Maternity Monday: Split-Neck Tunic
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Sales of note for 1/16:
(See all of the latest workwear sales at Corporette!)
- Nordstrom – Cashmere on sale; AllSaints, Free People, Nike, Tory Burch, and Vince up to 60%; beauty deals up to 25% off
- AllSaints – now up to 60% off (some of the best leather jackets!)
- Ann Taylor – Up to 40% off your full-price purchase; extra 50% off sale
- Banana Republic Factory – 50% off everything + extra 20% off
- Boden – 15% off new styles with code — readers love this blazer, these dresses, and their double-layer line of tees
- DeMellier – Sale now on, free shipping and returns — includes select options like Montreal, Vancouver, and Venice
- Eloquii – $29 and up select styles; extra 50% off all clearance, plus ELOQUII X kate spade new york collab just dropped
- Everlane – Sale of the year, up to 70% off — reader favorites include their scoop tee, Dream Pant, ReNew Transit backpack, silk blouses and oversized blazers! New markdowns just added
- Hannah Andersson – Up to 30% off all pajamas;
- J.Crew – Up to 40% off select styles; up to 50% off cashmere
- J.Crew Factory – 40-70% off everything
- L.K. Bennett – Archive sale, almost everything 70% off
- M.M.LaFleur – Tag sale for a limited time — jardigans and dresses $200, pants $150, tops $95, T-shirts $50
- Spanx – Lots of workwear on sale, some up to 70% off
- Talbots – Semi-Annual Red Door Sale – 50% off + extra 20% off, sale on sale, plus free shipping on $150+
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?
For those of you who ascribe to the general rule that “you can tell your partner what to do or how to do it but not both” (and opening the question as to whether this is a good rule), how do you handle when your partner has done a thing in a way that frustrates you?
E.g., when I do the laundry, I do it from start to finish including folding it and putting it away, all in the same day. If I cannot fold and put away a load in the same day, I will not start it. I don’t iron any clothes, so I don’t let the clean laundry sit in the dryer for more than a half hour to avoid wrinkles as much as possible. I am also sensitive to mildew smells so if a load is left in the washer it super grosses me out and I have to run it again. Plus, I really thrive on a sense of completion and the idea that my laundry takes a day and doesn’t becomes a perpetual task.
My DH is totally the opposite. He will put a load in the washing machine and leave it there overnight before moving it to the dryer. Loads in the dryer stay there until the next load needs to go in. He is also more than happy to use the dryer as an extra drawer, dipping into the dryer full of clean clothes to fish out the one item he needs, leaving the rest in there forever. This weekend I ran a load of wash and immediately went to move it to the dryer, only to find that there was already a (clean, dry) load sitting in the dryer from lord knows when. This was frustrating in the moment because I had an armload of drippy laundry in my arms when I made this discovery. Then I had to fold that laundry from the dryer before putting my wash in, all the while cursing my DH’s laundry habits.
Perhaps my approach to laundry is too rigid, and even getting my DH to take some initiative and take charge of laundry felt like a win. My question is less about LAUNDRY and more about shared tasks– when do you micromanage and when do you let it be?
Stupid first-time mom question here: how do you keep an infant warm in a carseat? I live in the Pacific Northwest, so we don’t have too many really frigid days, but I’m due in early December so I want to be prepared. I know puffy jackets aren’t safe because it creates slack in the carseat straps. But it sounds like fleece might be okay? What about a blanket tucked over the straps? Would that become a suffocation hazard if baby falls asleep?
I’ve seen carseat cover things that encase the whole carseat, but have wondered if those would be overkill in our climate.
Our daughter is 28 months and we’ve never gone on a vacation with her. Both sets of families live in town so we don’t have to travel and she was so hard for so long that it never felt woeth it, but now she is at a fantastic age and much more. Manageable or atkeast screen time and snacks and talking calmly can diffuse most sitjlutions.
Now we have a slightly easier little boy who is 15 weeks and we decided to be insane and book a stay for 3 nights at a really amazing family resort that is 3.5 hours drive from us.
My in laws are amazing and offer a ton of local help. they are also joining us on this trip. They’ve offered to have our daughter drive with them, sleep with them, babysit as much as needed etc.
I am still just freaking out about taking the baby, he is really pretty good at home and at the grandparents for napping and mood but I’m worried he can’t handle the car ride or we’ll have a disastrous night if he sleeps too much in the car. Any tips to manage? It’s not too late to cancel the trip but it is so depressing to think we can’t travel till he is also 2.
Silly question – we had a “no gifts, please” birthday party for our 5 year old. Guests respected the request and came without gifts or brought a nice card. Do we send them thank you notes to say thank you for coming? It feels weird not to send a thank you card.
A few weeks ago, the Ex (I refuse to claim him any longer) asked that I agree to reduce his monthly child support by 66% so that he can qualify for a mortgage to buy a house. The house is 45 minutes away from his kids. He sees the kids exactly 6% of the time. He may qualify to have his child support reduced. He quit-in-lieu-of-being-fired from his six figure education job and now has an hourly gig that pays 1/3 as much as his old job. New job is not making use of his master’s degree. He asked me to draft a side agreement to reduce his court-ordered child support because he does not want to go back to court. I said that I needed to think about all of this.
At our daughter’s birthday party on Saturday, he told me he is under contract to buy a house and asked whether we could talk. (So he moved forward assuming I would agree to all of this.) I told him that at our daughter’s party was not the time. So he called at 7:30 last night, as I’m putting the kids to bed. Later, I indicated that I could text but not talk. I said that I was not comfortable doing a side agreement. He pushed me to agree to the lower amount, to doing a side agreement and when I refused, then asked me how to go to court. I sent him the court’s website.
I am so frustrated with this guy, and I refuse to do the work for him so that he can do less to support his children. (I do not include his child support in my budget because he is so unreliable. It goes into an account for my kids.) Even though I do not think I have done anything wrong, I’m still nervous to go back to court. I have no idea what he will say or accuse me of (he has diagnosis that are indicative of his emotional instability). And I think that doing a side agreement to get around court-ordered child support is a very bad idea and would reflect very poorly on me as a member of the bar.
I’m the poster from a few weeks ago asking about paying the short-term nanny while we’re out of town. We met in the middle and are covering her part of the time while we’re away and she’s also looking for extra babysitting jobs while we’re out.
So now, what do we ask her to do while we’re gone? We usually don’t give her any housekeeping tasks other than just cleaning up after themselves as they go. I was thinking about asking her to just plan ahead for craft/activities, and perhaps thinking a bit about things we could do for our kid’s birthday party coming up next month. She graduated from an arts school so I think this is something she won’t hate doing.
Obviously some of the time we’re paying for her she won’t be really working and that’s fine, because we aren’t there so her primary responsibility of childcare is not applicable. But any other ideas for things that would be normal to ask her to do while we’re away?
What kinds of word combinations are expected around 18/19 months? My DD is almost 19 months and most of her talking is still single words although she is starting to say things like “hi mom” and “please cracker.” The ped seemed to think she should have two word sentences with a verb in them (like “mom come” or “dad go”) by now but she doesn’t. Actually i don’t think she really says any verbs at all? She says “eat” I guess, but that’s the only one I can think of. Is that bad? I did some quick internet searching and it seems like using verbs early is important to language development.
My husband got hit by a car while running this morning. It wasn’t going really fast (turning right, he was in the crosswalk), but he got knocked down and scraped up a bit. He’s also insanely busy at work right now and our one and three year old are A LOT. I just feel so bad for him, he says it really knocked him for a loop mentally, and I don’t know what I can do to help- any thoughts? Anyone else ever get hit like that?
Guys… I’m so demoralized about my physical appearance. DD is 18 mos and we’re officially trying for #2. I was 25-ish lbs lighter when I got pregnant with #1. I’ve struggled with weight my whole life (thanks, PCOS) and have had a few successful stints on WW. Heck, I used to run half marathons for fun (not built like a lean runner, but I enjoyed the physical activity). That feels so far out of reach today. I was flipping through some pictures of me from the weekend and I just look absolutely awful. I have no motivation to lose the weight if I’m just going to blow up again with #2. I know it’s a season of life and I’m trying to be kind to myself, but I’m just … upset. Everything I put on this weekend was tight – bras, jeans, everything.
Tell me this will pass? That I can reclaim my body after #2 shows up?
PSA for anyone else who suffered through the arctic blast in the North last year. After suffering through one too many outdoor hockey/skating practices I finally gave in and ordered a Soia & Kyo puffer. It came today and that thing is SO WARM I was practically sweating in it in my living room. Look, its a down coat so it isn’t SUPER stylish, but I also think this threads the needle between ‘wearing a down comforter’ and ‘I’m freezing but its fashion!!’. Fwiw, the salesladies at Saks also swore that Mackage and Soia & Kyo are warmer than the Canada Goose ones.
https://www.soiakyo.com/us/en/camelia-slim-fit-brushed-down-coat-with-leather-trims/CAMELIA-N.html?dwvar_CAMELIA-N_color=COL120&cgid=women-bestsellers#start=1&cgid=women-bestsellers
We used some sleep consultants for our twins and sleep trained at 4.5 months (4 months adjusted), right in the middle of the 4 month sleep regression (which they both had bad!). It was…the only way I felt prepared to go back to work, which I did at 5 months.
They got to 10-12 hours of sleep a night and three solid naps pretty quickly (sttn by day 3-4, naps “consolidated” two or three weeks after). We had some bumps with teething, adjusting room temperature, etc (its never perfect) but it is SO, SO much better than 2-3 wakeups a night.
I was dreading it and parts of it did suck but now it is really, really lovely because we have a nap schedule and a sleep schedule and I would say 90% of the time they sleep well, because of this they are happy and cheerful, and because we sleep we are able to parent them and also work and not feel like zombies. Sleep consultants definitely feel like part of the Parenting Industrial Complex but looking back on it (and thinking about the loads of sleep I got this weekend) I think for us – new parents, twins – it was completely worth it. The investment made us stick with the plan and the plan worked.
I’m about 30 weeks pregnant with my second and the extreme fatigue and general unwell feeling is wearing me down. Last time, I had some aches and pains by this point but felt pretty good overall. This time, with a preschooler and a more demanding job, not to mention living in a hotter part of the country, I’m feeling close to my breaking point. I feel like I can never get enough rest, my stomach never feels settled, I’m always out of breath, and I have little patience for my sweet but very spirited daughter. My husband is doing more than enough to pick up the slack, does most of household chores, gives me plenty of time on the weekends and evenings to rest, but it never feels like enough. I’m in pretty good shape, have gained the right amount of weight, eat as well as I can, and get a full nights sleep but . . . still feel terrible most days. Anyone else deal with this? Any strategies for making it through the next 10 weeks? This is busy season at work and I know it’s only going to get harder. FWIW, I don’t think I’m depressed but it is depressing to not feel well all the time. Thanks for any advice.
How do I deal with the 4month sleep regression? I go back to work in 2 weeks and ds#2 is up every 90 mins to 2 hours looking for Paci. I insert Paci and feed maybe 3x night. He sleeps from 630 to 7 am.. He was doing one 5 hour stretch then up every 2 hours before this. Do I need to get rid of Paci and sleep train? He is 75%+ for weight and height…
A couple times over the weekend my three yo complained his teeth hurt. Anyone have something similar happen? Not sure whether to take him to a doctor or a dentist or just wait it out. I checked and didn’t see anything wrong visually…
At what age would you be comfortable bringing a child to a family friendly ballet matinee? It’s specifically advertised as a special family performance. Trying to decide if inviting my fave 2 3/4 year old is wise.