Levothyroxine is a synthetic T4 and has the trade name Synthroid. Liothyronine, which has the trade name Cytomel, is synthetic T3.

Bar mop towels and cloth prefold diapers are what we use. We still keep some paper towels around (I'm not putting a cloth diaper over a bowl in the microwave to keep it from splattering the inside of the microwave while it heats even if that diaper has never seen a baby's bum) but spills get wiped up with bar mops or prefolds. If it's a huge spill (full gallon or more) we use old towels that are no longer used for drying off after a shower but still have a little bit of life left in them. They work well for vomit too because if it is just too gross to wash and reuse, I have no problem throwing the old towel away. I've even been known to buy old towels at the thrift store when they are $1 or less per towel. Sometimes our towels just don't wear out fast enough so I'm always looking for cheap or free towels even if they are on their last leg. Like was said above about fabric softener is a huge part of what reduces the effectiveness of towels. I was them with a cup or two of white vinegar to help keep them soft but still absorbent. I still dry in the dryer (knowing that any residue is going to get on them) but they really do work better if you can line dry. Also if your water is less than perfect, salts, minerals and other matter in the water can build up on everything you wash too and make towels less absorbent as a result. Our water is naturally very soft but full of iron. I can tell when the filter needs attention because my towels start pushing water around instead of absorbing it. Putting a cup of borax or washing soda (or both) in with the towels helps correct minor water imperfections if you are on city water.

Math is always one of our biggest time sinks not because we do or don't use a program but because I consider it important. I devote most of our school time to the 3 r's. The rest is just gravy. When we are in a difficult season of life, like just having had a baby, we touch base on the 3r's and then watch educational tv together (PBS kids is get for the elementary school age child) or listen to audiobooks together, or I will read aloud when I'm nursing the baby. Reading aloud is good for both your older kids and the baby! Thirty minutes actually is less than what we do. We do around an hour or so of math but broken up into 15 - 20 minute bites throughout the day. So we may spend one session on a worksheet that is nothing but review for 20 mins in the morning. Then we will play with whatever math concept we are currently working on for 20 mins or so after lunch. Then in the evening after dinner, we might play a game. It might be a game you can get at Wally World or it might be something from Ravensberger or Learning Resources or sometimes it's an online math game of some sort or sometimes it is a game from TPT or some other online sort that I printed out. We are working a lot on counting coins right now. Two of his favorite games at the moment are Don't Break the Bank and Coin War. (I'm on my phone right now and it is hard to link but I will add links later) I found those by Googling the skill I wanted him to get more practice on, in this case "counting coins", and the word "game" and I literally had more choices than we could possibly use. Oh another one he likes is Race to a Dollar. But really, you can enter any math skill and add the word game and then Google it. You can find quick and easy or very elaborate games as fast as you can click on them. I agree with the posters above, you just had a baby, he's only eight, still a baby himself really, and math is important but so is your sanity and your relationship with your son. It is okay to take a break until you have recovered and maybe getting to sleep more than just a couple of hours at a time. I can tell you from experience that everything will be fine. My grown kids, 21, 19 and 18 now are all competent young adults holding jobs and the 18yo is going to school as well as working. None of them suffered any life altering consequences from taking several months off from formal school when their younger siblings (currently 13, 11 and 7) were born. I remember questioning myself too when I was in your shoes but I can tell you now that it all worked out just fine and you would never know we took breaks when ever we needed them. The 18yo is my math whiz even. She has always scored in the upper 90th percentiles on standardized tests in math. My 19yo regularly wowed his LA teachers when he went to public school in Jr high/high school because even though he had a LA based learning disability, given the proper supports for that disability, he was regularly in the top of his class. My oldest was just an average student but he still loves to read and write stories that fill entire notebooks. They may not be on their way to being rocket scientists but I consider them all to be successful. They are competent young adults able to manage on their own in society and for the most part, doing what they love or on their way to doing what they love. Got off on a tangent there, but whether you decide to stick with your math program (which by the way, I also disagree with the "math is math" sentiment but this post is long enough already) or venture in to winging it on your own, make sure you and your son are getting enough rest to properly focus on a lesson without dissolving into tears. If baby is demanding attention 24/7 still, you can take a break until things are more settled and baby is in a good routine. Even teachers in schools get at least 6 weeks to start feeling human again. You might not have the luxury of having a sub fill in for you but I promise your son will still be fine at his young age.

Yeah, it sounds like it is easier for you to just buy a lot of things pre-made that we print because it is cheaper/easier for us to do it that way. I tried with youngest ds to transition to regular notebook paper but his handwriting went from acceptable for his age to illegible when we did that so I started out using the primary lined paper option on our printer to just print him paper as needed but of course it wasn't working well, ds thought the lines were spaced too far so we tried a few different styles of paper until we landed on some Australian style primary paper. He really liked it and his handwriting improved again significantly so I made some custom(of course lol) paper for him with a spacing of the lines that is comfortable for him (just slightly larger than wide ruler notebook paper) and now he is making progress with handwriting again with much less fuss over having to write.

Yeah, I think that might be splitting hairs a bit. Any teacher can (and should) make sure the meaning of the equals sign is understood no matter what curriculum or lack thereof they are using. I think many curricula assume that the students know what an equals sign really means. Of course, that isn't always the case, some teachers don't even understand the concept as simple as it is. I know this from having tutored education majors lol. Some kids understand the concept intuitively and some need to be taught explicitly but I don't think I could fault a program for not teaching it explicitly. But I've always made sure my kids understood the meaning from the beginning so I might not be the best person to evaluate curriculum based on that criteria. As you said before though, you will notice when something is missing or not strong enough. And it is easy enough to fill in those holes and strengthen those concepts that are lagging as you go along. I don't see gaps as a problem honestly in any subject. So long as you are willing to watch out for them and fill them in as needed, they are nothing more than learning opportunities and very often can be used to show why you need that skill.

We are, more or less, unschooling a soon-to-be 7yo (in less than a week) as well and I find that I print out more things when we unschool than when we are following a curriculum. Besides homemade worksheets, I print out primary lined paper to practice writing, we make books and we will print out covers and pictures to go in it, I printout games and mats to put in dry erase sleeves to learn about or practice topics in all subjects... then there's crafts and mazes and other random kid stuff I would print out even if we weren't homeschooling. I've lived in a house overseas, less than 900 square feet, and we were a family of 6 back then, and I still had a printer. lol I think it is interesting what one family prioritizes over another when confined in a small space. Come to think of it, our current house isn't much more than 1000 sq ft and now we have two! lol

Math On The Level gives a very thorough list of topics to be covered from preschool through pre-algebra that you can do in any order you like. But most if not all math programs at least give the table of contents in their samples. You could really pick any one you want and use the ToC as your guide for topics to cover if you wanted to be sure you didn't miss anything.

We have both a color inkjet printer and as of a few weeks ago when I found one on clearance for less than $100, a b&w laser printer. lol I cannot imagine trying to homeschool without a printer for more than a few weeks like when we had to pack it up for a move. Even then I would print up everything I thought I might need and then some before packing it up to get us through until I could hook up the printer again. lol You are indeed a brave soul... or maybe just younger and more modern than me and have everything digitized. lol I love having lots of things digitally but there are a few that I'm just clinging to the old fashioned paper printouts lol. Gotten totally OT here though. Sorry OP, didn't mean to hijack your post.

Lol, there is no way I can/could have drawn all those bears. I have arthritis so lots of writing or drawing leaves my hand in pain even with special pens and pencils for arthritic hands. All the writing/drawing you had to do there makes my hands start to hurt just looking at it. lol It is much easier for me to print out a bunch of b&w clipart and either make it into stickers with our Xyron machine or if it is too big for the machine, I'll glue it in the note book with either a glue stick or a glue runner. If I need it cut intricately, dh will cut it for me but most of the time I can use a paper cutter to cut a rectangle or square around what I need. Writing it in the notebook definitely has its advantages too, I could write out a worksheet when my older kids were middle school age on the fly, in less than 5 minutes. Luckily, I enjoy making the colorful worksheets on the computer and I can usually make more than enough for the week ahead for one kid in an hour on a Sunday afternoon.

I do the handwritten worksheets in the notebook too. Especially as they get older. I've also been known to do the handwritten ones for littles and just use stickers as the "fun factor" for a kid that needs something more visually appealing. Some of my kids are/were perfectly fine with no-frills, just the facts pages. But others, making it colorful and fun makes all the difference in the world, or at the very least, the difference between getting it done and having to nag them to get it done.

(I'm not feeling very well today and my thoughts are kinda all over the place. Hopefully, you can get the gist of what I'm trying to say.) I like math but I don't like repeating and practicing the same skill ad naseum, as a student or as a teacher. It seems like every curriculum out there is either tries to beat the concept or formula into a kid's head with a mind-numbingly large number of practice problems EXCEPT when my kid needs more practice on something, then there isn't enough practice, sigh. I honestly believe that many kids don't hate math, they hate the way that it is traditionally taught. Years ago, I bought Math on the Level (MOTL) when it first came out. I absolutely loved the idea that math didn't have to be one worksheet after another. I loved that we could stop and linger on a skill longer if needed or just cover it and be done and go on to the next thing if they get it immediately. If we run into a skill they just aren't ready to grapple with yet, we can skip it and go on to something else then come back to it later. We don't have to beat our heads on the wall for the next ten lessons because they all deal with the topic they aren't ready to absorb yet. I don't reference the MOTL books much anymore. Not because they aren't useful but because I just don't really need to to be able to teach elementary school and middle school math any more now that I'm going through it for the 5th time. There are some down sides to this approach though. I definitely have to be on the ball more with their math than I would be if we had a traditional curriculum. I can't just open and go (well, I can now that I know lots of tricks from teaching my other kids but at first, it was a lot more work). I have to decide what they are ready to try and what they are not ready for. I also have to decide if it's time to just move on or stick with a topic until they get it. Those things alone can be exhausting much less coming up with practice problems and such. I tend to make my own worksheets when I need them but there are lots of places to find math worksheets on every conceivable topic. But by making my own worksheets, I can customize the problems and any pictures I decide to include. For example, my youngest son is really into Minecraft right now so I customize his worksheets with Minecraft characters and pictures. Here is an old one I made probably a year ago: I bought a Minecraft clipart kit off of Etsy I think it was and I just use it to decorate his worksheets when we use them. For my visually learning son, decorating his pages in something he really likes and making the problems reference his favorite things goes a long way toward keeping him engaged and enjoying math. I draw my practice problem problems from MOTL, Math Mammoth, Beast Academy and Evan-Moor's Daily Math Practice books. I think the worksheet above was based on a sheet from the last one. We also do a lot of work orally or on a whiteboard. Even up into middle school, sometimes instead of a worksheet, we will just do a bunch of practice problems on the whiteboards. Just because we didn't create a paper trail every day, it doesn't mean that they didn't learn anything. Plus it keeps things from getting monotonous and predictable. We also play math games that I print off the internet. We are doing a lot of work with money right now so a lot of the games we are playing are about working with money. If you search "money games" on Teachers Pay Teachers, you will find tons of options on almost any topic.

Coloring is not a hill I'm willing to die on. Some kids enjoy it and some kids just don't. It can be helpful for a lot of things but not if the child hates doing and actively resists doing it every time. If trying some alternative ways of coloring doesn't appeal to him, I would let it go honestly. I hated coloring maps as a kid, never made any of my kids color anything as I saw it as busywork and yet we are all very good with geography. I attribute our geography skills to always having maps of all kinds around. I even had a huge map under plexiglass on the dining room table for a long time. The kids most definitely could find any country or body of water in the world and recognize any of them by shape, no coloring required.

I think it doesn't necessarily have to affect both to be a problem. My night vision is steadily getting worse now that I'm in my 40s. It's not horrible yet and I still do drive at night when I need to and, personally, I wouldn't ask the host to change their plans for me. I would either plan to leave early or stay the night somewhere or if it wasn't too far, I might just do it and know that I will be exhausted the next day from stress. But that said, my husband has this huge fear of deer when he is driving lmao! Like he is in panic mode driving at night or in the early morning or near dusk, pretty much any time of day that isn't broad daylight lol. We live in a rural area and we see deer on a daily basis almost year round. Certain routes we have to take around here, it isn't unusual to sight deer 5 or 6 times just one way on our way to somewhere. Dh is a nervous wreck driving at night. That's why I often do any driving we need to do at night but even with me driving, it still stresses him out that a deer could jump out in front of me at any time. FWIW, I've never hit a deer or even come close but he has. It was just one of those things that no one could have predicted or avoided. Just saying, they don't both have to have bad night vision necessarily for there to be a good reason. At least not in my opinion.

Sounds like SIL knows that MIL will bend over backwards to have all of her family together and uses it that fact to her advantage. Whether she is doing it purposely or just generally thinks the world revolves around her and does whatever it takes to keep her world in order, I can't tell but that is definitely what it looks like to me at least. I wouldn't back down on the time dinner is being served at my house either if it were me but I have a reputation for being very hard headed on some of the weirdest things, so take that for what you will. Does SIL possibly have some sort of issue, mental or physical, that makes traveling at night hard for her? You know, like bad night vision or some other reason that driving at night makes her uneasy? Does she turn into an ogre or something after the sun sets each night? Has she ever given an indication that it is anything more than inconvenient for her to have dinner instead of lunch with her husband's family? The only reason I ask is because if she's not just being a little princess who bullies her husband and her MIL through manipulation into doing things her way all the time outside of this dinner thing, I would be more inclined to possibly have an earlier dinner since MIL's whole deal is wanting to have all the family together. If the only thing she is suffering from is princess syndrome, I would be much more inclined to tell her "Sorry to hear you can't make it. Your husband and kids are still more than welcome to come without you since you can't come. See ya next year maybe." Or my husband's response to this is also appropriate, "If you want to pick the time, SIL, then you can host this family get-together next year. But THIS YEAR, when I am hosting it at MY HOUSE, we are having dinner at XXXX time. Hope you can make it."

Would it be possible to maybe sell just the teacher book of Treasured Conversations as an Amazon book, for the same asking price as the teacher and student book together right now, then include a "free" copy of the student pdf as a link to download separately that is hosted elsewhere? Maybe include the link in the book or a password for a password protected download? I was able to go ahead and purchase Treasured Conversations today and I've only had a small chance to glance through it but I already love it more than I thought I would. I'm so sad that some places make it so difficult for small business owners and we lose great things like this.

If you keep the stub from the post office or the Walmart money orders, you can verify that they have been cashed. I've had to do it to prove that I gave the land lord the MO and it is a book keeping error on their end. I always keep the stub and put it in a safe place the same way you would keep cancelled checks or or the duplicates to keep records. It has come in handy more than once to prove that I paid and paid on time despite not using checks. That's how I have gotten by for the last twenty years with writing probably less than 15 checks in that time. The tankless hot water heaters I've had experience with have not needed anymore maintenance than my regular tank hot water heater that needs yearly maintenance as well. There are lots of different kinds though and my experience has mostly been overseas with them. We plan to do it more like we have seen overseas where the kitchen has its own little tankless heater and the each bathroom has its own tankless heater. The ones that I have heard about having the most problems are where they try to have a huge tankless system for the whole house and then end up needing boosters everywhere because the water doesn't stay hot enough when it has to travel so far to the outlet. The biggest draw for us is not heating tons of water in a tank to just sit there until it is used and the endless hot water part. We live far enough south that it isn't difficult or too expensive to do. I've heard the farther north you go, the more expensive it gets to do tankless hot water because the starting temperature of the water before it is heated is lower.

Tankless instant hot water heaters. They are very common in Europe and parts of Asia. I can't wait to replace our tank hot water heater. It's been on the "someday" list for a while now lol

I've done money orders for many years (the last twenty years maybe?) because even though we had a checking account, ex-h was horrible about pulling money out from under checks I wrote to pay the bills. It was cheaper to pay 50 cents to a dollar for a money order to pay bills than it was to pay bounced check fees. You can get them at the bank, at the post office, even at Walmart. I was bound to be at least one of those places on or near pay day so it worked. I've never run into a problem giving a money order to anyone that requested checks only. Yes, money management, or lack thereof, was part of our irreconcilable differences. It was the weirdest feeling after the divorce to be able write a check from my own account to open my utilities and not have to worry about it bouncing. Amazon, Walmart, Target or any big box store gift card would be almost universally appreciated as a gift I would think. Personally, we buy stuff from Amazon every month so I would apply an Amazon gift card toward that and if there was nothing gift-like that I wanted on Amazon that month by some strange coincidence, that gift card would at least free up some of my money that would normally go to the monthly household supplies Amazon order and I could buy whatever I wanted from where ever. We have a couple of places here that buy unwanted gift cards for cash so if you really will not ever use the gift card it can be turned around for cash if necessary, less a small fee of a couple of dollars. I've not done it personally but a few stores have signs that say "We will buy any gift card". A large one time gift like graduation or wedding, I wouldn't consider the less than $10 fee for the prepaid card too much and just factor that in to how much I can afford to send. If money was really tight though and the fee would drastically affect how much I could send, then I might do a money order (from Walmart or the post office so they could easily cash it for free if they don't have a bank account) or send a gift card for a store they were registered at or ask if there is a particular gift card the graduate would really like.

I have one child who will eat the heels of store bought bread by choice lol. And I chose squirrel because the best part of homemade bread is the heel but I don't like the heels of store bought bread. And it's the best part of making bread because that means I get first pick and I pick the heel lol. But I don't usually have anyone to fight me for it. I get one, ds that likes heels gets the other, and the rest is devoured long before it has time to dry out or even cool off most of the time for that matter!

OT but thanks so much for the recommendation! One of my biggest pet peeves is animal hair on clothing when I'm wearing it or one of the kids or dh. I also wash the dog blankets often to keep the smell under control (one of the dogs is a bassett that was found near our home and never claimed) but ds LOVES to lay with the dogs or get them up in his chair. The dog hair is getting harder and harder to wash out! Going to try this out!

I still sing the Wells Fargo Wagon when the kids are all excited about the UPS man showing up with our online orders lol.

I had to laugh a little about the first part. There was a an older couple I saw at the self checkout the other day trying to use a card with the microchip in it that you have to insert into the pos machine from the bottom instead of sliding it. They were having a lot of trouble but I wasn't paying much attention at first. Then I realized they were trying to insert the card and then yank it back out like you do on some ATM machines and then getting frustrated when the machine kept canceling his payment lol. Before I could say anything, he pulled out a card that can be slid through the machine and paid that way but he was grumbling to his wife that he would have to go to the bank the next day and get a new card because that one was obviously faulty. lol I didn't get a chance to catch him and explain but I don't know if it would have mattered, he was pretty steamed already when I got there lol. Hopefully the bank employee explained it to him lol. I don't like the idea of implantables either but I could see the argument that a wearable can be physically stolen but an implantable would be a little harder to do that. Doesn't mean I'm going to be anywhere near the front of the line for it, but I can see the argument for it. Again, because of the poor internet around here, we still see signs even in Walmart that the internet is down and they are accepting cash only because the pos machines cannot communicate and function without internet. Really sucks sometimes because there is no such things as paper food stamps anymore, so when the machines are down, you are just out of luck for food stamps, WIC, personal checks, credit cards, debit cards or gift cards. Until internet is more reliable and universal in first world countries, much less poorer countries, I don't think physical money can plausibly disappear.

Oh my god yes! It drove me nuts before we had cellular internet and before we had unlimited data. We had to run ad blockers religiously because some websites who over do it on the ads to support the website would take ages to load. And pages that have auto-play videos too where the video is programmed to load before the rest of the page does. Then there are the pages that come up with the "We can see you are using an ad blocker. We depend on ads to support our site, please turn off your ad blocker to continue to our site." If I turn off my ad blocker, there is no guarantee I will be able to see the page at all if it won't load for me on my slow internet. I get it. I have designed websites for a living (and still do on occasion). I totally understand that maintaining a website costs money and intimately understand just how much it costs. But not everyone uses ad blockers to deny you ad revenue and peruse your website without giving you something in return (which is a whole 'nother rant for another thread). Some people need those ad blockers just to be able to view your website at all. There are still people in the world, even in first world countries, who do not have the luxury of fast, reliable internet.

Ummm, out here in the middle of nowhere (but still smack in the middle of the US), some people still have dial-up. Sadly, it is more reliable than the small local cable provider's internet service that advertises up to 100 Mbps connections but the key words are "up to". You might get 100Mbps... at 2 am.... if they aren't doing maintenance and everyone's internet is down. Otherwise, on most days you are lucky to get 10Mbps. Complaining to the company results in someone on the phone 3 states away telling you there is definitely a problem and they send you an apathetic repairman then charge you $50 just for him to get out of his truck on your property. He turns it on and off and again, tells you it is working normally and leaves within 15 minutes of arriving. So, yeah there are still dial-up services here that are slow but reliable. We tried satellite, way more trouble than it is worth but still slightly better than aforementioned cable company. So now we have cellular internet through our phones. We have a plan with unlimited tethering and unlimited data. It's faster than dial-up (you can actually stream with cellular but you can't with dial-up) and we almost never have an issue with it unlike satellite and cable internet. We love it and have no plans of ever going back unless maybe we finally get Cox cable down here. When we lived in areas that had Cox service, they were always spectacular with their service and the prices were reasonable. What I think will be gone in 10 years is paying for data on mobile phones and I think more people will use cellular data for things like internet service. It is less costly to maintain and/or upgrade a cell tower than it is to lay miles upon miles of cable or maintain a satellite. Also cell signal, even in our mountainous region, is more reliable than satellite signal which goes out every time a cloud passes by when we had it. Ten years ago, a lot of people still paid by the minute for long distance phone calls but now it is the normal to have unlimited long distance within your country and only pay for certain international phone calls. I think paying for cellular data is going to go the same way, it will get cheaper and cheaper with less and less restrictions until finally it is just normal for unlimited, unrestricted data to be the expected instead of the exception.

My youngest ds is weird and hates uncooked cottage cheese too lol! But he loves lasagna when I make it and doesn't even notice the cottage cheese. Like some else mentioned if you really don't like cottage cheese or ricotta cheese at all, you can just leave it out altogether. I put a couple of cloves of minced or pressed garlic, a teaspoon of Italian seasoning and a quarter cup of grated parmesan (not the powdered stuff in the can, the stuff in the refrigerated section with the other cheeses, I get it pre-grated) in the cottage cheese and let those flavors meld for a few hours before making lasagna before I add the cottage cheese to the lasagna.My meat and sauce are the exact same recipe I use to make no-mato spaghetti sauce. Then it is just layering sauce, noodles, cottage cheese mixture and mozzarella or Italian blend cheese in the baking pan. I follow the baking directions on the no cook noodle box since everything else in the pan is cooked already. Usually it is something along the lines of, add a 1/2 cup of water to the pan to help the noodles cook, cover the pan with foil or put a lid on it, bake at 350 or so for an hour then remove the lid or foil and bake until the cheese is melted and browned.