Washable Wednesday: JNY Suiting

Ladies, I need laundry help. Two problems:

1) Ring around the collar. I had been doing a good job with tackling this problem on my husband’s work shirts, but the stains are getting harder and harder to remove. I’ve been doing a pretreatment spray (like Zout) or a paste with OxiClean powder that I would rub in with a toothbrush. Sometimes the OxiClean fades the colors, so that’s not great. Other ideas?

2) Baby threw up all over a new shirt last night – a Loft utility blouse. It’s 100% polyester. I immediately washed it off and then threw it in the delicate cycle on cold (per instructions). Stain is still there. Ideas? (Besides changing out of work clothes before putting her down for bed….)

TIA!

For those of you that have more than one young child needing care, what arrangement do you have, and why? We are thinking about starting to try for #2, and while our daughter is in daycare now, having a second baby changes our options a bit.

Daughter would be somewhere between 2.5-3.5 when the next one is born, so we could put both in daycare, or get a nanny and put the older on in part time preschool. I like the idea of having the little one with a nanny, but our daughter was in daycare from 11 weeks and is now a super happy 15 month old. she was a daycare poster child and gets bored when she stays home with me all day :) On balance, though, I like the idea that the siblings could spend more time together (vs separate classrooms) with a nanny, and a nanny seems like it would be useful to have with two nuggets running around. We live in MA, where daycare costs about the same as college tuition (not even kidding), so a nanny for two would be more, but not not that much more expensive than daycare for two. I’d have to pay for preschool on top, but again, it’s nominal in the grand scheme of childcare costs.

I work from home, in a segregated home office, most days. I like the idea of taking a lunch and getting to see the kids, but also am hesitant that the work/home boundaries would get fuzzy (despite my clearly segregated home office, that our child doesn’t ever go into now, even on weekends).

And thanks Kat for today’s post – I’m in need of a new interview suit that comes in plus sizes, and didn’t have much luck with anything I liked in the MLK day sales. If anyone has any other recommendations for places for me to try other than JNY, please let me know. My local Macy’s had lots of sales, but was very picked over so very few pieces that went together.

My ideal suit would be a longer jacket, 2 or more buttons and available somewhere in the 16W-20W, in charcoal, light grey or black (not navy or brown). I probably won’t have need for it outside interviews, so it doesn’t need to be the best/nicest suit in the world. Any suggestions?

Question on sleep training: Can you train you child to sleep until your desired wakeup time? Do you let your kid CIO in the morning?

My 12 month old goes down for the night in her crib super easily at 7pm, but still wakes up earlier than I’d like (around 5am), nurses in the bed, then sometimes falls back to sleep (still in bed) until around 7am. I would really like for her to sleep in her crib until 7, but have not had luck with leaving her to put herself back to sleep. Admittedly, I’ve only waited as long as 20 minutes or so until going to get her. She’s not ravenous when she nurses in the morning, but sometimes she is just AWAKE and ready for the day such that leaving her in her crib seems like it wouldn’t work. I’ve mostly heard of sleep training as a way to get kids to go to sleep at night (or for naps) but what about staying asleep after a full night? Is this just a pipe dream? We did try to put her down slightly later at night, but she is so tired and ready to sleep at 7pm, that we didn’t press it.