to perform administrative functions myself. Our accounting department is incompetent. My boss is telling me to prioritize, then demanding that I drop everything for matters that are neither important nor time-critical. School is back in person, but the kid is struggling for a variety of reasons and every evening and weekend is basically nonstop he11. My husband is blaming the kid issues on my faulty parenting. When I suggest that maybe I should quit my job to focus on parenting he tells me to suck it up and deal. The pandemic has taken away all of my coping mechanisms–yoga, kickboxing, HIIT classes, practicing music in an empty house. I finally blew up yesterday and said something that was absolutely true but I shouldn’t have said out loud. I am at the breaking point.
Prompted by the rainy weather here-
For those with kids in elementary school and beyond- do you send your kids to school with and extra pair of shoes and socks on days when they wear their rain (or snow boots)? My fourth grader wore her running shoes to the bus stop today and they were soaked by the time she got on the bus, which I imagine is going to be uncomfortable. (Maybe? She seems to have a high tolerance for these things). So now I’m wondering if i ought to send her with extra shoes or if she should keep an extra pair at school? I feel like the last winter she was in school – 2019!- she said they just wore their boots all day. When I was that age we had cubbies for extra shoes, but our school isn’t letting kids have lockers this year. Just wondering what other folks do.
https://www.boppy.com/pages/loungerrecall
I have a 4 y/o in pre-k and 7 month old twins. DH wants to hire a PT nanny (only for the twins, to be clear). Do these exist? I think what we’re actually looking for is a mother’s helper? We need someone to watch the twins about four hours a day. If s/he could do some light housekeeping that would be a plus. Do I just look on care dot com and sitter city? Sorry, I know this is discussed a lot but in my area everyone does full time nanny/day care or stays home. I could ask some of the other pre-k moms I guess.
Does anyone have any products they actually like from Sensy?
I know, I know…mlms are awful etc., but I’d like to support a woman I know with a purchase. I’m thinking I’ll get some laundry detergent or multipurpose cleaner…that is the least expensive and also consumable. Any favorite scents? Anything that’s not too overwhelming (we use “free and clear” no scent detergent typically). I hate “stuff” so buying a “warmer” (??) for $$ seems ridiculous since it’ll end up in the trash.
No this is not a mother’s helper. Mother’s helper is the 14yr old in the neighborhood who does dishes/folds baby clothes or conversely plays with your kids while you cook dinner. You need a qualified pt nanny or babysitter. It’s unreasonable to expect housekeeping while caring for 2 babies.
Any tips from Moms who travel? Does it get easier with time?
I’m an engineer with a fairly hands-on job. It requires traveling to customer sites occasionally to test, support installations, etc. I’ve been in this role for about 10 years.
I returned from maternity leave after having my daughter in early 2020. Covid put a pause on travel then. As some projects of mine are picking up there are more travel demands coming my way. I made my first week long trip last week and have several more trips in the works.
It was extremely hard to be away from my daughter that long. My husband was strained as I am normally both pick-up and drop-off due to his work schedule & commute time. He was great about helping me video chat with her almost everyday but I still missed her so much.
I’m wondering if there are other resources that could help me feel more connected with other Moms who travel for work (ex. books or podcasts)? This website really helps me feel connected as I don’t know that many working moms in real life. Most of my coworkers (all guys) look forward to travel to get away from family.
Is this a sign I need to look at making a move to a role that doesn’t require travel? My current job is suppose to require less than 20% travel.