Ditto. I'd be interested in seeing the original data, particularly which programs they chose as "educational."

We just got a grapefruit tree -- can't wait for it to be full of delicious fruit! I think I'll lurk in case anyone comes up with more recipes. The granitas sounds scrumptious. :lurk5:

It would get me too. I can't tell what that word is supposed to be. :(

:lol::lol::lol: Nu-cue-lar isn't a word either and our venerable ex-president used it all the time.

Old allegory -- doesn't work anymore with modern science. So, yes, you can the wind if you have the right equipment. The same is true for the brain/soul/mind. When you use a functional MRI, you can see the portions of the brain that light up when the subject experiences love. You can see anger, you can see what part of the brain generates each emotion. It is possible to "see" a person thinking about art and it looks very different than when the same person is thinking about math. What you cannot see is anything like the Judeo-Christian concept of a soul. There is no science to back it up at all. All you see are trillions of little brain cells talking to each other -- from this cacophony arises the perception of self and for some, the sense of a soul. By the way, you can see God in the brain too. See here: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/10/god-brai/ and here: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/religionbrain/

Clairvoyance is not required for good mothering. If the child doesn't ask for anything and doesn't seem to want anything, then whatever you get her will be fine.

My 10.75-year-old is 4'11 and weighs 80 pounds. (Almost exactly like the poster above me and mine wears 12 slims also.) He eats like the world is going to end tomorrow, but he's skinny as a rail. He's a competitive swimmer and in his little racing shorts he looks like a little stick figure. He's very wiry and strong. The other day I tried to pick him up and I couldn't. :( He only looks light. He's heavy! I guess because he has so little fluffly fat, all he's got is heavy muscles and bones. Ack -- I can't pick up my last baby any more. :(

What kind of withdrawal symptoms do you get? I never get any when I go off Prozac and I'm wondering if those symptoms are a function of the Paxil, or just the way you experience coming off anti-depressants.

I have taken Prozac on and off for the last 10 years. The longest I've taken them is 18 months just precisely straddling my last period. It's the worse I've been and my doctor told me that was very expected during menopause since I'm predisposed. The shortest time I've taken it is six months. My depression is always accompanied by anxiety and hypochondria. The Prozac has worked well for me. It takes about 2 months to kick in. I know the signs now and keep startup Prozac on hand. The instant I feel it coming on, I take my first pill and call my doctor for an appointment. This has worked well for me. If I don't start to medicate immediately, I'll get too depressed to see the doctor and then I just let it slide which is a bad, bad thing. I've been off Prozac since... now that I come to think of it, I've been off since my last period two years ago. Can't say I miss either one. I understand your feelings of failure when your meds stop working. Although I've always used the same medicine, I have felt that sense of failure when out of the blue one day I wake up and I know it's coming back. I always feel that I have no right to be sad -- I have everything I could ever want and more. I live a charmed life. I have no right to be sad. That's nonsense, but one still feels that way. For some people depression is a life-long condition. It is not a mental disease. It is a physical disease like diabetes -- a chemical imbalance that is treatable if not curable. That being said, my doctor prophesied five years ago that I'd be done with my depression when I was done with my periods. She was right. I'm still vigilant -- it's so easy to slip under the water without realizing it. But I understand my condition and I've got a handle on it. If your condition requires that you take medications for years, then so be it. Diabetics take insulin their entire lives -- that's no indication of their character or worth. Last, you should know that there is a lot of basic research being done right now. Soon it will be much easier for your doctor to prescribe the right anti-depressant the first time. There's no way to do that now -- it's completely hit and miss. Take your meds, take care of yourself, and leave the feelings of guilt and failure behind you.

There are too many false positives with these markers to get too upset over. And if all he found was one marker, well... I'm not going to tell you not to worry about it because you're going to do that anyway. Get whatever further screening will calm your nerves. That being said, a child with Downs Syndrome is not a catastrophe. The fact is that none of our children turned out exactly the way we envisioned them. The two children I've known with Downs are sweet, delicious cuddle-bunnies who are consistent sources of joy to their parents, siblings and everyone that they come near. I know how this sort of thing can eat away at you. Last time I was pregnant, my first ultrasound showed an empty sac. The midwife told me it looked like a blighted ovum. She suggested waiting a few to see what would happen. My blighted ovum is 10-years old, skinny as a rail, and eating me out of house and home.

Can you point to the place in the human body where this soul is located? Science has tried to find it for thousands of years and it seems illusive. Does the Bible say where this soul is located? Where is your soul when you faint? When you're under anesthesia? And does it go to purgatory when one dies, or do only Catholic souls go to purgatory? Do protestant souls go straight to heaven?

If by soul you mean a personality that transcends death, then no, dogs don't have souls and neither do people. When the brain stops working, the individual identity of that being disappears. Once a person is dead, all that is left is the legacy they built during their life. To echo a previous poster, I don't believe in heaven, but if there is, I'm not going without my hounds! :001_smile:

We are done until the first week of January except for the three R's. We'll continue with reading, writing and math, and we'll spend the rest of the time enjoying the holidays.

Every gift should be returned promptly.

Most active kids can't get enough in just three meals. Their stomachs aren't big enough, so they tend to graze. All my kids needed snacks before bed. My youngest is thin as a rail, eats three big healthy meals, plus several snacks every day and he still has to have something to eat or he'll pester me until he gets fed. Once his belly is full, he brushes his teeth, gets into bed, reads or listens to his book until he falls asleep. You can give her: Cereal (hot or cold) PBJ Sandwich Fresh fruit Raw vegetables A glass of milk or juice Dinner leftovers Some people's metabolisms are that way. Heck, in Spain everybody is that way. Dinner is at 10:00 pm, they talk, drink, and eat till 11, and are in bed at 11:30 or midnight. Personally, that would give me heartburn, but in some countries a large meal just before bedtime is common.

She always "just had one." :) That family sure loves babies -- hopefully the baby will gain weight and all will be right. These days they can bring around tiny babies that would have been lost 20 years ago, plus she knows how to take care of herself when she's pregnant, so the baby has a lot going for her.

That's bad. :( Wikipedia says: "50 to 70 percent of babies born at 24 to 25 weeks [are viable]." But it jumps to 90% at 26 weeks. I hope things turn out well.

Put the balls of yarn, just as they come from the store, but without the paper or plastic wrapper, in a mesh laundry bag and drop it in the washing machine with regular laundry detergent. (Whatever you do, don't unravel them -- you'll never get it in a ball again.) You can do it along with your other wash of similar colors and textiles. Toss in the dryer, bag and all, when you're done. Either in the wash or in the dryer, you'll need fabric softener so it doesn't go all kinky on you. Do the same thing with your unfinished piece, then dry it flat on a towel. Do a few at a time unless you have several laundry mesh bags. If you do not have a mesh laundry bag, a small pillow case with a zipper or anything made of *thin* fabric with a zipper so the yarn doesn't spill out will do. This will take care of years-old cat pee as well as kid-barf. Ask me how I know. ;)

DVD43 works for the locked DVD's.

There are tons of Wiccans and earthfolk in Australia. Right now you'd be celebrating Litha (summer solstice), so you can decorate your tree with summer symbols. Decorate your tree with with garlands of flowers, shells, symbols of the sun, and anything else that makes you think of summer. Decorate with summer fruits and sunflowers. If bonfires are an option, now is the time. Colors are red, orange, bright yellows. Use symbols of the sun in your cooking - corn cakes, berries, seasonal vegetables, honey cakes, fruit salad and freshly baked bread, anything round and yellow, and seasonal fruits and vegetables. Blessed Litha to you and everyone Down Under.

Right click > info > make any changes you want.

I'm hoping to find a guide that doesn't include the dogma -- I guess that's what I was looking for. I teach the Bible and other sacred texts as great books, not as the word of God. (We're atheists.) So I'd love to find a guide that will help us explore all the wonderful Christian symbology without promoting Christian world view. Also, as an aside, Wikipedia disagrees that the author wrote these books to teach Christianity. and

We use both Alice and Scratch. Ds loves them. Dh takes the lead teaching that, and he uses each program for different types of applications. He thinks they're a great learning tool.

I wouldn't pay for a timeline. I create my own to put in a notebook and download images from the Internet to make the figures. I've been doing this for a while, so I have a system. I print them on card stock and slip them into sheet protectors while we work on them this year. I don't want to put three holes in them because when we're all done SOTW 4 next year, I'll take the entire thing and have it spiral bound as a keepsake, and also to study from. Once a month I make a list of the historical figures and events we're going to put in our time line. I open a tab on my browser to Wikipedia and another to Google images search. I copy and paste images to a Word document, then paste the name and birth/death dates below the images. (I use a table to make a grid I can then cut out. I get 15 images per page, landscape, 5 columns, 3 rows.) If you follow the link in my signature you can download a pdf with my time line sheets from 1500-1800 (it's what we're covering this year). If you need different years, pm me and I'll send you my original Word file and you can change the dates and print your own.

We used Saxon for a few months several years ago. Ds couldn't tolerate the snail-pace and the constant rehash of material of which he had already achieved mastery. Review is fine, but dragging every bit of new knowledge with you for the rest of the year is too much. It drove him crazy, and it drove me crazy. At that point ds decided he hated math more than anything in the world. That seemed like a good time to drop Saxon and we've been using Singapore Math ever since. This year we bought TT as a supplement. I bought it mainly to cover any gaps when I switched from the US Edition to the California Standards Edition of Singapore. Ds loves it. He's covered so much ground that now he's ahead in Singapore Math and I'm going to have to skip a level. I love that I don't have to teach it. I'm not a mathy person, so I appreciate that someone else is teaching the complicated concepts. I know how to do the stuff, I'm just not that confident that I can explain it. Ds does a lesson a day when we're doing other stuff too. When we're taking a few days off Singapore or we have a light day otherwise, he does two lessons and he's happy to do them. As far as he's concerned, it's as close to a video game as he's going to get during the school day!:lol: Even though TT is more expensive, it resells for almost it's retail value. You can resell it right here on this board and get $100 back. I sold my first set the same day I put up an ad (not here), and got $100 for it. My net cost for the level 5 set was $30. That's cheaper than Saxon. Also, there is no need to buy the student workbook. The learner needs scratch paper to work out the problem anyway. Then he has to type in the answer into his computer. Why make him hand write it in the workbook too? Just print out his scores and keep them in your little one's portfolio. I can't recommend TT enough. I was one of the "doubters," but I took a chance and I'm glad I did.