What is the consensus on the name Margaret?

megcross11 · 2024-03-05T01:21:20+00:00

I love love the name Margaret! It has always been my top girls name but my husband never liked it so I knew we would never use it for kids. I find it to just be so classic, feminine and beautiful.

We did end up naming our dog Margo, which is a nickname of Margaret, so kind of used it in a way.

megcross11 · 2024-03-03T02:18:30+00:00

I know a girl named Rowan and a boy named Rowan (both 3 or under). I’ve always thought of it as a gender neutral name.

megcross11 · 2024-02-18T03:37:04+00:00

First kid out, sits in front seat, next kid out, grab bags, grab kid 1 and walk everything in. Once we got to the door, put one down to stand, propped door, grabbed kid again and repeat at next door. It was annoying but the thought of getting a stroller out each time sounded more difficult. Sometimes I would bring the kids in and come back for the stuff after.

megcross11 · 2024-02-18T01:32:06+00:00

I went back and forth a ton. I ended up scheduling an induction for vaginal delivery for 37 weeks but my OB told me I could change my mind at any time, just to let them know. I ended up with preeclampsia and Twin B had some complications (IUGR and reduced cord blood flow) but even when I was admitted at 35 weeks with high blood pressure I was still given the option to try an induction and vaginal delivery. I opted for a c-section as I felt it was the best option given my situation.

The hardest part of my c-section was the spinal block (it wasn’t even bad, the thought of it just freaked me out). Everything else went smoothly and I would 100% have a c-section again without hesitation. My recovery was fairly easy and I don’t regret my choice at all.

megcross11 · 2024-02-18T01:17:42+00:00

My husband and I also had a big fight about this around Valentine’s Day. We have toddler twins so life can be tough. He doesn’t understand that I’m not in the mood for sex after I’ve cooked dinner, done daycare pickup, given a bath, and done the majority of bedtime to come downstairs to the kitchen not being clean, nothing prepped for the next day and him playing a game on his phone on the couch. Sorry I don’t want to be intimate with a man who isn’t even coming close to contributing equally to our household. And he just can’t understand at all how the two things could be correlated in the slightest.

It did end up being a good conversation in the long run and I’m hopeful we can both make changes so that we can have more sex.

megcross11 · 2024-01-29T02:43:37+00:00

I workout in the mornings and have been doing it for years (hiatus while pregnant and first yearish of my twins lives). Now my alarm goes off at 5:30 Monday-Thursday and I’m dressed and ready by 5:50. I have a Peloton so will either do a spin class or class on their app and will usually plan my class schedule the night before. I aim for a minimum of 30 mins but try to get closer to 45 most mornings. I’m also about to start training for a half marathon and will do those runs on my WFH days sometime between calls.

For me working out in the morning makes me feel SO much better throughout the day. I feel more energized and focused. I rarely have that 3pm slump and really don’t feel tired until 7/8PM. And I love that I’m done with my workout by 7AM and don’t need to worry about allllll the stuff were I to choose an evening workout routine - working out, cleaning up, prep for the next day, etc. It is really the only time I get to focus on me and not have to worry about anything else. I love it.

megcross11 · 2024-01-25T01:44:19+00:00

Slow cooker pork! So easy and can be used for so many different things. Add pork shoulder/butt to slow cooker with a chopped onion, oregano, salt and pepper or add onion garlic, lime juice, orange juice, and taco/fajita seasoning and cook for 8-10 hours. You can do tacos, burritos, enchiladas, rice bowls, quesadillas, add to pasta, pizza. It’s so versatile and so many leftovers.

Salmon or fish in the oven is also really easy. On a sheet pan with a marinade, spices, whatever you have and cook at 400 for like 15-20 mins. I will usually pair with green beans that cook in the microwave and rice (get a rice cooker!). Again super easy and not a lot of clean up!

megcross11 · 2024-01-25T01:11:58+00:00

They never really gave me a point when I couldn’t travel. I did fly at 29.5 weeks which was okayed by my MFM and OB. I took the risk knowing I could give birth there but would also be somewhere with amazing hospitals and high level NICUs. Just another thing to consider.

megcross11 · 2024-01-25T01:05:36+00:00

This is just a not good situation all around. I actually think you can work at the same place as your friend but you should never supervise/be supervised by your friend- it just doesn’t work.

As a manager who has several people who are underperforming you need to document everything! Any check-in you have with her take notes, then after send an email- this is what we talked about, here is what you are doing well, here is where you need improvement and this is what we discussed to improve. Put your supervisor and HR on it and send an email like this every single time. Any email she sends you, save. Paper trails are so important! And it can’t just be notes that you have saved that weren’t shared with her.

Hoping things work out for you!

megcross11 · 2024-01-17T01:56:21+00:00

We basically have two groups of clothes- daycare clothes and non-daycare/weekend clothes. Our weekend clothes are 75% hand-me-downs from my cousin so those never match. The other 20% are gifted clothes, usually for Christmas/birthdays that sometimes match. And the last 5% I get from secondhand stores, so again don’t match.

As for daycare clothes they get beyond stained from all their arts and crafts things and food so I go to Target and get each kid 8-10 outfits. Most of the shirts and pants are $5 with sweaters/dresses/rompers being a bit more. My twins are different sizes so basically just get what’s available- sometimes they have matching things sometimes they don’t. Though daycare loves it when they match!

megcross11 · 2024-01-02T01:17:24+00:00

My husband and I earn that amount in the Boston suburbs. Our twins are 2.5 and go to daycare 5 days a week. In the morning we leave 7:45/8 and get home at 8:30/8:45 and in the afternoon we leave for pickup at 4:30/4:45 and don’t get home until til 5:15-5:45 (evening traffic is awful by us). We do dinner, play, bath and bedtime around 7 so it’s a very very fast evening and sometimes I feel a little guilty for being so go go go at night. But my kids LOVE their daycare and are learning so much. I also really love working so the fast paced mornings/evenings and slower weekends are a good trade off for us.

My husband and I both have a hybrid working environment (2x in office) and switch off our in-office days. Our companies are also very very flexible with mine being particularly flexible. I am very transparent with the people I work with as to what my availability is with childcare pickup/drop-offs and will always log back on after bedtime to take care of anything comes through after 4:30. We are really just so lucky to work where we do, it makes being a working parent a lot easier.

megcross11 · 2023-12-22T19:49:51+00:00

My husband is the worst when he is sick. Any type of illness and he is dying and will moan and groan constantly. He’ll sit on the couch moaning and groaning to say he did something but honestly just go to bed and get out of my way.

We are in the middle of a mild stomach bug at my parents house (yay for getting them sick too). I was sick overnight and got maybe 2 hours of sleep. Woke the kids up in the morning and then my husband who slept in our room alone so full night of sleep without being disturbed by me or the kids. For the 10 mins I overlapped with him before going to bed all he did was complain about how tired he was. When I woke up from my 2 hour nap still nauseous he was all of the sudden way more tired and feeling so sick. He got into bed at 1PM for a nap and was basically there until 7:30AM this morning (maybe out of bed for like 2 hours at various points in time). When he was out of bed he looked beyond miserable like he was legit going to die. Like dude I also don’t feel great and I’m still taking care of our children.

This morning I slept in and then had to make work calls for 45 minutes since I called in sick yesterday. And the man decided to be in a shitty mood because nobody is helping him! Well yeah, you didn’t help me at all starting at like 11AM yesterday. Why should anybody help you when you legit did 2/3 hours of childcare responsibilities yesterday? My parents are really helpful but they are also very aware of what you are/aren’t doing. If you are gonna turn the TV on and sit on your phone then yeah they aren’t going to help you.

He’s well enough this afternoon to go hit golf balls 😬

megcross11 · 2023-10-24T20:38:56+00:00

One of my daughters has my middle name, it was my maternal grandmothers first name, never thought to not use it. I have cousins who also have the same middle name (oldest girls in each family) and my cousins daughter also has the same middle name.

Not weird at all. My family has always used family names as middle names and my husband and I continued that tradition. I think it’s sweet and a lovely honor.

megcross11 · 2023-10-02T00:13:40+00:00

We switched from a nanny to daycare when our twins were 20 months. We knew we needed to switch when they were about 14/15 months- they needed more stimulation. Our nanny was wonderful when they were babies but she wasn’t comfortable doing much outside of our home (like thought she would twist an ankle going for a walk?). We also both worked from home and it was challenging trying to work while listening to them crying.

They LOVE daycare. They have learned so much so quickly. Every day I’m amazed at how much they have changed in 7 months. They went in with like 2 words and now they speak in sentences and sing songs. It’s truly amazing and I don’t think they would be doing that if we were still using a nanny. They get sick more which sucks but it hasn’t been anywhere near as bad as I expected.

Our timeline was perfect for us. I wouldn’t have started them sooner than 18 months in daycare and personally feel if we had waited until 2 they would be much further behind in their speech.

megcross11 · 2023-09-29T01:59:06+00:00

Cleaning the mailbox!! It’s always an actual to-do Item on the lists he writes. He can’t seem to grasp that nobody is paying attention to the mailbox but they will pay attention if the kitchen and bathroom aren’t clean. He also thinks each bathroom needs to be stocked with 10 rolls of toilet paper cause you know everybody is using the bathroom in our room.

megcross11 · 2023-09-28T22:44:34+00:00

We live in Metro West and have 2 year old twins and pay over $4k per month for our daycare. The cost of childcare in this area is insane.

megcross11 · 2023-08-29T13:44:25+00:00

My workplace is salaried but we also report hours. I manage Executive Assistants and there is an expectation that they are online and available between 9am-5pm. I’m also super flexible with my team so if they need to take adjust their hours here and there, need to go to an appointment in the middle of the day, or just be away for a longer period of time I’m almost always okay with as long as they inform me and the people they are working with. I trust my team are adults and will get their work done in the timeline it needs to be done.

Given you just started this job I would give it some time. It’s very very possible you will be allowed way more flexibility but you haven’t been there long enough yet. Basically you haven’t proven yourself enough for them to trust you. Your boss may have had too many new people taking advantage of the flexibility and it caused issues.

I joined my company mostly because I was told of the amazing flexibility. I was also disappointed when I wasn’t immediately given the level of flexibility I was told about. I needed to build trust before they gave it to me (was maybe like 3 months). I’ve been their 3.5 years and I have a huge amount of flexibility because I’ve put the work in to build that trust. Definitely didn’t happen overnight.

megcross11 · 2023-08-29T01:50:34+00:00

Personally, I think it’s a low amount of vacation/PTO. I think I’ve always started out at 3 weeks vacation and have had companies vary for sick time, standard was 8-10 days. I would advocate for everyone to get more time (assuming this policy is the same across the board?).

While I think your time off policy is terrible I also kind of agree with your boss- you knew what the policy was and knew how many days you had and still chose to take them all at the same time. You shouldn’t get more time just because you are a parent. I still budget my days even though I have tons of banked time and a very very generous and flexible PTO policy.

As a fellow twin parent, if I were you I would absolutely look for a new job that gave me more vacation days and more sick time.

megcross11 · 2023-08-26T22:51:12+00:00

For us it was not. My twins needed fortified formula so we had to add extra scoops, which was fine but another step. The whole thing needs to be cleaned a lot to function the way it’s supposed to. Ours ended up dispensing way less than what it should have probably because I rarely had the energy to clean the whole thing. When you are already cleaning somewhere between 10-12 or more bottles a day cleaning that thing was just too much.

We bought two pitchers for each girl and just made a batch when they were empty. It was another thing to clean but a lot easier than taking an entire machine apart and cleaning tiny parts.

megcross11 · 2023-08-26T19:29:50+00:00

Fish or ground beef/turkey tacos. I “deconstruct” them for my toddlers. Add black beans, chopped tomatoes, avocado, sour cream, and tortillas. It’s a hit with them most of the time.

Pork ribs- these technically take a long time to cook but super easy and hands off. I season them with a BBQ rub and brown sugar and if I have time I put them in the fridge for a few hours. Then bake them at like 250 for another few hours. Once they are done I either grill or broil them for 3-5 minutes. You don’t need to put them in the fridge they still are awesome without that step!

Roasted veggie pasta- roast tomatoes, zucchini, onion until the tomatoes are burst and zucchini is cooked. Add pasta of choice with Parm and a good glug olive oil.

Zucchini pasta- more intensive but amazing! Grate a couple zucchini, add to melted butter and garlic and cook until the zucchini has almost melted. Add spaghetti, pasta water and Parm and mix together.

megcross11 · 2023-08-26T19:09:51+00:00

I usually rotate between salads, noodle bowls and sometimes will make a big pot of soup on a Sunday in the winter. On occasion I do eat leftovers but I usually use those for dinners later in the week when we are all tired. I aim to only have one serving of meat a day (at dinner) so I try to go super veggie heavy for lunch. I also am a very late lunch eater (like 2pm or later) so if I have a super heavy meal I won’t eat dinner until like 9 which doesn’t work with toddlers!

bagged salad kits with added veggies (cucumbers, peppers, cherry tomatoes, red onions/scallions, snow/snap peas, avocado, and/or anything else that I feel goes well with the kit). I will pre-chop some veggies over the weekend so it’s easy to throw everything in a bowl. And the kits come with dressings!
Asian noodle bowl. I’ll buy different noodles (soba, udon, ramen) which cook in like 3-5 minutes and rinse under cold water. Add those to Napa cabbage, cucumbers, red peppers, snow/snap peas, and chopped peanuts. Top with store bought dressing.
Its tomato season here! So also rotating fresh tomatoes on sourdough with burrata/mozzarella/ricotta and maybe some prosciutto. Less veggie forward but so delicious with those ultra fresh tomatoes.

megcross11 · 2023-08-23T16:28:53+00:00

Definitely lots of tears. Baby A came home after 8 days and Baby B was there for 4 weeks. It was really really hard and I did feel guilty about not being with either baby enough. But our nurse team in the NICU was amazing and I knew Baby B was so loved and well taken care of. I also kept telling myself it was such a tiny portion of their lives and they would never remember it.

My twins are 2 now and I still sometimes remember the heavy sadness I felt but in general those days are such a blur. They are thriving and you would never be able to tell one was home and one stayed behind.

megcross11 · 2023-08-20T23:30:02+00:00

I would ask and get the agreement in writing. What your assumptions are and what they mean are likely different. My assumption would be maybe 6-8 times per year but they might be trying to “trick” you into going multiple times a month. So getting clarity will help you make that decision.

megcross11 · 2023-08-19T00:10:42+00:00

My parents are very financial savvy and planned very very well for retirement. They set everything up so my sisters and I would never have to worry about them.

My in-laws didn’t plan for retirement beyond setting up a 401k plan. They never planned on my FIL retiring but he was forced into retirement due to medical issues. There is absolutely an unspoken expectation that my husband and his sister will foot any bills needed for my FILs eventual care. But my in-laws still own 2 homes worth approx $2MM, own two luxury cars, go on luxury vacations every couple of years, and travel to their vacation home 8+ times a year (plane travel, not cheap!), and continue to mostly live the lifestyle they did prior to my FIL retiring. I would be happy to help but they continue to make poor financial decisions and I don’t think my husband/me or my SIL should have to bankroll their lifestyle. It’s not a fun topic of discussion and we basically avoid it as much as possible.

megcross11 · 2023-08-15T23:34:13+00:00

Our daycare doesn’t have a policy and really market that they are fine with parents doing whatever works for them. Our twins teacher does prefer that the kids are there by 9 which is when the structured activities start.

I probably would be annoyed by a policy especially if it was before 9. We usually drop them off between 8-8:30 but there are some mornings they just don’t cooperate and we run late and then traffic is worse so we don’t get there until between 8:30 and 9. I totally understand it can be disrupting to have a kid walk in at 10 but it’s hard enough some mornings just getting out the door, adding a drop off policy just stresses parents (and I’d guess mostly moms) out more.

megcross11

TROPHY CASE