That’s the brand that we have. D1 fits into 3T still and she wears 5/6 in clothing.
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Yeah I was gonna say, I don’t know size to size how they run, but overall they run really big.
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Perfect, I’d say the ones I have were probably the exact same from costco as a private label, but I’m not fully sure. 3T we see a lot of ankle. I think I’ll keep an eye out for either used! @brackenjoy I loved your nikwax tip.
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The nice thing depending on how tall their rainboot is, is that you can get a good run up the leg from that 
If you have tall/thin dimensions for a kid, as they get older, you can also look for the bib pants style and a lot of people apparently get multiple years out of those. 
just replace the coats as their arms get longer but the bib pants last a long time, while still getting some waist protection in downpours.
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I would call your description of his toileting level potty trained. 4-years-olds still have accidents frequently. It sounds as if he can read his body’s cues and understands all the steps. He’s just not too good at knowing how far he can push it and would rather not stop what he’s doing to attend to it. Pretty typical for 4, I 'd say.
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Following up on the birthday party discussion on @Meowkins journal -
I’m stressing out. I had a plan for a park birthday party, picked a weekend, picked a park, checked that both picnic sites at that park were available both days of that weekend. Then I stalled for 1 week, and both picnic sites were completely booked for both weekend days. I cannot find another reservable site near us for that weekend. My sister already booked her plane tickets so I cannot change the weekend.
Here are my options:
Park 1: I reserved a site and paid but I just found out it’s not the site I thought. There’s no playground. It’s about 20 min drive from our house but very close to daycare so attendance shouldn’t be a problem. I can bring in a bounce house but will likely need to plan other activities for the kids since it’s just an open field. Planning kid activities is not my strength you guys.
Park 2: 5 minute walk from our house. All picnic tables are non reservable (first come first serve). There is a great playground. I think as a backup I can borrow or buy folding tables and then return them if we don’t use them. But the non-reservable part stresses me out. It is further from daycare and where most daycare friends live but I think it’ll be okay. No bounce house.
Either way we will order pizza and serve lunch. My sister is flying in to help so there will be three adults. I also have a 6 month old baby in addition to the birthday boy. Daycare class is about 20 kids, generally good attendance (10-15) at birthday parties, plus about 3-5 neighborhood friends.
What should I do? I’m leaning toward Option 2 but open to lawn game suggestions that don’t require too much adult oversight.
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I think Park 2 works fine 
We didn’t have a reservable place either, but the folding tables gave us peace of mind. Perk of non-reserved place is that if there is lower attendance from daycare, there will be other friends on the playground to play with who are just randomly playing at the park that day!
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Absolutely agree on all points. And also what we’re doing for Latte’s friends birthday! Non reservable, playground, closer to us than school friends, etc
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I think park 2 will be fine but I totally understand the stress. Which sounds more fun for you?
If you go with park 1 some other activity ideas are: paper and crayons for coloring, make your own crown coloring kits, bubble machine or kiddy-pools with some bubble mix and bubble wands, soccer balls, bring-your-own scooter/bike.
It looks like the weather will be nice this weekend (at our party) but we’ve have misty rain on Pipsqueak’s birthday before so I wanted to make sure there was a covered picnic area reserved for my own peace of mind. So we spent much more money to have a place reserved and it looks like we won’t need it but I’ve been sleeping better all month because of it lol.
I’m not sure if you were looking to reserve at a park in my city, but the online reservations will all show unavailable if you are within 30 days. Within 30 days you can still book sites in person at the parks and rec office. They are super helpful and answer the phone when you call.
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Park 2 and hire some teenagers or college students to play. Bring as many balls as you can find, bubbles, chalk, and a beanbag toss.
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Park 2
Ideas
Picnic blankets/tablecloths so you only need one folding table
Bubbles
Balloons
Bean bag toss
Pin the tail
Bin of toys that can survive - plastic animals, trucks, mega blocks
Watercolour paints for directly on pavement
A handful of ride along toys (borrowed)
Playdough
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Okay this is genius I will be implementing this
Thanks all - I’ll talk to Husband tonight but I’m leaning toward Park 2. To be clear, if there’s a playground I will be organizing nothing other than food and cake 
(which is what all the other playground birthday parties have been like as well). It’s only if there’s no playground (as in Park 1) where I feel like I need to have things for the kids to do.
@Sunflower I’m primarily looking at County sites because County lets you book online, whereas my city (where Park 2 is) is all non-reservable for picnic tables. LA is weird.
I’ve already figured out that if it rains I cancel the party but invite bestie from daycare + neighborhood friends to our house and it will be complete chaos.
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This sounds awesome. I think you have it handled!! We also told people to bring picnic blankets or camp/lawn chairs if they felt inclined it’s good to have options!!
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What are your strategies for baby proofing with another young child in the house?
We’ve got the basics covered (I.e furniture anchored, outlets plugged, kitchen is gated,etc). It’s all the random bits of toys from Child #1 that I worry about being a choking hazard for Baby. Child mostly plays out in the living room because there’s not a lot of space in his room, but we could put some buckets with baby-proof lids in his room but I worry about consistently putting the small pieces away.
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We fenced the baby until they wanted OUT and then we used the fence + furniture to hold the fence steady to cut 1/3 off our large loungeroom and put all the small toys in there. That worked for our particular loungeroom but I’m not sure what I’d do in another layout.
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Dd1 was 5 by the time dd2 was crawling, and she really was pretty good about playing with small stuff up on the table. I was pretty darned vigilant because dh has a choking phobia.
With dd3 we had a larger place and all small things had to stay in the bedroom which we gated off. This must have worked as dd3 is alive and well today. 
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We got one of those baby enclosures and instead of making it the baby space, we made it the big kid space. It was in the main room of the house, but had all the little stuff that baby couldn’t have, or big kid didn’t want her to have. Big kid was able to manipulate the gate and loved being in the room with us, but being able to come and go and get away from baby, especially once baby started being mobile.
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Ooooh this is definitely what will work best for us. Call it Latte’s office and have it be her special big girl space.
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Ours are close in age, so we didn’t let little toys except LEGO come in, and that was after pregnancy, so stayed in Dad’s office for supervised play, then the guest room for unsupervised play.
Plasticine etc should stay at the table, but we found/still find some in poop.
In bigger toy sets unnecessary small pieces disappear during unpacking. The wooden mechano type sets need their little bits so we just supervise the baby when those are out
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Random info
The last podcast of Good Inside/Dr. Becky was really good. It talked about self care and also that when self care isn’t working it is because we are doing the self care for the old version of us. And that it is super hard to figure out what new me needs.
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