Washable Workwear Wednesday: Wrap Neckline Dress
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Sales of note for 2/7:
(See all of the latest workwear sales at Corporette!)
- Nordstrom – Winter Sale, up to 60% off! 7850 new markdowns for women
- Ann Taylor – Extra 25% off your $175+ purchase — and $30 of full-price pants and denim
- Banana Republic Factory – Up to 50% off everything + extra 15% off
- Boden – 15% off new season styles
- Eloquii – 60% off 100s of styles
- J.Crew – Extra 50% off all sale styles
- J.Crew Factory – 40% off everything including new arrivals + extra 20% off $125+
- Rothy’s – Final Few: Up to 40% off last-chance styles
- Spanx – Lots of workwear on sale, some up to 70% off
- Talbots – 40% off one item + 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?
I know it is getting late, so I will probably post again tomorrow. But does anyone have a really cool or fun hostess gift idea? My department has dinner at my boss’s house this weekend. We’ve been there before, it’s pretty casual, and we’re the only ones who need to travel to be there. So, I wouldn’t say it is necessarily expected, but I’d like to take a little something. I really don’t want to take the standard wine, flowers, etc. Does anyone have any really cool or fun ideas for a hostess gift? I’d say under $40, preferably under $30. Thanks!!
Piggybacking off of the question regarding infirm grandparents from earlier this week.
We have the only grandchild of all grandparents, 2 yo. My mother and stepfather live about 20 minutes away, my MIL and FIL live about 2 hours away, and my father also lives about 2 hours away (he’s single). No other local relatives.
My father is physically strong, but we have concerns about his judgment, particularly as relates to driving and/or in emergency situations. We have times where we will visit him with our toddler and he’ll visit us. I’m comfortable with leaving him alone with her for a couple hours while we go out and do errands, or have them go on a walk together, or we’ll drop them off for a half day at the zoo, but I would not be comfortable with an overnight or anything that would involve him driving her. FWIW, he interacts really well with the toddler and they adore each other.
My husband does shift work (sometimes nights and weekends), so when I am periodically out of town (for work usually, a week at a time, or once in a while a weekend with friends), we have asked either my mother and stepfather or MIL and FIL to watch the toddler on the days and nights my husband isn’t available. At their own homes. My mother and stepfather are close enough to continue the daycare routine if they want. We are entirely comfortable with this.
The problem is, my father wants to be part of this rotation and is directly asking whether he can watch our toddler on one of my upcoming work trips. He’s also asking about carseats he should consider buying. He recently had some health issues that compromised his eyesight, so that was a convenient excuse regarding not having him drive our toddler. Now his eyesight is better (he has provided me with medical documentation!) and I need to figure out how to have this conversation with him.
Regardless of his eyesight I just don’t feel comfortable with him driving our toddler, but it’s hard to figure out how/what to tell him. It’s not that he has any physical limitations I can point to or any actual diagnosis, it’s just a matter of my feelings regarding his judgment, honestly. Like I don’t know if there was an emergency whether he would be able to respond well, and also, it would be just him, no backup, vs. the other parents who have someone else around. Also, because we haven’t had my dad watch our toddler on his own for a long period of time, I don’t think he realizes how difficult and tiring it can be to actually care for her while also dealing with all the logistics.
Complicating the situation is that the fact that for my father, knowing the other grandparents/stepgrandparent have had the toddler on extended visits triggers memories of having to deal with custody/visitation issues with me as a kid (my parents divorced when I was quite young).
I would love any tips/ideas. I can’t see any option other than having a conversation that will really, really hurt my father. I’ve told him in the wake of his eyesight issues that I just wasn’t comfortable having him drive the toddler and that I was going to honor that feeling because my toddler’s safety is nonnegotiable to me. Now I think I’m going to have to tell him I don’t see that changing, ever, right?
Help me stop going down an Amazon rabbit hole. Anyone have a stylus etch a sketch type magnetic drawing thing they like for toddlers?
I have an incredible (ridiculous) amount of vacation time that I need to use, but I find it really hard to feasibly take time off because I have a small team and there isn’t much opportunity to delegate when I’m out. That said, I’ve been dealing with moderate depression during the past six months, and work stress and burnout is a big reason why I’ve gotten to this place mentally. I’ve been thinking about proposing that I take Fridays off during the summer months. I have the time to do it, and having long weekends all summer would give me more time with my kids, a chance to catch up on chores before the real weekend begins, etc. People in my office have gotten creative with vacation time, but people seem more accepting of the explanation that “Joe is taking 2 weeks off” vs. “Sally has Fridays off.” But I’ve found that short, frequent breaks are really valuable for my mental health.
Is it worth the risk to ask my boss whether this is feasible? If she balks, how much do I share about how burned out I feel? She has to know that on some level — for nearly 18 months, I was covering 1.5 jobs. I’ve sacrificed my past two summers to cover for others and work extra, all while exceeding my goals, and I’m just … tired. I want to be a tad bit selfish for a change and put myself, rather than my workplace, first. Obviously, I wouldn’t be that blunt about it, but that’s my state of mind right now.
Inspired by the comment above – anyone raising a kid in a 1 bedroom apartment? I’m a divorced single mom and have my kid 50%. We are in a VHCOL area and not leaving – work, friend and family connections are here, as well as kiddo’s dad. Right now she’s little so this is not an issue at all – she shares a bed with me and plays in the living room. There’s a decent chance I’ll be able to upgrade to a 2 bedroom when she’s close to middle school, but no guarantees. I’m thinking that if that doesn’t work she can have the bedroom and I’ll sleep in the living room? Anyone else in the same boat?
Anyone had their toddler learn words in a weird order? My son lags a little in speech, though not enough for his developmental assessment at 18 months to suggest speech therapy. At that point, he could officially say the 8 words they were looking for. He is about to turn 2 in a few weeks and he can say quite a few more now, but none of them are himself or any of the family! He knows “bubbles” and “banana” and “baby” but not Mama, Dada, or his twin sister’s name, and he literally spends 24 hours a day with his sister. He doesn’t seem to know his own name and doesn’t turn around when we call him, though he responds to other more softly spoken words, so I don’t think it is his hearing. He will repeat words when we ask– If I tell him, “say bye-bye daddy!” he’ll say “bye-bye Daddy” while looking somewhere completely different, and if I ask him where is Daddy or Mama or his sister, he won’t point to us. He knows the boy in the mirror has his name, but I don’t think he is aware that mirror boy is him. He doesn’t seem to know any of the names of his day care classmates or teachers, and he doesn’t say the name of his favorite lovey. His 2-year-old pediatrician appointment is coming up and I’m trying to decide if I really think there is something wrong enough to push for more testing. It just seems so odd for him to learn words for things but none for people.
How far in advance do you buy your kiddos clothes? Do you shop seasonally? I’ve exhausted my supply of hand me downs and baby gifts and am thinking about wardrobe going forward I live in a pretty mild climate so I’ve been picking up things as I see them on sale at gap, h&m, etc.
How do you manage this?
We are beginning the process to have our oldest tested for special services in the emotional/social development area. He is seven, and we were very recently told by his classroom teacher that while he is polite, excelling academically and follows the rules, he does not have any age-appropriate relationships with his peers, does not engage his peers or teacher in back and forth conversation, is hyper-focused on his specialized area of interest at school and will not talk about anything else. A few hours after receiving this information (and no, we did not hear this from his teacher last year), I went and did a bit of reading and felt like so very much about our little boy began to make sense. At home, he is literal, has inappropriate responses to others’ emotions, has emotional outbursts where he uses words but does not seem to understand the emotional impact of those words and he engages in play at the instruction of his little sister. I fully understand that we cannot diagnose him, but in my gut, I know that he is on spectrum. I think I have suspected this for a long time but did not have the full picture until we met with his classroom teacher.
At this point, I want to help him and make sure that he has the supports that he needs. I’ve been questioning some of the behavior for a long time, but I don’t spend a great deal of time around children other than my own, so I did not have a frame of reference.
I’m the one whose daughter’s speech delay was changed to severe last week. I also work full time with a new boss, who is putting me in an awkward spot between her and my coworker. I’m not comfortable disclosing this to my new boss who has told me that I am the “dependable” one in the department. In other words, I feel overwhelmed. I vacillate between thinking that I’ve got this and then wondering if I can shut my door, curl into a ball and cry for a while.
Does anyone have a recommendation for a recent book on parenting children with asperger’s (I know that is all now the spectrum but I believe we are dealing with what 5 years ago would have been called aspergers). I prefer books, and I find the amount of information on the web is overwhelming and much is out of date, but I would appreciate any recommendations on where to start. Thanks.
Has anyone looked into the phone-watches for kids? Verizon has the Gizmo Pal and I’m thinking about it for my soon-to-be kindergartner in the fall. She’ll be riding the bus (with a transfer, although there will be caretakers who are supposed to stay with the kids) from school to after care, and both of us work more than 30 minutes away. I feel like a phone to call us or a local neighbor in an emergency or if she gets lost would help me feel so much better. But she’s 5. Is this crazy?
We are having Baby #2 in June. Our toddler will be 25 months when Baby 2 is born. Toddler is moving into his own room in the next few weeks, and we plan to take his crib with him since he hasn’t tried to escape and we don’t want to mess with a good thing. Our crib converts into a toddler bed, but we also bought a full size bed for when he moves into the new room (stored in the basement for now).
My question is: do we buy a second crib so that Toddler can stay in the crib/toddler bed for as long as he wants or do we move him into the full size bed so that Baby 2 can have the crib? I expect Baby 2 will be sleeping in a bassinet/co-sleeper crib in our room for at least four months — so Toddler will be about 29 months by the time Baby 2 needs the crib.
Thanks in advance — this feels unnecessarily complicated!
You may very well be able to sleep train the baby in the same room as the toddler, and you should at least try it. Don’t give up your room!
Remember your older kid is not hard-wired like you to wake up to baby’s cries. My kids, at varying ages, and in various room-sharing or room-next-door arrangements, have slept through each other’s crying, nursing, sleep talking, barfing, etc.
If anything, put your baby in he living room corner for awhile, or if big enough, stick the pack and play in a closet or bathroom.
Piggybacking a little from yesterday’s question on sleep – for those of you with 2+ kids in relatively small houses/apartments, what do you do or plan to do for sleep areas for baby and toddler? We’re in a 2-bed apt. at the moment and will likely stay this way for a bit, including by the time our second is born. I’m totally fine with them sharing a room when they can both sleep well enough through the night, but what do we do about sleep training while the baby is still young?
We’re planning to have the second in our room at the beginning, but then want to keep our sleep areas separate to get some sleep training in (subject to baby’s temperament of course!) Is it crazy for us to sleep in the living room while the baby takes our room (or vice versa, but the living room is a little cold)? Our toddler is a pretty good sleeper, but I don’t know if he can handle multiple cries at night, if they’re in the same room.
AIMS, I think you might be in the same boat right now, with 2 kids in an apt. – would love to hear your thoughts and from anyone else in the same situation.
My kids’ birthday was six months ago and we still have not sent out thank notes for the gifts. Is it too late? Do I apologize for the late thank you? One day, I’ll accomplish the impossible and send the thank yous within a week of the party!
Happy spring snow day, everyone!
Come on, universe. This is just not cool.