A Parent in America and A Parent in Silver Spring staff member Corinne Gracyalny always has such great style. Even when she comes over with her hair in a huge top knot and yoga pants, she looks fierce. I asked her to share her favorite stores and picks for us. The perimeters were “current and affordable.” Here’s what she recommends.

Hot Mama Picks by Corinne Gracyalny

Shopping for clothes after you have kids must be harder. When do you find the time? But have no fear! Check out my top 3 amazing, diverse and fun online stores for savvy style.

ZARA offers sophisticated, sexy, and classic clothing at an affordable price. Everyone from the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton (an expectant mom herself!), to young postgraduates like me wears these gorgeous clothes.

If you are shopping for a new coat, you cannot go wrong with the ZARA’s short coat with bell sleeves. This beautiful, military style coat is great with colored jeans and a cute blouse. Perfect for winter and will take you to spring.You can wear it anywhere, everywhere, and at $169 for top-quality construction, it’s a smart buy.

MADEWELL is also an amazing store. Although it maybe a little more expensive than Old Navy, the pieces are so well made and definitely worth the purchase. They carry the best denim pieces in colors and just regular old washes, but what some people don’t know is that they have some gorgeous dresses, too.

Colored jeans are everywhere on the runways. Denim is always in so have a little fun from the normal jean and go crazy. These maroon skinny jeans are perfect with a blouse or a denim shirt. Although $69.50-$78 is not cheap, when you pull them on you really see the difference between MADEWELL denim and discount stores.

My final suggestion for post baby shopping is definitely TOPSHOP. This UK-based store combines all the latest trends from classic to rock star to street. It’s a great way to put yourself out there through style and just have fun! They always have great finds and will carry you season to season.

The peplum dresses are totally in right now, can transition from day/night or work/evening and flatter the figure. This affordable peplum top is perfect for a holiday party or date night when paired with a skirt or pants already in your closet, and for less than $40 you are totally on-trend.

I hope you all find these stores as exciting and fun to shop in as I do. Clothes don’t have to crazy expensive or from 5^th Avenue to be in style. Happy shopping!

The wickedly smart and funny Corinne Gracyalny has joined the A Parent in America/A Parent in Silver Spring staff to help me keep the websites up to date and contribute key coolness insights to us slightly-older parental units. I‘ve dubbed her column “Corinne Keeps Us Cool.”

Although Corinne may sometimes be found wearing less-than-sturdy shoes, she is serious about sturdiness in one aspect of her life: her iPhone! Read on for her recommendation and real-world review of the Otterbox Defender iPhone case.

Then leave a comment to win your very own new Otterbox case for the iPhone 5. In a happy coincidence, after Corinne wrote this piece I received a brand new one at the #ATTBloggerBrunch! I am happy to pass along to you, a lucky reader, for your own use OR your gifting to a family member this holiday (retail $25).

Unbreakable! by Corinne Gracyalny

Everyone knows that kids - especially young kids (like Jessica’s daughter Alice) — love to play with everything. Your keys, your makeup, your purse, but most of all, your phone. Since our phones are essential to our lives but irresistible to the kids, it’s important to keep our phones safe from little fingers.

Take it from someone who spends a lot of time with an 18 month year old: my iPhone’s life is always at stake.

Otterbox cases are by far the best in the world! They are fairly inexpensive (about $15 for iPhone 4/4s and $25 for iPhone 5), heavy duty and perfect for moms with young children, college students…anyone who leads a fast-paced and unpredictable life.

The case combines a hard plastic case that covers the phone, a cover for its sensitive glass screen and a thick rubber casing around the plastic. They come in vivid or classic colors, single- and two-toned. You can individualize your phone to your personality and easily recognize it. They are the best.

To win your own Otterbox Defender Case in Punk blue/green for the iPhone 5:

• Leave a comment on this post with a Corinne Keeps Us Cool topic suggestion.

• Tweet your suggestion for a blog topic to @jessicaapiss with the hashtag #giveaway.

We will randomly drawn the winner from all comments in one week on Tuesday November 27 at 8 p.m. Eastern.

Thanks to AT&T for providing the case for the giveaway! Affiliate links are used.

Ellen Schnackenberg is an active patient advocate and blogger at Migraine.com.

There is a myth that children don’t experience migraine attacks. The truth is that migraine doesn’t discriminate on the basis of age, gender, skin color or anything else. Although they are more likely to occur as a child ages, even infants can suffer migraine. Our family experienced this when our son began experiencing them when he was only a few months old.

Diagnosing migraine in children can be tricky because the symptoms of migraine are common to other disorders and diseases as well. There is no test for migraine disease, and children often lack the vocabulary to be able to tell us what symptoms they are experiencing. Compounding the problem, children are often fearful their pain is something catastrophic like a brain tumor, and will often be afraid to talk to their parents about their symptoms.

The diagnosis of migraine is one of exclusion – once you’ve excluded everything else, migraine is more likely to be the culprit. Testing for these other things will be important though, because it is vital to rule out serious disorders and diseases and not simply to assume migraine or other headache is the reason for the child’s symptoms. Please understand that your child’s doctor will order these tests to rule bad things out, not because he/she suspects your child has a serious disease or disorder.

Infants and children present with Migraine symptoms that are different from adults. We’re not sure why. Knowing the symptoms of migraine in children is important, especially if there is a history of migraine or other headache disorders in the child’s family.

Some of the symptoms a child may have include:

• Pain that is often pounding or throbbing on both sides or in the front of the head in young children. As children get older, symptoms usually become isolated to one side. Sides may change from one attack to another.
• Symptoms that may seem flu-like, such as irritability; nausea and/or vomiting; a desire to sleep or lay down in a dark, quiet place; stomach pain; appetite loss; paleness; dehydration. Your child may sleep a lot, or not at all. Attacks usually only last hours however, where flu lasts days.
• Aura: your child may come to you saying that their eyesight is funny, or something “feels strange” before their pain begins. You may have to ask more direct questions to pinpoint the exact symptoms your child is experiencing. Having a list of these symptoms is very helpful for your doctor.
• Infants may seem to have a recurring earache, crying and tugging at the ear, or rubbing the head or eyes. However the pain lasts hours, often seems to go away with a nap, and there will be no abnormal findings when the ears are examined.

Diagnosis is very important in children, because it is the first step toward getting the attacks under control and keeping them there, minimizing the chance that episodic (occasional) migraine will transform to more troublesome, disruptive and difficult to treat chronic migraine. Diagnosis also means you can be prepared for the next attack. Packing a migraine tool bag is a great way to minimize the disturbance a Migraine may have on the child and his/her family.

If the child has migraine, learning about and eliminating triggers will be important. A trigger is something that makes it more likely for a migraine to start. Frequent triggers include food and food additives, weather, illness or injury, change in sleep patterns, fluorescent lighting, crying, caffeine. Almost anything can be a potential trigger in some people, and triggers tend to cumulate over days, so detective work using a notebook may be the best first thing a parent can start with.

New medications have been approved by the FDA for migraine attacks in children of certain age groups. Controlling migraine attacks early is important, so be sure your child’s physician is well versed in migraine and headache disorders and is aware of these new options. If there is a doubt, please seek the help of a board certified headache specialist. There are currently 290 of them throughout the United States, and all they do every day is diagnose and treat these disorders. They stay current on the latest and greatest discoveries and therapies and are the best resource for the care of migraine and headache.

Disclosure: This is a compensated guest post.