Hmmm... I don't think so. He is using the appropriate strokes that I explicitly taught him after a really bad experience with a preschool teacher who believed that all children will naturally learn to form letters in their own way and that handwriting instruction was unnecessary. She also thought that unguided and unsupervised worksheets for writing their full names was a good idea for bell work for 3 - 4yos. I wanted to smack that woman when I found out what she was doing to those poor kids, not just my ds. It took me a full year and a half to break most of the bad habits he had developed with her. I'm pretty stringent on letter formation. It doesn't have to look perfect but I do insist on proper formation techniques. All that to say that no, I don't think he is drawing them. I have LOE, WRTR and SWR. I got them used, clearanced or a lifetime ago when we lived where we had access to funding for homeschool supplies. Even the used versions of LiPS and FIS are out of my reach financially. Resale value doesn't mean a lot when you can't even afford to buy it used in the first place. The nearest Scottish Rite center is a 5 hour drive and 250 miles away. And they don't even seem to have a dyslexia center. It seems to be orthopedics and sports medicine oriented on their website with no mention of dyslexia. I found a training manual on the MA Rooney site but it doesn't look that much different from WRTR or SWR. Just more emphasis on the phonemic awareness parts which is fine, I can emphasize that and expand on it for him and we can spend extra time on sound production and recognition. I have no problem modifying what we have to make it work if we can't afford the other programs. I'm going to ask his SLP if she has any of these programs or knows someone who might have them or would let me borrow them. I am kinda doubting anyone in this area would have them though so I don't have high hopes for it. This area still teaches look-say (ugh) and relies heavily on sight words and memorization and very little if any at all on phonics. Most people around here don't even understand what phonics is. Dh, who went to school here when he was young, told me today that he has learned a lot listening in on my phonics lessons with ds. He had heard of phonics but he had never known anyone who was taught that way or seen anyone taught that way. I spent most of my elementary and middle school years in a Spalding school district so it seems very odd to me that it was a new concept to dh that letters make sounds. I had heard that some people were taught that way but I had never met anyone who didn't have at least a little phonics knowledge even if it wasn't as extensive and detailed as mine was. Dh was just lucky I guess that he has a very large working memory and was a good reader in school but he doesn't read for pleasure much. He is literate and excels in academic things, especially math and science, but he was in his thirties before he discovered phonics. I would have never guessed that he didn't know that letters make sounds. I was even shocked when he told me that he didn't know that before. I've wandered way off topic. Thanks for all the suggestions. Please keep them coming if there are anymore resources out there.

Yes he does his best work when he is copying or writing by choice. He will often ask us to write a word he is unsure about so he can copy it. He is also a perfectionist to the extreme. It's to the point sometimes that I see him not want to try things if he isn't sure he can get it right the first time. It takes a lot of coaxing to get him to try things and make mistakes to find the right answer to something. He gets very frustrated with himself if he feels like he is making too many mistakes. Sometimes we have to stop and try again later because of his perfectionist tendencies. It was older ds who had the CTOPP so I will definitely ask when we are ready to have him re-evaluated. I gave him the Barton screening even though there is no way we can afford it right now, or any time in the near future, even with all their suggestions. He did great on part A and B and then failed spectacularly on part C. The funny thing is, Logic of English has many exercises just like those in the Barton assessment and I know he can do them or he has in the past. I was actually recently thinking about going back over some of the phonemic awareness exercises with him as a review before I posted all this here. I think that might be pushed up the priority list now that I can see how far he has slipped with that since the explicit phonemic awareness exercises have slowly started to fade out of the LOE lessons. Any other phonemic awareness programs or resources I should check out?

No, not really. She only works with kids through kindergarten age. She actually said she suspected more language issues which is why she told me to get him reevaluated when he falls behind his age mates. At the time she dismissed him, his articulation and motor planning were considered age appropriate so he no longer qualified for services AND he was already at the top of her age bracket. There would be new SLPs that work with children in grades 1 - 3 and we have met and talked with them at his last IEP meeting but as I said even though he has obvious speech errors, they are not outside the realm of normal for a 6yo first grader. He is completely understandable 95% of the time or more and self corrects spontaneous speech but his errors are comparable with same age peers who do not have apraxia. She actually said if it were up to her, she would keep working with him and not dismiss him, or have others work with him, all through elementary school but since we are in an IEP and we cannot afford to self pay completely, he was dismissed from speech with the caveat that they would reevaluate any time to get him back on the IEP. His SLP also runs her own summer program that she does independently of the schools so he still sees her in the summer but she doesn't have time during the school year to have private students and I completely get that. He has had the Test of Narrative Language and I think SPELT as well but I will have to go look at his paperwork. We have had no trouble at all getting testing or IEPs or qualified SLPs and other therapists as other people have. I don't know what the difference is but this has been in several different states and school districts and it has never been an issue. CTOPP and TILLS sounds familiar but I can't honestly remember at the moment if it was this ds who had those tests or oldest ds who was my reading late bloomer who passed all the tests with flying colors but still didn't read more than BOB books on his own until he was 9 despite working with him since he was 5. Again I'd have to go pull out the paperwork and check to see who had what tests. Discomfort with writing: Yes but no more so than most wiggly little 6yo boys I've seen. He doesn't want to write or do school work but he can if he puts his nose to the grindstone and just does it. And he does it very well. He has very neat handwriting and is very meticulous about it when he wants to be. He loves to draw as well and has quite a knack for it. He can make quite detailed drawings for his age. He is my 4th little boy and 6th child so I feel I can say with confidence that he is more just a wiggly little boy than disabled on that particular topic. Gross Motor Issues: He has been tested by more than one OT for gross and fine motor skill impairments. His fine motor skills have always been way above normal. He amazes OTs with what he can do fine motor wise and he could manipulate the tiniest pieces with precision since he was a toddler. Gross motor has always tested fine but he definitely has something vestibular/proprioceptive going on with him. If you look up 'bull in a china shop', I'm pretty sure you will find a picture of him. Clumsy is an understatement. I've worked with him a little on my own because he always passes the OT screenings (he has had several with different OTs and organizations). I've slacked off a bit recently because we have other more pressing matters taking up my time right now and you can definitely tell than we've slacked off on the mommy OT therapy. He also seems to have muscular hypertrophy like his dad does but that's not been confirmed yet. He's very strong, very muscularly built despite not being terribly athletic and weighs way more than he looks. Even hospital staff on his recent ER visit commented repeatedly on how heavy he was despite the fact that he is so small and not obviously overweight. He is 6y 10m and weighs between 75 and 80 lbs. I didn't weigh that much until middle school. Refusing to do age-typical activities like coloring or puzzles: He's not a fan of coloring most of the time but he doesn't actively avoid it. None of my kids were big on coloring just to color but they will do it if it suits them at the time so it does not strike me as odd that he doesn't care for it. He loves puzzles and Legos and the like. Tinkertoys, Lincoln logs and blocks are some of his favorite toys and he will play for hours with them. Some other things he does that have made me wonder about him and what else he might be dealing with.... He has always lined up toys as part of his play. Long lines across the room of blocks or cars or plastic people... all precisely lined up and equally spaced that he doesn't want anyone to mess with despite the fact that he blocking traffic flow in the room. He throws a fit if you kick it over on accident but we have worked with him a lot with this since toddlerhood and now if you give him an alternative place he can line up his toys where they won't be disturbed or apologize to him if you kick it over, he doesn't throw a fit anymore. I just figured the fits were part of his very dramatic personality but it has made me wonder at times. He has wicked food texture issues and is very restrictive about his diet given the chance. We have worked with him a lot and he will try new foods but I definitely cannot use the "he won't starve himself" mentality with this kid. He absolutely will and has made himself sick from lack of eating rather than eat something that he doesn't want to eat. Or he will sneak food when no one is looking rather than eat the offensive to him food. He even went so far as writing me a list of "(ds's name) approved foods" and will often remind me that X or Y food is not on his food list and make a suggestion from his list as a substitute. The list was less than one page long in 6yo moderately large handwriting and probably has 25 or so food and drink items. He had dysphagia with silent aspiration as an infant/toddler/young preschooler. He was on honey thick liquids from 2 months until a few months after his 3rd birthday when he finally passed the swallow study. He still has chewing and swallowing issues from time to time ( and his food list reflects that since his favorite foods tend to be ones that require less chewing) but his very first SLP when he was about 20 months old did a lot of work on learning to chew and swallow properly. In fact, she did much more work on correcting his chewing and swallowing techniques than actual speech. He had a lot of trouble learning to eat ultra smooth cereals and purees from a spoon. Then more trouble going from smooth "1st foods" purees to more textured "2nd food' purees. All my other kids skipped 3rd foods and went straight to table foods. This ds we had to fight him again to get him to eat 3rd foods. Then we finally got him to eat table foods around 18 months. All my other kids were on table foods almost exclusively by their first birthday. This child has no volume control. None. Zero. Zilch. Oh he can whisper but even his whispers are loud. We always joke that he only has two volumes, loud and louder. He also is always making noise. Always. Right now, it's mostly random robot sounds that he defaults to. He almost sings them like a song with no words. Even his breathing is loud sometimes. I only thought little boys were loud. This kid is a whole 'nother category of loud. She has them or knows someone who does that she can borrow and have them give him the evals. She didn't want to dismiss him at all, it was just the circumstances that we were in. He hasn't been dismissed from speech for years, it will have been a year at the end of December since he was dismissed from weekly speech and he did see the SLP bi-weekly over the summer as a private pay. She was willing and we could have gotten more and had insurance pay for some or all of it but again, circumstances didn't permit it this past summer. He hasn't gone more than 6 months yet without even just a little speech work and I work with him a lot at home. I can get in touch with the SLP any time and get her opinion or ideas on how to work with him. I helped her out when she started homeschooling her daughter so we are sort of friends outside of the professional relationship of her being his SLP. Does he script or have an unusual ability to memorize large amounts of language? That is an interesting question... he does like memory work in general. More than any of my other kids did. He is excited at the prospect of doing community children's theater and was excited that he would have to memorize his lines if he was in a play. But he was even more excited that he would be on stage and all eyes would be on him He loves being the center of attention and has been known to act out when he is not. When I have him go back and read a page fluently after he has sounded out the words, he does read with inflection and dramatic flair without me having to model it for him or point it out. I've wondered sometimes if he was memorizing the text in books which is why I'm glad I have quite a collection of beginner readers to choose from with him being the youngest of 6 kids. I try to keep the rotation of books we work on large to try and prevent him from just memorizing. He has definitely memorized a few so I take them out of the rotation. But I've never heard him recite long parts of songs or movies or anything like that. When he hears an interesting word and asks what it means, you will hear him trying to use the word in his everyday conversation trying to get a feel for it. I wouldn't say his vocabulary is above average but it is definitely high normal. I will take a look at the links in a little bit. Thanks. ETA: Forgot to mention, yes full evals are an option. We can have them done at the children's hospital 2.5 - 3 hours away but at the moment our plate is full with other needs so it will probably be at least after his birthday in January before we can pursue that.

I'm cross posting this from the curriculum board at lewelma's suggestion. It didn't occur to me to post it here since I don't think my son's disability is the issue here but perhaps some of you here have more experience with reading issues that seem to possibly be beyond the garden variety. So ds is an older 6yo, he will be 7yo the day after New Year's day. He was a very late talker (3yo) and spent 4 years in speech therapy due to apraxia. He still has some speech issues but he is not currently in therapy because he is considered "age appropriate" for the time being but his SLP said to have him tested again if his speech doesn't improve spontaneously by the age of 8. (She doesn't expect it will spontaneously resolve due to the apraxia.) I've been working with him on letter sounds, phonics and reading since just before his 5th birthday, about the same time he graduated from speech. Of course, he worked on letter sounds and such before that with speech but the focus was more on producing the correct sound rather than reading. Anyways, he is doing well, I don't consider him to be behind at all right now. He can read and decode words but fluency is still a struggle for him. He has great working memory and after he has sounded out all the words on a page, he can go back and read the page fluently with few, if any, mistakes. He also can usually remember a new word from one page to the next. So with all that out there, here is the problem. He still often confuses b, d, p and q. I have taught him these letters and how to tell them apart from day one. When he writes, he always gets the correct letter, b starts at the top, d starts like a letter 'a', p starts with the line going down and q starts with the round quarter part. But when he reads, he will interchange all four of those letters. Today for example, he kept trying to make a 'p' sound for b in bike. I would tell him there is no p in that word, look again and then it was a 50-50 shot whether he tried the 'b' sound or the 'd' sound. He substitutes the 'q' sound less often than p.b and d but he does do it sometimes. He also frequently swaps n and u; m and w; and i and j. We have worked ad nauseum on telling these letters apart with all the usual tricks and lots of practice. But I'm not seeing much improvement. He does not interchange them when he writes, only when he reads. My other kids, which only one had a speech issue but it was hearing related not neurological, all picked up on the confusing letter tricks fairly quickly and made steady progress making mistakes less and less until eventually they didn't make them at all. But this ds doesn't seem to be making any improvement despite working on it for the last year and a half or so. Letter confusion isn't really part of apraxia at least that I'm aware of. And it is so odd to me that he only does it when reading and not when writing. I know reversals are common though the end of second grade but it's the no noticeable improvement despite working on it that has me wondering about him. Anyone else dealt with a child like this? Did the problem just spontaneously resolve or did you do something to help it resolve? Follow-up post I will x-post this, thank you for the suggestion, lewelma. He did have the letters introduced slowly and separately, practiced, practiced practiced before moving on, and lots and lots of cueing. We work on words in isolation more often than I have him read short books, stories and passages. We do this because he rushes and tries to "fake" fluency but his guesses are wrong at least 90% of the time and I have to make him slow down and sound out words so that he gets the words right. I do stories and passages without pictures for him a lot because if there are pictures, he tries to guess his way through even more. Even if it means I have to type out a story myself and print it out because the one I want him to practice has pictures. I figure this is because he is the only non-reader in the house and he wants desperately to be like everyone else right now and not in the time it takes to learn to read when it doesn't come naturally to you. Math comes naturally to him. Amazingly naturally.But reading not so much. He recognizes there is a problem but he rarely self corrects which is why I posted. The self correction is what I consider to be progress toward correcting reversals and swapping. With my other kids, they would slowly self correct more and more until they didn't do it anymore. This kid, after more than a year of practice, still doesn't self correct hardly at all. We are still cueing almost every time. His only saving grace is that his working memory allows him to remember the word in a story, usually until the end most of the time. But often if he sees that same word again in another story, we have to start over with the cueing and remembering the word. I'm not ready to jump to a diagnosis for him, some of his siblings were just late bloomers when it came to reading independently but the issues were dramatically different than this ds's issues. I am really just curious if there is anything I'm missing that could help him beyond the garden variety supports that he doesn't seem to be internalizing yet.

I will x-post this, thank you for the suggestion, lewelma. He did have the letters introduced slowly and separately, practiced, practiced practiced before moving on, and lots and lots of cueing. We work on words in isolation more often than I have him read short books, stories and passages. We do this because he rushes and tries to "fake" fluency but his guesses are wrong at least 90% of the time and I have to make him slow down and sound out words so that he gets the words right. I do stories and passages without pictures for him a lot because if there are pictures, he tries to guess his way through even more. Even if it means I have to type out a story myself and print it out because the one I want him to practice has pictures. I figure this is because he is the only non-reader in the house and he wants desperately to be like everyone else right now and not in the time it takes to learn to read when it doesn't come naturally to you. Math comes naturally to him. Amazingly naturally.But reading not so much. He recognizes there is a problem but he rarely self corrects which is why I posted. The self correction is what I consider to be progress toward correcting reversals and swapping. With my other kids, they would slowly self correct more and more until they didn't do it anymore. This kid, after more than a year of practice, still doesn't self correct hardly at all. We are still cueing almost every time. His only saving grace is that his working memory allows him to remember the word in a story, usually until the end most of the time. But often if he sees that same word again in another story, we have to start over with the cueing and remembering the word. I'm not ready to jump to a diagnosis for him, some of his siblings were just late bloomers when it came to reading independently but the issues were dramatically different than this ds's issues. I am really just curious if there is anything I'm missing that could help him beyond the garden variety supports that he doesn't seem to be internalizing yet.

So ds is an older 6yo, he will be 7yo the day after New Year's day. He was a very late talker (3yo) and spent 4 years in speech therapy due to apraxia. He still has some speech issues but he is not currently in therapy because he is considered "age appropriate" for the time being but his SLP said to have him tested again if his speech doesn't improve spontaneously by the age of 8. (She doesn't expect it will spontaneously resolve due to the apraxia.) I've been working with him on letter sounds, phonics and reading since just before his 5th birthday, about the same time he graduated from speech. Of course, he worked on letter sounds and such before that with speech but the focus was more on producing the correct sound rather than reading. Anyways, he is doing well, I don't consider him to be behind at all right now. He can read and decode words but fluency is still a struggle for him. He has great working memory and after he has sounded out all the words on a page, he can go back and read the page fluently with few, if any, mistakes. He also can usually remember a new word from one page to the next. So with all that out there, here is the problem. He still often confuses b, d, p and q. I have taught him these letters and how to tell them apart from day one. When he writes, he always gets the correct letter, b starts at the top, d starts like a letter 'a', p starts with the line going down and q starts with the round quarter part. But when he reads, he will interchange all four of those letters. Today for example, he kept trying to make a 'p' sound for b in bike. I would tell him there is no p in that word, look again and then it was a 50-50 shot whether he tried the 'b' sound or the 'd' sound. He substitutes the 'q' sound less often than p.b and d but he does do it sometimes. He also frequently swaps n and u; m and w; and i and j. We have worked ad nauseum on telling these letters apart with all the usual tricks and lots of practice. But I'm not seeing much improvement. He does not interchange them when he writes, only when he reads. My other kids, which only one had a speech issue but it was hearing related not neurological, all picked up on the confusing letter tricks fairly quickly and made steady progress making mistakes less and less until eventually they didn't make them at all. But this ds doesn't seem to be making any improvement despite working on it for the last year and a half or so. Letter confusion isn't really part of apraxia at least that I'm aware of. And it is so odd to me that he only does it when reading and not when writing. I know reversals are common though the end of second grade but it's the no noticeable improvement despite working on it that has me wondering about him. Anyone else dealt with a child like this? Did the problem just spontaneously resolve or did you do something to help it resolve?

We have one bite rule. You have to take one bite of anything new (provided there is no known or suspected allergy). If you truly do not like it, you can have a peanut butter sandwich, carrot sticks and a glass of milk. That you make yourself if you are over 6yo. There were nights where one or more kids had this for dinner and they all survived. The 9yo's comments were rude and disrespectful. You don't insult the cook who made your meal and you certainly don't disrespect your mother without provocation. I would make sure to make it clear that it wasn't her unwillingness to eat or that she didn't like what was for dinner that has her in hot water with you, it was her lack of respect you as her mother and lack of manners in regards to food that has been prepared for her. (((HUGS))) Nine year old girls are full of hormones and she is allowed to make mistakes and errors in judgement because of them but hormones do not excuse her from being kind and respectful. At least, that's how I handle haughty preteens in my house. There is a right and wrong way to critique your food and your mother. She made a serious error in judgement on both counts. I would help her see that and tell her where to find the peanut butter and bread to make her own dinner.

Thanks for reminding me I need to go get the costume box out of the shed for ds to look through. This will be the first year we intend to take him trick or treating. We have lots of reasons for not wanting to celebrate holidays but ds is super interested in going trick or treating this year and the nearest town always has a big trick or treat downtown where all the businesses give out candy. We live too far out in the country to go door to door. Plus it will be just days after dh will have been released from the hospital for major surgery so it will be a nice distraction for ds. I have years and years of old costumes stored in a sealed rubbermaid container in the shed. When my older kids were little, I would shop thrift stores and clearance sales for items to add to the costume box year round. There were a few costumes that I let them keep and wear year round but anything that wasn't likely to be able to take the use and abuse of everyday play or that I wanted to keep available for younger kids' Halloween use. I honestly can't remember what all is out there. It's been that long since we've celebrated Halloween at all. But the kids always had a blast picking and choosing just the right pieces for their costumes from the box. I would only buy extra pieces for a costume if it wasn't something they could make themselves for some reason or if I found a really good deal. They were always more than welcome to spend their own money on costume pieces and it was then their choice on whether it went in the costume box for everyone to use next year or if they wanted to keep it for themselves since they bought it. While I do absolutely agree they are only little once, I also value teaching them how to not buy things impulsively and be judicious about how money is spent, whether it is my money or their money. I would not buy a $30 ninja costume but I might go halfsies with them if they really really wanted that particular costume after we went through the costume box and couldn't find anything suitable to make a ninja costume.

I was 10yo when I got chicken pox. I remember it. I was miserable and didn't get to miss any school to boot because I got it on summer vacation. My oldest daughter got it when she was in 6th grade so I guess she was 11yo. She had it over spring break and only got to miss the last day of school before spring break. All my other kids got it from her even the one who had had the vaccine. They were 14yo, 12yo, 7yo, 5yo and 4 months old at that time. The 4 month old actually got it bad enough to test immune at his 6yo well check. The only one of the kids who had a mild case was the 5yo. Very few sores and not particularly ill at all but this is the same kid who could have raging strep throat and never looked or acted sick at all lol. None of us have had shingles and no vaccines for chicken pox or shingles are planned.

There is a yard in our area that puts up a huge display for every holiday. From September to November, they have a graveyard scene with all the usually gravestones and skeletons and grim reapers. They also have what appears to be a real horse drawn carriage being pulled by skeletal horses through the graveyard. I've never been close enough to confirm if either the carriage or the skeletal horses were real. It wouldn't surprise me if they were real though. Being farm and ranch country, I doubt it would be too hard to procure the bones even if they came from many horses or were found in the fields when they had to dig for some reason. Not something I would seek out to do but the yard looks really neat when they decorate. Who knows, maybe it is the skeleton of a beloved horse and they chose to use the bones as yard decor in the horse's memory? Again, not something I would choose to do but there are all kinds of people in this world.

I haven't read all the replies but we are completely against competitive contact sports for ds6. Dh played sports as a kid. He tried all the typical sports for American kids (football, baseball, basketball, soccer, track etc) but his passion was football. He played Pop-Warner from the time he was 8yo. He always told me he never had a concussion playing football, just the wind knocked out of him a few times. When he was 17, he started getting what the doctor called exertion headaches. He would be running on the track as a warm up to football practice and just drop unconscious for no apparent reason. Once he had something to drink and could tell the coach how many fingers he was holding up, he went right back to practice after these episodes. In hindsight, this should have been the first clue that something was wrong. After high school, dh started getting migraine headaches. They lasted a few hours to a few days and medication could help some but just lots of rest was the only thing that really abated the pain and pressure in his head. Slowly, they started lasting weeks at a time. Then they got so bad that he couldn't hold a job because he had a migraine more often than he didn't have one. Then it got to the point that they were pretty much a daily thing. Without a job and before Obamacare, he couldn't afford to go see specialists with no insurance and no way to pay out of pocket. He couldn't get disability because he couldn't afford to get all the medical paper work necessary to back his story. Once Obamacare allowed him to see doctors that could help and get disability and insurance, we started trying to really find out why he had these constant headaches. I've lost count of how many specialists we've been to for him over the years. No one could explain why he was more or less healthy but in excruciating pain more often than not. When he was talking to some old football buddies, it occurred to me to ask him what he thought a concussion looked like and he told me when you lose consciousness, that's a concussion. So I had to explain to him that minor concussions can cause damage without losing consciousness. I asked him how many times he was hit hard enough to "see stars" when he was playing football and he and his friends laughed and said "Everyday. That's just how it is when you play football." So he spent years and years suffering minor concussions everyday. That was the clue that finally got us to the right specialists to finally solve the mystery of dh's migraines. It only took almost 15 years since the "exertion headaches" when he was a teenager. In two weeks, after trying all the less invasive treatments for over a year now, dh is going in for surgery to implant a brain shunt to drain the excessive cerebrospinal fluid that is causing his headaches that are comparable to having a brain tumor. The condition is a form of hydrocephalus that can be triggered by head injuries, especially frequent or multiple head injuries, that used to be called pseudotumor cerebrii but is now called idiopathic intracranial hypertension(IIH). It is also suspected, but cannot be proven until autopsy, that dh also suffers from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) which is a neurodegenerative condition frequently seen in boxers and football players who sustain multiple head injuries. IIH and CTE can be co-morbid conditions particularly when there is a history of multiple head injuries. Dh is absolutely adament that ds will not play football or other contact sports like he did as a kid. There are so many other ways for ds to get exercise and take risks without increasing his risk of multiple head injuries. He remembers all the times his coaches would tell him to "walk it off" or "get back in there" when he now knows he had just suffered a brain injury and should have been told to sit down or see a doctor. He was never knocked unconscious so it was assumed that he was fine but the cumulative affect of all the "walk it off"s are what caused his heaches that still affect him to this day. True, lots of kids play these sports and are fine but to dh, it is not worth the risk for his child to have to suffer and feel the pain he has to deal with everyday due to contact sports. He was so scared when I was pregnant with ds and we still didn't have anything conclusive on what was causing his headaches that it might be something genetic that he might pass to ds. Now that we know what caused his headaches, he still does not want to chance ds having the same fate as him.

Huh. I was given a new agitatorless washing machine about a year ago when my agitator washer died. I haven't had any problems with clothing being ripped, torn or damaged in any way. If anything, I'd say it is more gentle than the agitator washer was. I usually run it on normal or heavy duty depending on how long I want it to "agitate" the clothes or whatever I'm washing. Really the only problem I've had with it at all is if you just throw blankets or sheets in there willy nilly. There will be a blanket mushroom cap when the washer is done which sometimes leaves bits of soap stuck to the top of that blanket. When it happens, I just have to reposition the blanket in the washer so that it isn't spread across the middle and run the cycle again. Inconvenient but it doesn't damage anything or rip it up. I wonder if it ripping up clothes is only certain brands or a flaw that has been addressed or something like that. I was skeptical at first about no agitator but I absolutely love it now... well as much as I can love a machine for the chore I hate lol.

I hate doing laundry. It just seems like a never ending chore. For that and other reasons, it is my second most hated household chore. So I choose clothing with that in mind. My "grown up clothes" as you call them do not require special handling in the wash. They are light and breathable synthetic fabrics like nylon, acrylic rayon and polyester. If they "accidentally" get tossed in with the regular clothes or get a stain or smell to them for some reason that really needs a dose of bleach to fix it, it won't harm the piece of clothing. Synthetics are not dyed, the color is part of the fiber. By the time you add enough bleach to take the color out of them, you will have eaten a hole in the fabric. Think of the man-made fibers that swimming suits are made of. You can go to the chlorine fill pool all summer and the color hardly fades at all. When I was a teen/young adult, I had fancy silk shirts and 100% cotton dresses and the like. That's when I learned that as pretty as they were, I hated washing them and babying them to keep them looking nice. Some people might enjoy doing those things, but I'm not one of them. So I changed how I bought clothing to more closely match the amount of work I'm willing to put in to keeping them looking nice. Day to day, I'm a t-shirt and jeans girl but if I can get away with sweat pants instead of jeans, I'll take that option. I have a few nice outfits for when t-shirts and jeans are not appropriate attire but I made sure that they were just as easy to care for as t-shirts and jeans. The only color I separate out is whites. But because our water is heavy on the iron, I try to avoid buying white clothes whenever possible (iron in the water turns whites orangey-brown and bleach makes it worse!). That and when I wear white, it is guaranteed I will somehow spill something on it that will stain. Underwear and socks go in with the towels and they are all washed in hot water. Our towels smell funky if I wash them in cold water and socks and underwear go in with them because.... I don't know, just because that's how I've always done it! Since I typically put bleach in with towels (though lately I've found that vinegar works just as well as bleach unless there are towels in there that were used to clean up a disgusting mess or something) I guess it just made sense to me that the clothing that tends to get the dirtiest with kids gets washed in hot bleach water. I was never taught to wash laundry as a kid so I know I didn't learn it from my mom or anything like that. It just made sense to me I guess when I was a new young mom handling the family laundry for the first time.

I answered Other but I could live in a lighthouse if the opportunity presented itself. What I really want though is a tiny house or a small cottage. Dh is agreeable so long as we have a big garage/workshop for all of his tinkering hobbies lol.

I have a steam mop (I think it's the Swiffer/Bissell one?) I use it in my bathrooms and in the kitchen where I have sheet vinyl floors. I usually just put plain water in the tank and use the Method Squirt and Mop liquid by just spraying a small puddle in front of the steam mop every now and then. I like that I can use just any old wash cloth or old towel that I have ripped apart to be the right size instead of buying refills for it. I'm a little more picky about my vinyl plank floors. I don't use my steam mop on them because I don't want to chance the steam getting between the planks and loosening the glue and the planks coming loose. I have a regular swiffer style mop that I just attach a washcloth that is damp with warm water and some of the Method Squirt and Mop. Our whole family loves the original almond scent.

Ubuntu is a fairly easy to install Linux distro with lots of Windows like features. Linux Mint is another pretty beginner friendly Linux distro. MX Linux is pretty popular as well. There are lots of different "flavors" of Linux based on what you want to do with it. The three I mentioned are similar to Windows in the way of features and reasonably beginner friendly. They also have the most compatibility options with standard programs that most people like to use. Microsoft Office Suite isn't likely to work on a Linux system (at least don't know of any work arounds off the top of my head). But you have the Google internet based office programs that will work on any computer that can access the internet (Chrome or Firefox should have a Linux friendly install you can download onto a flash drive and install on your Linux computer if your distro doesn't have a web browser already installed). You can also install Libre Office which is a free office suite that will work on Linux systems.

You should be able to make a bootable flash drive with your Linux distro on it. It's been a while for me too, so I can't give you the exact steps to do this but it's not hard to do. A reputable Linux distro will give you step by step directions for creating the bootable flash drive. When you turn the computer on, there should be some options for hitting the F keys on the keyboard to get to the bios. From within the bios menu, you can change the boot order so that instead of booting into your Windows installation, it looks for a flash drive first to boot from. If you have your bootable flash drive plugged in, it will boot from that instead the next time you turn the computer on. Once you are booting from the flash drive with Linux on it, it should give you an option to reformat the drive and install linux. Make sure there is nothing on that drive that you want to keep. Reformat = wipe the drive clean and start over with an empty drive. There might be some options for partitioning the drive and installing Linux in a partition but the easiest way to install Linux on a computer that you don't want to dual boot or anything else fancy is to reformat the drive and install on a clean drive. I'm not sure how far to break things down for you. I can explain it in even simpler terms but if you have some computer experience, I don't want to insult you, lol.

We will just keep on using Windows 7. I know people who are still using Windows XP without issue. I'm not terribly worried about Microsoft no longer supporting it. Dh and I have talked about going with a Linux distro whenever the programs we use or want to install won't play nice with Windows 7 anymore. For now, everything still works fine so we will cross that bridge when we get there. Honestly, I would clean up the hard drive before installing a new one. Go through everything and delete outdated, useless or no longer needed files and programs. Do a disk clean up and a defrag afterwards and see if you still need a new hard drive. If you do still need a new hard drive, the easiest route for the non-computer savvy is an external hard drive. You can just plug it in to any USB port and leave it there. If you want an internal drive, it's not hard but it's a little more work than an external hard drive. It involves opening the case, making sure you have an open space in your HD rack, an open SATA port on your motherboard and a spare compatible power cable from your PSU. If you have all those things, it is just a matter of putting the new drive in the rack, attaching the SATA cable from the drive to the motherboard and connecting the power cable from the PSU to the new board. I imagine there are tons of videos on Youtube if you need to see someone do it to be confident in doing it yourself. Depending on the distro you use, it is no more difficult than installing Windows. If you wanted to have just Linux on your system, you would reformat the hard drive and install the Linux distro of your choice (that you downloaded before reformatting the hard drive and put on a flash drive). You can also do a dual boot where the computer has both Windows and Linux and you have to choose which "side" you want to go to every time you boot up the computer but that is a bit more complicated.

Typically, whenever my toddler children "fed" the baby, they only had the attention span to do it for less than 5 minutes. But that short amount of time getting to help with the baby made them feel important and connected with their sibling. Nurturing the bond between siblings is just as important to me as my bond with my children. My oldest daughter was 12yo when her youngest brother was born. She never got her school work and chores done so fast as when he was an infant and she could feed and change him when she completed her regular responsibilities. Her absolute willingness to take care of him from the time she got home from school and done with her homework and chores until she went to bed is what allowed me to attend to my other children's needs. Of course, dh and I still did the majority of the baby care but she was a huge help to us. Ds is 6 years old now and I don't see any difference in my and dh's bond with him and any of the other kids. He doesn't suffer from any kind of attachment disorder or anything like that because one of his siblings loved him and cared for him to give me a little break from baby care to take care of other things.

I've heard it both ways, I've never put enough thought into it to be upset by it. It is a single unit, stove, oven, and range are all interchangeable. Context tells you whether it is the burners or the oven you are using. Personally, I preheat the oven to bake and use the stove to boil a pot of water. The whole unit is either a range or a stove. But I've never been bothered by someone preheating a stove. Currently I have a cooktop but no oven. The cooktop is neither a range nor a stove, it's just a cooktop with 4 burners. We have a very large toaster oven with a rotisserie setting that we have been using as our oven for a couple of years now while we save up for a wall oven. It works well.

I'm glad you see that but just last month we had to take ds6 to the emergency room and we were asked if his DTaP was up to date and of course we had to say no, it wasn't because he has never received one. The nurse asked why he had not had one and I told her we have a family history of anaphylactic reactions but due to the nature of ds's injury I was fine with him receiving a DTaP and the immunoglobulin if he needed it. She told me that "vaccine reactions don't run in families". If I had not been so focused on ds and his injury I might have asked her "well what would you call it when my sister and I have both broken out in hives within minutes of receiving a vaccine and so have 2 of my kids. One of my kids also had to be hospitalized for anaphylaxis not once but two separate times after receiving a vaccine? When you've watched my child struggling to survive a routine vaccine and have had to bear the words 'if she survives...' then you can have an opinion on whether or not vaccine reactions run in my family." I just ignored her comment like I do a lot of the comments I receive when people find out we don't vaccinate except as needed or very delayed. It is extremely frustrating and irritating though when even trained medical staff make broad assumptions and act on them without a second thought. Ds did receive the DTaP and immunoglobulin in the ER that day (not in the same ER that nurse was in though, we were transferred from the local hospital to the children's hospital) and he didn't have any anaphlaxsis symptoms so we got lucky on that.

What I hate is when I get lumped into the anti-vaxxers because we do an as-needed/ delayed vax schedule because we have had multiple anaphylactic reactions to multiple vaccines in our immediate family. I didn't choose to be an anti-vaxxer. I was told by multiple doctors (not crunchy doctors that I specifically hunted down so that they would agree with me) that herd immunity may be our family's best choice since it was obvious our immune systems have some sort of issue with something in the vaccines that most people do not have. It drives me nuts that each time I have a encounter with a new doctor or nurse and the subject of vaccines inevitably comes up, 9 times out of 10 they assume I'm a radical anti-vaxxer that they need to "fix". I'm not going to give myself or my children vaccines just to prove to them that we have anaphylactic reactions that are noted over and over again in the charts if they would take the time to look. Sigh. Sorry for the tangent. Just wanted to throw out there that not everyone who refuses or delays vaccines is a radical anti-vaxxers. Some of us are just trying to toe the line between immunity and other health problems in order to survive. It really sucks when people on both sides of the issue give us flack for things that we never asked for to happen to us. Feels like we just can't win sometimes.

Go for medieval! It's not like they won't see the ancient stuff again. If they are bored on a rainy day, pull out the unfinished maps and and have fun remembering previous history lessons. Just don't tell them it's actually history review.

We don't get our first frost here typically until late October at the earliest. We can usually keep gardening frost tolerant plants outdoors and mostly unprotected into December. I am so ready for it to actually feel like fall already! I'd take a damp 47 degrees right now lol. Wanna trade? :-P Yes the fire look is just that, for looks. It's a light bulb that spins around flashing light thru different colored plastic lenses to simulate the movement and look of a fire. Like I said it's not very convincing if you stare it at for a while but at a glance, it can be hard to tell sometimes lol. We can turn the fire look on but not the heat or we can turn the heat on but not the fire, they are independent of each other but somehow, the glow of the "fire" does make you feel cozier. :-)