Washable Workwear Wednesday: Ruffle Trim Sweater Jacket

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A woman wearing a Ruffle Trim Sweater JacketI always like sweater jackets because they’re comfortable and let you move, bend, etc. — they feel freer than blazers but still look professional. They’re also good for fall as a lightweight jacket for the office and for something to keep at work. This would be nice over a gray dress, maybe for a work party or something like that. I like the faux waistband in the back, and I like the little ruffle details. (My only issue is the gold buttons, but if they’re not your style they can easily be switched out.) The jacket is machine wash cold and lay flat to dry. It’s only available in red in most sizes, but it’s still in black in “woman petites.” The blazer is $149 at Talbots (in four size ranges), but they have frequent sales, of course, so keep an eye out. Ruffle Trim Sweater Jacket Looking for other washable workwear? See all of our recent recommendations for washable clothes for work, or check out our roundup of the best brands for washable workwear. This post contains affiliate links and CorporetteMoms may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. For more details see here. Thank you so much for your support!

Sales of note for 9.10.24

(See all of the latest workwear sales at Corporette!)

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

And — here are some of our latest threadjacks of interestworking mom questions asked by the commenters!

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Didn’t want to TJ the question above, but I have a question as to the optimal time to move kids in to the same bedroom.

DD#1 will be almost 4 when the DD#2 arrives. We actually have three bedrooms, but the ultimate goal is to have the two share a room so that the third bedroom can remain a home office/playroom. We plan to have the new baby sleep in our room (mini crib) for the first 6 months, give or take a couple months.

Option 1 would be to move DD#2 into DD#1’s bedroom ASAP after that, so they can both get used to sleeping together.

Option 2 would be to move DD#2 into the home office and keep her in the home office/nursery for an undetermined amount of time.

Either option is doable. What would you all recommend, based on what would be best for the kids? If Option 2, when would be the best time to move DD#2 in with DD#1? Around 1 year old? As soon as she sleeps through the night regularly? As soon as she is ready to move into a toddler bed? Another milestone?

Note that it would be only a minor inconvenience to have DD#2 in the home office for a couple years. My main concern is to have the sharing a room thing be as smooth a transition as possible.

We’re expecting our second in a few months and trying to figure out what would work best in the following situation. We live in a two bedroom apartment and have one little one already. Plan is to have new baby sleep in our room initially and then for both kids will to share a room. Oldest is 2 and currently sleeps in a crib.

Option 1 would be to transition oldest to a regular bed and put crib in our room and then eventually move crib to kids’ room.

Option 2 would be to leave oldest in the crib for now and have new baby sleep in a pack and play or to get a mini-crib, either option being for about 6 months and then transition both kids to new beds in one room.

One major complicating factor is we must have some invasive work done in our apartment when baby will be about 2-4 months old – not optional – which will make our bedroom uninhabitable for about 2 months. During that time we will be sleeping in the living room and new baby will need to either move into the kids’ room earlier than we’d like or will need to sleep in the living room too. We have a rock-n-play already but I don’t think that’s a good full-time sleep option. We also have a pack-n-play but I sort of hate the way it looks. It currently lives at the grandparents’ house and I’d prefer to leave it there, but I know it’s silly to spend a lot of money on a temporary sleep arrangement. I am okay with spending a little money though to have something that I won’t hate for 6 months. Currently leaning towards finding a used mini crib with wheels on CL. Am I missing a better solution? What would you do in this situation?

Cross posting from main site…

Ladies, need some vacation help! We have a 9 month old boy and 5.5 year old daughter, and would like to plan a short holiday around Thanksgiving.

Context:
– We live in PNW and don’t have family in the area, so want to do something fun and outside the PNW that week.
– We have about 4-5 days for the holiday and can stretch to 6-7 if necessary.
– CA is out as we’re planning extended trips there over Christmas and Spring Break to visit family.
– DC, NYC, Boston (too cold), Philly, Chicago, Orlando, Vegas are all out as DH and I have spent extensive time there.
– Would prefer to travel domestically with the kiddos.

Ideally, we’re looking for places that are kid-friendly and have good food and sights for the adults to not get completely bored either. We’d like to do one big “thing” a day (e.g., museum or zoo) and then lounge the rest of the day, eat out, etc. We haven’t taken a proper holiday in over 18 months so no real budget we’re working against.

We’re thinking of going to New Orleans, Nashville, or Phoenix as DH and I haven’t been to any of those places.

So wise hive, what would you recommend:
1) Between New Orleans, Nashville, or Phoenix – which is better with kids? What should we do there?
2) Are there other options we should consider? (DH suggested Salt Lake City and nearby dino sights – my daughter is a BIG fan – as an example)

TIA!

I’m embarrassed to suddenly realize that I may have made a big tax oversight….my therapist is an individual, sole practitioner with no entity. Should I have been withholding taxes the way you do with household help? It seems different, since I’m going to the therapist’s office rather than having the help come to my house. If I didn’t need to withhold taxes, should I have been giving a 1099 each year?

I was just asked to be the godmother of my niece (first grandchild, so it’s a reasonably big to-do). I’m SUPER excited, mostly because I’m obsessed with her and this makes us even closer!

Her parents aren’t devoutly Catholic (nor am I, but raised in the church) and are doing this more out of family tradition. We’re in the northeast. I would like to get her something non-religious (no crosses, bibles) but also something special she’ll always have. I was hoping Tiffanys did a nice bracelet for little girls, but I came up empty. Any other ideas? I would like it to be reasonably nice and not something from Things Remembered or that I can get at any old mall kiosk, if that makes sense. Ideal budget is sub $200, but could be swayed a bit if it’s otherwise perfect. Thanks!

Probably I’m the last to figure this out, but I wanted to share in case others can enjoy it – kiddo has started sending emoji texts to grandparents and her dad on a regular basis. She can’t read yet but she can “read the pictures.” It’s a cool way to keep in touch and my family is always tickled when they get a text message from kiddo. Unicorns, rainbows, hearts and the poop emoji make frequent appearances.

Looking for some perspective here. My husband and I come from very different families. His parents are old school Southern. Although his mom worked, his dad was always (as far as I can tell) the head of the household and was certainly always the breadwinner. They had very traditional responsibilities within the family. My husband had a terrific relationship with his dad, and it seems that especially when he was a teenager, his dad was very present and was a safe and grounded place for my husband to air out his teen angst and get wisdom and guidance in return. I grew up as an only child with a single mom. My parents divorced when I was just 4 and the whole time I was growing up, my dad lived on the other side of the country from me. I saw him for one week once a year, and as I got older, there were a few years I didn’t see him at all. We talked on the phone maybe quarterly for about five or ten minutes. My mom and I had a very intense relationship. She never thought she’d have to fend for herself in the world and I took over a lot of responsibility early on (e.g., balancing the family checkbook and paying the bills when I was 14). It was my mom and me against the world. While I had a lot of early responsibility, the up side was that I had all of my mom’s attention. She didn’t date much and pretty much decided she wasn’t going to bring anyone else into our family. She did remarry after I’d graduated from college, but her focus while I was young was entirely on me. Since I had no siblings, I didn’t even have to compete with them for anything.

My husband says he feels like he doesn’t get enough alone time with me. I’ve felt torn because I feel like I don’t spend enough time with our kids (age 2 and 4). I work full time and see them for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, plus weekends. The kids are in bed by 8:00 and my husband has my full attention between then and when we go to bed, around 11:00. Plus the kids still nap and so we have alone time midday on the weekends, too. He expects a promotion shortly and said he’d like to spend some of the extra money on more childcare. We already get at least one date night per week and often a half or full day on the weekend together since we have an au pair and my in-laws live nearby and will often take the kids for the day. My heart dropped when he said that because I feel like after a whole week at work, being away from my kids for a whole Saturday often seems cruel to them. But when I wonder whether we spend enough time with the kids or whether they spend too much time being cared for by other people, he says yes there’s a point where you’re handing off your kids too much, but we’re waaaaay short of that point.

This is rambly and I’m sorry. I’ve just been heartsick over this all morning. I worry that my husband doesn’t spend enough time with the kids. He says he just does not enjoy doing anything as a family right now because they’re so young. He thinks he’ll enjoy it more when they’re older. I feel like you don’t just get to parachute into your kid’s life when you deem them interesting enough to be worthy of your time. But I can’t tell if I’m just projecting my own feelings about my dad onto him. Obviously he’s in their lives far more than my father was in mine. I also worry that my experience of being so closely bonded to my mom growing up, and not having a married couple role model, has made me have unrealistic expectations about how close I should be with my own kids. I get the impression if you have married parents and siblings (as my husband had) it’s kind of the parents in one camp and the kids in another, and while it can be the whole family against the world, there’s also a particular bond between the parents that the kids aren’t part of. On the one hand I know the kids will grow up and have their own lives and so what’s healthy is for my husband and me to keep our relationship strong since we’ll be together the rest of our lives (or that’s the plan at least). On the other, I can feel already how soon it will be that the kids will be out of the house and gone. My husband thinks it’s strange because it’s going to be 14 and 16 years before each of our kids goes to college, but my older one is already getting big to be carried around and I am trying to hold onto every second of having them here with us.

I guess I’m asking, especially for those of you who grew up with two parents, did you feel like your parents weren’t paying enough attention to you? I remember missing my mother so much even when I just spent a week at my grandparents’, or being so sad when I had a babysitter putting me to bed instead of her. My four year old keeps careful track of who’s putting him to bed each night and I feel guilty if it’s not me more than once or twice a week. But I wonder whether I missed my mom more than most kids because she was in many ways all I had in the world (I had grandparents and aunts and uncles, but in terms of our household, it was just us). Such a rambling post, I’m sorry. WOuld love to hear any thoughts.

Nursing and reading aloud to my three month old is the easiest way to deal with the witching hour.
He falls asleep and can be swaddled and put into bed. It also seems to help me calm down (I find the crying and comfort nursing a bit overwhelming). However, we are almost done with the Winnie the Pooh books. Any fun children’s books that lend themselves to being read aloud? I’d prefer short stories versus a novel.

Full disclosure – this sounds quite wholesome and virtuous but I’m crap with tummy time, he only naps in the sling, and refuses to take a bottle. I feel like I’m accidentally attachment parenting.

I know that the prevailing theory is that you need to introduce a food several times (7 times?) before the kid may be open to eating it. Do you follow that approach when you are packing lunches for daycare/school?

2 year old is very picky and refuses to eat most fruit (but will have fruit smoothies and various veggies) and an assortment of other things (e.g. the only sandwich he likes is pb&j). Do I just keep introducing various types of fruit and other things he doesn’t like, and suck up the fact that he might not touch it? Husband grew up in a culture where food.was.not.wasted. and it almost physically pains him to see the amount of food wasted in the lunch box. On the other hand, not introducing a wider array of foods is not a great solution either.

Thoughts?

Is there a lifehack I’m missing here? I am six weeks pregnant and am newly dealing with crushing exhaustion and low-grade nausea, so…pretty standard. We have a three-year-old and have been through this before, but it’s so easy to forget! My husband and I both work full-time and are basically perpetually tired anyway, but I am usually about done by the time we get dinner cleaned up and the kid to bed. Last night he expressed irritation because I “always go to bed so early” and we hardly get a chance to talk. That went over well. ;)

Any suggestions to make this easier? I know it will get better in a few months, and then harder again, of course. I’m struggling to figure out how to not to be terrible at my job and also be a good wife and parent, while basically feeling crummy most of the time.

My sister is pregnant with her first and I’d like to buy her some kind of splurge-y (under $100) maternity wear as a present. Is this a good or bad idea? Any recs?

Happy Halloween hangover day, moms! My kid got home from trick-or-treating with friends an hour after her bedtime with several pounds of candy, wet socks, and silly string in her hair. Good luck to her teachers and coaches today.