Budget Thursday: Printed Ruched Crisscross Dress
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This is a cute and flattering dress from NY Collection, available at Macy’s. I like a lot of elements of this dress — the unique neckline (the website description calls it “sweetheart,” though I don’t necessarily agree), the ruching, and the fun pattern. I like that the pattern is called “Aqua Partydot,” and it seems pretty apt. I can picture playing up the pink with a fun pair of pink shoes, or toning down the pattern by throwing a black blazer on top. This dress is available in sizes 1X–3X and is currently on sale for $34. The same print can be found on a somewhat similar NY Collection dress that comes in sizes S–XL and is on sale for $47. Printed Ruched Crisscross Dress
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Sales of note for 3/15/25
(See all of the latest workwear sales at Corporette!)
- Nordstrom – Spring sale, up to 50% off
- Ann Taylor – 40% off everything + free shipping
- Banana Republic Factory – 40% off everything + 20% off
- Eloquii – 50% off select styles + extra 50% off sale
- J.Crew – Extra 30% off women’s styles + spring break styles on sale
- J.Crew Factory – 40% off everything + extra 20% off 3 styles + 50% off clearance
- M.M.LaFleur – Friends and family sale, 20% off with code; use code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off
- Spanx – Lots of workwear on sale, some up to 70% off
- Talbots – 40% off 1 item + 30% off everything else (includes markdowns, already 25% off)
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?
A comment above made me think of this — I know a lot of people on here are Janet Lansbury fans and I absolutely count myself among them. I think her approach is awesome. But she is just so *humorless.* Her podcasts, her blog — they always leave me vaguely sad and irritated, even though I also find them useful. Is this just me?
Has anyone ever had their nanny stay overnight? How did you negotiate/calculate an overnight rate? We have one toddler who goes to sleep by 7 PM. I’m comfortable with paying some overtime but I also can’t comprehend (or really afford) paying hourly overtime simply for her to sleep at our house/watch Netflix for the 12 hours while toddler is asleep.
Random poll for those that don’t mind participating – how often do you and your husband (or partner) garden?
I’ll go first – typically 1-2x week. I’m pregnant and with all the fun hormones, right now it’s more like 2x-4x, this is an anomaly though even for pre-kids. Low point post-partum was 1x every 10 days or so, this is when baby was <4 months old. Husband says he's happy both ways, but I always wonder what's normal.
For those of you with part-time nannies, how do you calculate their rate? We are considering hiring a part-time nanny — afterschool hours– for when our oldest starts Kinder in the fall. I am imagining that the nanny would be home for school bus drop-off around 3pm and stay until 6 or so, 5 days per week, totaling 15 hours per week. We have a 2-year old in full-day daycare, so might also have her pick him up and have both kids for that timeframe. What is the best comparator for setting a rate? We pay our babysitters around 15$ per hour (more for an adult) to give you a sense of what the market is like here. Is that the rate to use? More? Less? Or is there some other comparator I can use?
My 3 year old is such a jerk. I’m not really asking for anything specific here, other than perhaps to weigh in re: if she/we need therapy or just to hang on. As background, I have 2 other kids (one older, one younger) and what I’m going through with my middle is just so far from either of them–and has been since she was born. My other kids are annoying and trying and difficult at times, but always within the level of “able to manage.” I’ve on more than one occasion considered sending this one to live with my mom for a week just to…breathe.
She has always been a crap sleeper, but not just the lack of sleep–when she’s not sleeping, she screams/shrieks/yells. It’s not *quite* a tantrum, but very close. She’s only 75% awake/rational (and that’s 3-year-old rational, not Real Human Rational) but she’ll do things like wake up at 3am, start yelling for us until someone gets her (she can get out of bed, but she doesn’t), then complain-cry for HOURS. Yesterday at 3am she was up scream-shouting that her foot hurt. We took her to the bathroom and brought her to our room to snuggle in/shut her up. She’s in bed between me and DH. “MY FOOOOOT HURTSSSS” “Here, let me kiss it better.” “NO! (kicks me in the face)” “Would you like me to rub it?” “NO! MY FOOT HURTS! (top of lungs screaming)” “That sounds hard. Come snuggle in.” “MY FOOT HURTS (top of lungs screaming).” “I love you, how can I help?” “MY FOOT HURTS top of lungs screaming”. This went on for nearly an hour. At some point our 1 year old woke up crying so I went to deal with her and let the screaming continue (now it was “MY FOOT HURTS. I WANT MAMA.”). I finally get back. DH has tried giving her water, food, snuggles, putting her back into her own bed, ignoring her, and a million other things.
During the day, she is Sass Factor 10 and has similar behavior. She will yell louder when she gets an answer she doesn’t like. She has a nasty temper. (Example: 11:50am: “(whining) Mom, I’m hungryyyyyyyyyy” “oh, good. It’s lunch time.” “NO! I WANT A SNACKKKKY.” “I hear you that you want a snack. You can have a snack after lunch! Let’s go get lunch.” “NO! I WANT A SNACKKKKY.” “It’s lunch time. Let’s go get lunch. Do you want to help make it?” “NO! (stomps foot, throws toy she is holding, etc) I WANT A SNACKYYY. (hits me)”
When the entire rest of the house is asleep but she is up, she yells at the top of her lungs. We ask her to use her quiet voice, her small voice, her inside voice, and it just does not go through.
I’ve asked the doctor about this before–but there’s no specific behavior. Just “doesn’t have any kind of sense of respect for me or DH and does what she g-damn pleases.” We don’t spoil her. We try hard to give her solo attention (FWIW she was like this since she was an infant–she was a nonstop screamer and was just…never happy…despite what we did. She didn’t have any physical issues). She acts like a normal person at daycare, and they laugh at me when I describe what she does at home saying she must have an evil twin.
We’ve had her hearing checked because she straight up doesn’t listen sometimes in a way that made me think she couldn’t hear us. She’ll ask a question, we’ll answer, and she’ll just ask it again and again. “I want to go outside.” “Okay, let’s get your boots.” “I want to go outside.” “Okay, let’s go! Find your boots” “I WANT TO GO OUTSIDE.” “[name], did you hear what I just said? Let’s get your boots! (standing up)” “I WANT TO GO OUTSIDE!!!!!!!!”
40% of the time, she’s a sweet girl. But she has this dark side that is just…nasty. My other kids have such a different temperament that I can’t tease out if Some Kids Are Jerks Until They Are Older or if there’s something to be concerned about here. An additional factor is that she’s apparently extremely off the charts intelligent per her daycare teachers and physician. We haven’t tested her on any kind of scale, but part of me wonders if she’s just Grade A screwing with us.
Does anyone have a “daddy purse” that is not a diaper bag that they like? Prepping my husband for a trip with our 4 and 7 year old and thinking of all the stuff I carry normally in my purse that my husband won’t have. A small backpack? Crossbody? Hmmn.
The comment above about kids who hate mornings got me wondering… Do most people not have to wake their kids up to go to daycare? Is that just because you have magically short commutes?
We have to be out the door at 7:15 so wake our 2-year-old up at 6:50. On a rare occasion she’ll already be awake, but usually it’s a struggle to get her awake, dressed and downstairs, though she generally perks up at breakfast. Bedtime is between 6 and 6:30 (depending on daycare naps) and she falls asleep right away but I really can’t see any way to get her more than 12.5 hours of sleep on a weeknight.
I need sleep advice. My almost 4 year old developed some really difficult sleep habits right around the time she turned three. We have perpetuated the problem, I’m sure, after trying for months to teach her good sleep habits and getting nowhere. She will not stay in her room. It takes her forever to fall asleep and we have to lay with her until she does. She usually comes to our bed in the middle of the night. If not, she is definitely up and in our room by 5:30. I have tried everything short of locking her in her room at night, which I do not want to do. We made very small incremental steps over a period of months prior to the holidays and then our holiday traveling set us back to square one. I finally decided that this is a phase and she will outgrow it and not be sleeping with us forever. The problem now is that while her sleeping in our bed does not effect me, it does keep my husband awake. After three nights in a row of her being in a bed most of the night, he tells me this morning that we need to start sleep training her again. Taking her back to her bed every time, not laying with her until she falls asleep, etc. I totally agree in theory but I know how much work it took to try and do this before the holidays and I’m not ready to go back there again. I’m getting just enough rest to function right now as it is. Telling husband to go sleep upstairs when she keeps him up doesn’t seem like a solution either.
Any anecdotes or tips from those who have been there would be greatly appreciated. We’ve tried night lights, stuffed animals, sound and light machines, ok to wake clock, bribes with candy, bribes with toys, silently walking her back to bed every time she gets up, completely ignoring her when she leaves her bedroom, locking our bedroom door, making her a separate place to sleep on the floor of our bedroom.
My soon-to-be-ex “forgot” about our son’s parent-teacher conference this morning. He claimed that he got locked out of his phone last week and lost his calendar. I’m not sure that’s even a thing, but even if it was true, it does not make it ok. Argh!
Also, in the course of asking whether he was attending the parent-teacher conference, he mentioned that his school (he is an elem. school principal) has an event tomorrow night and do I think the kids want to go. (I have the kids tomorrow — well all the time except during the day every other Saturday and Sunday.) He has not called them or attempted any contact with the kids since he dropped them off on Sunday afternoon on the 10th. We agreed to at least 48 hours’ notice for schedule changes. The event is from 5:30-7:30 tomorrow night and bumps up against their bedtime (it is easily 30 minutes away). Tell me I’m not a giant jerk for sticking to my boundary — telling him that I need 48 hours’ notice for a schedule change?
My very verbal 19 month old has been smacking himself in the head in frustration and it’s so unsettling. Any book recs for toddler feelings? We have Mr Panda’s Feelings but Mr Panda is annoying!
He’s a sensitive little soul – my husband bumped his head 3 days ago and my son is still trying to kiss and cuddle it better. Reading ‘Are you my mother?’ is an emotional experience – he whimpers when the baby bird is calling for his mother and says talks about them cuddling and being happy at the end so I’m hoping books might help.
Guys, my almost 4 year old is a huge jerk, and I need some help figuring out some strategies for me and DH to cope/manage her.
First issue is just general meanness – lately she has been just flat out rude and telling us she doesn’t like us, that we’re mean, that the other parent is her favorite, that she doesn’t want a particular parent to talk to her/be around her. Our current strategy is to mostly ignore, and/or trade off (i.e., give in – she doesn’t want mom to brush teeth, fine, dad can do it), and occasionally point out that she’s been unkind. Any other tips?
Second issue has less to do with her age, but mornings are roooooooooough. She will happily pop out of bed on a weekend morning because weekends mean screentime. But weekdays are… a nightmare. She’s always been a late sleeper. On weekdays we often have to wake her up at 7:30. Then she lays in bed for 30 minutes, dozing/acclimating. We have taken a soft approach to this so far and have let her do this. Then when we get her out of bed (at around 8/8:15), it’s a FIGHT to put clothes on her. She refuses to dress herself, but she’ll rip off all the clothes that we put on her. Then we try to get food in her – some days we run out of time to eat breakfast at home and she needs to eat cereal in the stroller because we try to get out the door by 8:30. The ENTIRE MORNING is just emotional AF. She’s screaming / crying, we’re getting frustrated, etc. Our working theory is that she wakes up with very low blood sugar, but we can’t force feed her. But…. this is untenable. Any suggestions?
Does anyone else have a toddler that is terrified of strangers? I know about separation anxiety, but I’m talking about fear of strangers even when her parents are around (and possibly even when we’re holding her). From the time she was a newborn, people would comment on what a solemn and serious baby she was, because she would never smile at anyone who wasn’t us (but she was so smiley for us!). Now that she’s a toddler (16 months) she sometimes cries if someone she doesn’t know touches her or gets too close to her, even if we’re right there. She’s burst into tears in the grocery store and other places because a stranger tried to say hi to her and got too close. We have done family photos a couple times and can’t get a single smile out of her because she’s so freaked out by the photographer – even if one parent is holding her and the other one is right there (multiple photographers have commented they’ve never seen anything like it). Is this a not-going-to-daycare thing, since she’s always been home with a nanny? We travel a lot and go out to eat a couple times a week, so it’s not like she never goes out in public though.
I scheduled a newborn photo shoot for 10 days after the baby is born. We have a toddler too. She has a cute summer dress that’s white and navy. What should I wear? I have no idea what size I’ll be but don’t want to leave it to the last minute. I also want something that covers my arms, any help would be great!
This photoshop job has so many skin colors going on. At first when I looked at this, I was like, is she wearing white hose? Then I saw her arms and thought, oh no, she’s just really fair. But then I saw her decolletage and was like, huh?
After two months of ear infections and fluid that won’t drain, my 9 month twins are getting tubes tomorrow morning. Any post-procedure tips/warnings? The nurse said they’d be disoriented and “floppy” when they came out of recovery. They’re using gas, not IV. Let’s hope this nightmare is almost over!