Washable Workwear Wednesday: Travel Ponte Blazer

Hah! I’m on my work computer and that website is blocked.

I’m responding to Anon from late last night who wanted to know about going back to big law with young elementary kids at this time.

Kindly, I’d say it’s an overly ambitious idea. (Yesterday evening when I first saw it, after frantically finishing up revisions to send to a client before I had to pick up my young kid at camp, so I could come back, finish up a few other deadlines and release my time, I thought it was a crazy idea…)

I think it’s still hard to juggle early elementary and big law pre-pandemic, now it’s nearly impossible — and I have the best of circumstances short of having family in town and/or a stay-at-home spouse. Even setting aside the logistics of getting 7-9 hours a day to bill 6-8 hours (ideally), you’ll have no previously established work product/ethic to rely on, which means there’s a risk of little forgiveness when things go haywire.

Ugh. It looks like our suburban Pennsylvania school district is going to decide on all remote until October and then “reassess” whether to move to hybrid. It feels like a bait and switch since previously the district said it would do either 5 days a week or hybrid (with an all remote option available in either case), and now it is too late to even enroll in a cyber charter. Just curious, for those in districts that have announced all remote until x date, do you think there’s any real chance the district will do any sort of in person learning this school year? Are there any districts that have had the guts to announce fully remote for the full school year?

Our schools are remote for now. We have heard that there will be some “synchronous” learning and some “asynchronous” learning (taped lectures? assignments to watch Khan Academy videos? who knows?).

I have a middle schooler and elementary schooler, at different schools, and with different schedules. And work FT.

I hope that they understand that a lot has been offloaded onto parents who will give it a good try, but don’t have the bandwidth for perfection. And that the adopt maybe a “high pass / pass / fail” mindset for many things (like parent has one household lunchtime and stuff needs to take turns yielding with grace to other things, like a parent’s need earn a living and be on calls vs always being on-call for troubleshooting a buggy chomebook).

School starts in 2 weeks and we don’t even have guidance for what times during the day “school” “starts” or has synchronous learning (probably the more important, as it seems to be direct instruction with a live teacher vs passive learning), to help arrange for work coverage, teen sitters, adult tutors, etc. Do any of you have any guidance on this? I realize that high school kids applying to college probably need/want actual grades. But our online experience was so dismal last spring that I am not about to jeopardize my job for it (and yet don’t want my kids to fail or miss any meaningful learning opportunities this year). Ugh.

Actual Q: have any schools come out and said “parents: give it a good try; we won’t penalize your kid b/c the glitchy technology doesn’t work or your kid doesn’t do well if the sole instruction is ‘here — watch this Khan Academy video that will teach you how to do factoring'”? I feel like they need to acknowledge this and haven’t.

My mom moved to my town in January, unannounced. She was laid off from her job and moved three states over with a plan to “find something” (she is not particularly marketable) and rent out the house she owns. She hdan’t put too much effort into finding a job yet when the pandemic hit. She offered to watch our kids for a few hours a day when schools closed.

DH and I talked long and hard about letting her watch the kids, because while it would really help us out of a jam, there were significant strings attached. We said no at first–we are not comfortable with an employer/employee relationship. She both insisted, and also it became a not-so-subtle way of her telling us she needed money. We landed on her watching the kids and us occasionally buying her grocery gift cards or some extra cash here and there, but very intentionally never a payment-for-care arrangement. She treated it equally as flexibly, often telling us the morning of that she couldn’t take the kids, or would have to drop them off early (which was a pain, but you get what you pay for).

When summer came and camp (mercifully) opened for my oldest, we told her we were comfortable getting a sitter for the younger kids. She insisted that she wanted to continue to watch the younger kids (2 & 5) most mornings (~10-1). She started coming later, or asking me to drop them off later, skipping days, etc. So I let her know we felt like we were imposing and we really need to get a sitter with a set schedule etc in place. She was miffed and wanted to be that sitter–but can’t/won’t agree to the hours we need.

So, as if that’s not enough of a pickle, she’s now telling us that she doesn’t agree with how we are socially distancing. She doesn’t like that my oldest is playing tennis without a mask. She doesn’t like that we take the kids to our pool club. She doesn’t like that we plan to send our younger kids back to daycare and preschool in September 3x/week. She has offered to watch them for us so we “don’t have to send them back,” but she’s offering in a way that (1) doesn’t give us the hours or commitment we need and (2) doesn’t give the kids the socialization we need and (3) drives me bonkers because she “grandmas” them all day long letting them eat garbage and play. All stuff that is TOTALLY FINE during the pandemic when nothing was open and we needed ANYTHING, but now that we have options, this is not a good option for us.

What are my options here?

I never had a particularly great relationship with my mom, but these are her only grandkids. She is NOT reliable childcare, and I’m not even sure I’d use her if she were because she’s too much “grandma” and not enough “sitter.”

I’ve talked to her about being backup care, or filling in when daycare/preschool aren’t our options, but she doesn’t like that either–she wants the kids to stay out of preschool/daycare entirely. I’ve also encouraged her to look for a family that might want to stay socially isolated and she could help them! But she complains that nobody will be “as flexible” (duh).

What do you all think? This was something we know we’d have to deal with when we ok’d the help back in March, so it’s been a long time coming but the answers haven’t gotten any clearer.

Question for moms of older girls: how old was your daughter when she developed breast buds and how many years after that did she get her period? My 7 year old has breast buds, which seems really young!

Daycare wants a family photo collage. I know there are apps like PicStitch that let you easily make photo collages but does anyone know if there are similar apps that let you make a collage and add text to it? Ideally free.