Washable Workwear Wednesday: Theia Ruffled Top

It may be too late in the day, but how do you handle self-evaluations when you haven’t been at your best at work? I was out on maternity leave this year and while I think the quality of my work has been good – honestly even better than it was pre-baby in many ways – the quantity of hours has been poor and my level of participation in the community, biz development, etc has been basically zero. Is an honest approach best or am I shooting myself in the foot?

Help — I need hair styling tips for my preschool-age daughter. Her hair is fine-textured, but there’s a lot of it. It’s a couple inches below the shoulder. She rarely wears it down, otherwise it’s constantly falling in her face. Her default style is wearing the top section in a ponytail or “Elsa braid.” BUT, during the summer, the bottom section gets so gross and tangly from sunscreen and sweat. Problem is, I cannot get this poor child’s hair to STAY in a regular ponytail. I think the weight/slippery texture of her hair eventually loosens the whole style, causing the front pieces to start falling out. If the ponytail feels like it’s “falling,” she just rips the whole thing out because it’s not comfortable.

I have tried several types of fabric-covered holders and the stretchy plastic-y ones. It doesn’t seem to make much difference.

WHAT AM I MISSING? I have a pixie cut, in part because I have no hairstyling skills. Like, even braids are hard for me. Daughter’s hair looked so cute in slightly angled bob (and it was so much easier to care for), but she is adamant that she doesn’t want a haircut.

For those of you with two kids and a nanny, how much did you increase their pay when going from one kid to two under their care? Our oldest will be going to preschool a few days/week for a few hours a day, but she’ll definitely be home with our nanny part of the time and we will need help preschool pick ups or dropoffs.

Also, I get 4 months of maternity leave, so I’m not planning on giving her this raise until I go back to work since I’ll be home to share the load with her. Does this sound right, or should I give her raise immediately once our second is born?

When did you do a first haircut for toddler girls? My 17 month old has got a lot of hair but it’s mostly kind of scraggly and I think it might look a lot better with a professional haircut. But she hates both strangers and people touching her head, so I can’t imagine a professional haircut is going to be anything but a disaster. Fwiw, she has long straight bangs (I trim them, but apparently not short enough for her daycare teachers, who always send her home with the bangs clipped back), the hair at the front sides is straight-ish and sort of flips out at the bottom and the hair in the back is super curly and seems to be growing out more than down. I know I shouldn’t feel this way but I’m one of the least girly women I know and I feel like I’m already failing my daughter by not styling her hair in a cute way every day. I feel bad when I see that the daycare teachers have ‘done’ her hair, even though I know they probably enjoy doing it.

I need help understanding how night potty training works, please. Kiddo is 3 (4 in October). She is day trained and rarely (knock on wood) has accidents. She’s been that way for a little over 10 months. She wears a diaper at night and diapers are very full in the morning. She uses a diaper plus a Sposie. She is now in a regular bed, not a crib. The last few nights, she has been having a hard time falling asleep and wanting to go potty about 20-30 minutes after she goes down. I think she’s mostly stalling, but I don’t want to discourage her from going potty if she has to. This morning when I went in to wake her up she told me she didn’t need to go potty because she went in her diaper and was awake when she went in her diaper. So I think she’s starting to make connections about waking up to go potty, but I also think “stay in your bed/crib” is so ingrained in her sweet little brain. Ideally, I think I’d start putting her in a pull-up style diaper at night so that she can more easily get up and go potty. But (1) I’m worried they’ll consistently leak and (2) I’m worried she’ll start waking up a lot earlier for the day. How do other people handle this training period? I have no problem making it a rule that she goes back into her room to rest or read or whatever until wake-up time. But it would just be so helpful to get an idea of what people really do to night train kiddos. Thank you!

PS – we are in no rush at all – I know it will happen when it happens. But I also think she is starting to show signs of readiness and want to do whatever is developmentally appropriate at this time.

Did anyone feel tired, irritable, moody, etc when they started to wean? I am doing that slowly with my 11.5 month old. I’ve been having trouble sleeping and get hot in bed, am tired during the day, and just generally feel out of sorts. I’d love to hear about others’ experiences.

Any advice on distinguishing mastitis from normal engorgement? 3 weeks PP. DS hasn’t been sleeping longer than normal and I’m EBF, but got really full on one side last night for no reason and now have a fair amount of pain. No fever or illness symptoms but I have redness which could also just be engorgement. I pumped that side after feeding but it still hurts. We’ve had a lot of doctors appts for him so I really don’t want to go to one for myself unnecessarily…