I agree with HomeAgain. Another tactic I use with my kids when teaching independence is challenging them to complete something before I finish as task a little ways away from them. It really works well if your child has a competitive streak. For example, yesterday my 6yo (will be 7 in 3 mos) was working on some word work that he can complete without assistance with me just watching So I challenged him to finish the page before I finished washing the breakfast dishes. I was only 3 feet away but he completed it and I may or may not have taken more time than I actually needed to wash the dishes to help him feel successful on this first foray into independent school work. That's just part of my youngest son's personality though. I know he needs to feel successful at something to be able to encourage him to do even more the next time. I have an older child that would be totally insulted if he noticed that I wasn't actually racing and letting him win even when he was younger ds's age. Every kid is different and you need to find the tactics that motivate your particular child the best and if you have multiple kids, it is very likely that each one of them is motivated by something different.

I think Here's a pretty good explanation of how radiant heat works. I love our little fake fireplace lol. I'm in the process of building a faux hearth and mantle for it too lol. Ours even has the lights that make it look like a fire. It's not convincing if you look closely at it but more than one person has had to do a double take when looking at it to decide if it was a real fire or not. It keeps our open floor plan kitchen, living room and dining room warm in the winter but our winters are not typically freezing cold. The total area we are heating with it is just over 500 square feet. We are still in a/c mode right now with highs in the upper 90s during the day and miserable humidity. Turning the heat on isn't even on my radar for at least another month probably, maybe two. But even in January/February when the temps might dip down to the single digits at night for a while, that little heater does its job and does it well. What you really need to look at to decide if a space heater will heat the space you want heated is BTUs. You need to take into consideration the cubic area you want to heat (high ceilings mean that you need more heat output to be able to feel the heat near the floor since heat rises) and your climate. If you are turning the heat on already, you will need more BTUs than me because I live in a milder climate than you do. Here is a link to do the math for determining the BTUs you need. It seems to be figuring out BTUs for a whole house system but the process is pretty much the same for a space heater and a smaller space. When in doubt, get as many BTUs as you can afford. You can always run it on low or adjust the thermostat down (ans use less electricity as a result) but you can't force an heater to heat more than it is capable of.

I've homeschooled six kids past or up to the age of 7 and none of them could do more than one or two simple tasks without me there. Even with those one or two simple tasks, I needed to be near by or they wouldn't get done. My kids were just not ready at the age of 7 to do much of anything on their own but by 9 or 10 they were ready to begin working toward independent work. Personally, I think your expectations might be a little too high for your 7 year old. Have you tried breaking the task down further for her? Instead of a few problems, maybe have her try one problem without you right there with her or even one step of a problem with you looking on and not helping? Then move toward more as she masters each little bit of independence. A 7 year old who can't or doesn't like independent work wouldn't bother me and yes, I've had to homeschool other children at the same time, my oldest 3 kids are stair steps so I've had a third grader just learning independence, a first grader and a kindergartner who were completely dependent upon me being present for the entire lesson and a toddler to boot. It's not easy but you can teach them all they need to know even if they need your full attention while they work for a while longer. My three little stairsteps are all grown up now and have been perfectly capable of independent work for years now. ;-) You said she is a quick learner, does she need a lot of practice or is she the kind of student that once she has it, she is ready to move on to the next thing and can apply what she has previously learned? It's possible that she is so distracted because she's bored because she doesn't need all the practice to retain her lessons. I was that kid growing up and so is my second oldest daughter. I hated practicing things ad naseum when I already understood the concept and it made completing the work very tedious and difficult for me. I was ready for a new challenge, not more of the same work I could already do perfectly. Just wanted to share some food for thought really. Every kid and every homeschool is different so of course, ymmv.

Delonghi is always the brand we get for oil filled heaters. They usually last 3 - 4 years with continuous use all winter, at least for us. To me, all heaters have a bit of a smell when they are brand new but after a while of use. it fades. We also have a radiant heat portable electric fireplace in our living room that I love. That one I don't remember the name of or the model, it was on sale this past spring at Walmart. I don't like to use our central heat at all because it is forced air and causes allergy issues for me.

We have an oil filled radiator that we run in our master bath in the winter since we had to cut off central heat and air to that room (long story). It keeps that bathroom (long and narrow 18' by maybe 8ft?) plenty warm in the winter. I actually prefer that little oil filled radiator to central heat now that we have been using it for a few years. It keeps that bathroom plenty warm on low and on high it starts making the adjacent master bedroom warmer too. My son learned fairly quickly that touching it when its on isn't a good idea. It didn't really hurt him but it was enough to discourage him from doing it again. Like ceramic heaters, oil filled radiators won't instantly heat a room and the larger the room, the longer it takes but once it has been going for a few hours, it keeps the room cozy.

I will never ever understand carpeted bathrooms or kitchens. I've seen both and had a partially carpeted bathroom once. It was a rental house and I figure it was just in the master bath, the vanity area was carpeted but the toilet and tub were in a separate area that had sheet vinyl so I decided that since finding nice rental housing in that area was tough anyways, I'd just live with the carpet in my bathroom since it wasn't in the kids bathroom. Never. Again. Even in the vanity area of the little used master bathroom, it was a pain.

We are nearing the end of the slow process of replacing all the carpet in our house. I hate carpet for all the reasons mentioned above. We have no intentions of moving unless we win we lottery and can move where we want and have the house of our dreams built, which will feature absolutely no carpet. We are using vinyl flooring and I love it. Cheaper than hardwood, less maintenance than hardwood(we live in a humid climate so wood expansion/contraction is a worse issue than other places I've lived), doesn't feel as delicate to me as laminate. That echo/plastic-y sound DawnM mentioned makes me feel like it could break easily but that could just be me, I've never had it in any house I've lived in for that reason. Our dream house will have decorative concrete floors throughout. I've had them before and they are a breeze to keep clean. The bathrooms in that house had tile and he grout lines were my nemesis. It was white grout too so with two young boys and a man-child husband at the time who never seem to be able to "hit the mark" in the bathroom, trying to keep that grout white was a nightmare. Anytime something gets spilled on the remaining carpet in the house, I can usually be heard grumbling as I try to clean it, "Who the heck thought it was a good idea to upholster a floor!?!"

I've been there done that too with pregnancy. It's super frustrating and that is compounded by pregnancy hormones. Ktgrok's idea of a maternal-fetal medicine specialist is a good one. Even if they are out of network, it is worth a shot. They can probably help you navigate everything to get you with someone who can help you that is covered if nothing else. Or maybe they can work with the insurance on your behalf since this is a high risk pregnancy and get them to cover things they ordinarily wouldn't cover. I had a MFMS on my high risk pregnancy (placental abruption detected at 14 weeks, wasn't expected to make it to 20 weeks, scheduled to deliver at 30 weeks, bought her 6 extra weeks in the womb before she was born at 36 weeks. She's 13 now with no issues at all related to her birth). The MFMS was wonderful and was wonderfully kind and caring about a pregnancy that by all indications could have ended tragically. She didn't downplay that the pregnancy was a risk to both of us, me and the baby, but she wasn't all doom and gloom either. She was definitely good at her job. I've never met another person in the obstetrics field like her.

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. I hate people dropping in unannounced. Gives me anxiety just thinking about it. I feel my stomach drop to the floor and I feel like puking when it happens and after they leave I usually crash and need a nap. Even if they only stay 5 minutes. Yes, I know I have an anxiety problem. I especially do not like visitors, announced or unannounced, in the hospital. We always tell the admissions desk that they are not allowed to tell people we are there when they ask us that question. If I wanted visitors, I would have invited them. I do not ever drop in on anyone without announcing myself first or they explicitly tell me to come over. If all you do is drop hints but never say, "Hey why don't you come over at X time on Y day" I am probably going to sorely disappoint you. I was raised mostly in the southwestern United States. Lived a good portion of my teenage and young adult years in the south. There was a military influence from childhood into my early thirties. Now I live in the middle of nowhere on the edge between the midwest and the south. I like it here. We rarely get unannounced visitors anymore because there is really no other reason to come where we are other than to come see us. And most people who know us well enough to see us know about my anxiety and call or text first.

Teaching independence is not something that can be taught to children in 9 months or less especially with a child too young to realistically expect independence. I typically start teaching independence with school work in 3rd grade. Depending on the child and what I've learned I can reasonably expect from that particular child, they start with one or two tasks they already know how to do with me sitting right there. These tasks take 5 - 10 minutes with me sitting right there. They typically take twice as long when they start learning to do it independently. I don't expect them to start being fully independent with any of their school work until 6th grade at the earliest. So it literally takes 3 years of training them and working with them for them to be reliably independent where I can give them a list with the reasonable expectation that they complete it. And even then there are still subjects they cannot complete independently and days that they rebel and try to see if I really do still want them to complete the work to the same standards every time. Homeschooling with a house full of littles is no easy task. It takes enormous amounts of time and patience. It can be done, I have done it and lived to tell the tale but I did get more than a few grey hairs from the experience. The way I handled it was to let go of my unrealistic ideas of what school should look like and make peace with the fact that even though it didn't look like what I imagined, they were still learning and still thriving. Combining subjects where ever I could was much more effective than trying to force my kids to be independent before they were developmentally ready. I was in your shoes and trying to figure out how to do everything with lots of kids in the house. In the end, it was my preconceived notions and unrealistic expectations from lack of experience that had to change.

The only things I see that might be missing is some kind of music appreciation or learning an instrument or P.E. type learning. Of course neither or those is strictly necessary. What you have is plenty as long as they are getting outside to play often but if you wanted to add something or felt something was missing, those are the only things I can really see that you haven't covered in your post. Another optional thing you could add is foreign language learning but again that's not strictly necessary at your children's ages.

My general rule has always been when they show an genuine interest or age 6 which ever comes first. I really like Logic of English Foundations because it works on those phonemic awareness/pre-reading skills a lot especially in the early lessons. Foundations A is prefect for a 4 year old with at least some interest in doing lessons. Don't rush it or feel like you have to try to do a full lesson every day (split the activities over 2 or 3 days) but feel free to skip anything he already knows solidly or isn't completely ready for. You can certainly do LOE Foundations while working on his grip and just skip the writing part. It is very slow and methodical to begin with so while he may know how to form the letters, it could be good practice for him to work on his grip. Or substitute other writing exercises or OT exercises for fixing his pencil grip.

If you don't want to go the credit card route, you can have her go to Walmart near her and get a Walmart prepaid credit card. It works like a credit card, can be used anywhere VISA is accepted and can be topped off by you online. The only thing it doesn't have is a bill that can get out of hand. It's a prepaid card so you can only spend as much money as you load on it. I've used ours to pay for online purchases, pump gas, pay for hotel rooms, rent cars... I've never had a problem with it not working so long as I loaded enough money on it to cover the purchase. It can even accept direct deposits and allows you to set up savings and bill pay features. Just wanted to mention this option in case you didn't know about it.

My married name from my first marriage was a "Mc" last name. We always just abbreviated it with just an M.

Zaboomafoo and Wild Kratts are both excellent kids shows that teach both about animals and how to safely observe creatures of all kinds in their natural habitats.

T-Mobile prepaid is what we used until just this month. We moved to post-paid because it made more sense for our current situation but I would go back to prepaid in a heartbeat if we needed to. On prepaid, we got unlimited talk, text and data for $75/mo/line. Service was excellent on prepaid, coverage was no better or worse than any other provider around here (we live in the mountains so all providers have dead zones around here due to the topography.) We use our phones extensively and even use them as our sole internet connection at home via tethering. T-Mobile is one of the few providers that allows tethering with very few restrictions even on prepaid. I would highly recommend their prepaid to anyone.

I remember my mother putting Ziploc bags over our socks before we put our shoes on to go out in the snow because it didn't snow often enough (only every couple of years) to warrant buying snow boots every year lol. Maybe you could make a bootie of sorts out of PUL material to put over her socks then put the boots on over that? Then even if the top of the shoe isn't waterproof, her feet should stay dry. Or maybe spray the boots with the waterproofing spray for camping equipment. As long as the material on the boot isn't a really loose weave, it should work.

If the neighbor is listed as the person who gave the information and signed the statement, I wouldn't see why it couldn't be prosecuted as filing a false statement. But it costs money to take it all to court. It would depend on if the neighbor was a minor annoyance or a major nuisance and how much money you had to invest in putting this neighbor in her place. We lived in an apartment complex once that had an area behind our assigned parking spots that was clearly marked no parking. People parked there all the time and we couldn't get out of our assigned parking spot because there was no room to back up or pull out of the spot. We called the towing company anytime we couldn't get out of our spot because someone parked in the no parking zone. We didn't have to give any information to the police or the towing company about us, just where the car to be towed was located. It would have been impossible to identify who called it in if someone thought they had been wrongly towed.

Believe it or not, we live in a dry county. There are several in our state. That's not to say you can't get alcohol, most of the surrounding counties are not dry and two of them have a liquor store literally just mere feet on the other side of the county line lol. But you definitely don't see as many drunken parties here as you do in the neighboring counties. Dh and I don't drink because of the medications we are on. Ds21 has had drinks but doesn't go out drinking all the time. Ds19 and dd18 I'm sure have had drinks at their father's house but neither of them go out partying or anything like that. I don't see any of them becoming more than occasional drinkers because they all comment on what drinking has done to their father.

We have a little plastic terrarium like this from Walmart. It was less than $10 if I remember correctly. Ds6 collects lizards and bugs and frogs and tadpoles in it but we only allow him to observe them in there for a few hours at most. We have a pond on our property so it's not hard for him to collect frogs and such himself, even near the pond. He grew up around the pond so he knows the safe areas of the pond to explore and he can swim (not that you'd want to in that nasty overflow pond lol). If your son isn't well versed in open water safety, I wouldn't want to teach him, collect specimen and watch a 2yo all at the same time. That would be exhausting if you don't have someone to come with you and be an extra set of hands or your 2yo is the type that would be content at least for a little while in a stroller or a baby carrier. I have to agree with the poster above though. We always remind the kids that animals are happiest living free and in the wild. While they are fun to observe, we need to do our best to observe them in their natural habitat and if we do catch them, we need to return them to their home ASAP. Can you not observe them in their natural habitat and determine what conditions you find them in to decide if they like warm/cold, humid or dry? It seems like that would be easier and more humane than catching and experimenting on them and possibly killing them from mishandling or accidental spills. You could take a picture and talk about where you found them and decide what they prefer based on where they choose to live. You can order a wide variety of bugs and amphibians to observe as they grow. We've considered getting some aquatic frogs as pets so ds has frogs that he can observe without disturbing the one that are in the wild.

Oh, I forgot about A Child Through History, A Street Through History and A City Through History. My son loves looking through those during our history lessons. I also agree that Usborne can be a bit dense for wiggly first grade boys. We have the DK History Year by Year as our history encyclopedia and we just browse and talk about it, not straight read it.

DP

In addition to the suggestions above, you might want to introduce non-fiction with subject matter he is genuinely interested in. Science is a great way to introduce non-fiction to preschoolers and young elementary school kids. Let's Read and Find Out science books are bound to have a book that catches his interest. The Step Into Reading non-fiction books are usually good too. My first grader is really into animals so Step Into Reading's Hungry Hungry Sharks was a huge hit with him. Step Into Reading also has some history titles like Tut's Mummy Lost and Found and Pompeii Buried Alive. Your library should have many non-fiction titles on a variety of topics and reading levels. Right now I have a couple of young elementary level books on the Stone Age and Mesopotamia from the library and a couple of encyclopedia type books on the same topic for browsing more than straight reading. We have You Wouldn't Want To Be A Mammoth Hunter from the You Wouldn't Want to Be.... Series and that was also a non-fiction hit with my first grader. Non-fiction doesn't have to be dry encyclopedia readings only. There are tons of non-fiction titles out there that are fun, interesting and engaging, even for young kids.

Marfan was one of my first thoughts too. My oldest son was suspected to have it but it was ruled out. He was over 6 foot tall when he started high school, he had been taller than me since he was 10 or 11. But he also has scoliosis, which inherited from my side of the family. Marfan's syndrome can cause heart problems without warning so it is definitely something you may want to be sure to rule out. That said, my oldest daughter has always been tall for her age and has big feet. She couldn't "borrow" my shoes (size 7-8) anymore by the time she was in 3rd grade. She has what I've always called a "softball player" build. She's not overweight by any means but she is very sturdy and always has been which is in stark contrast to her younger sister who looks like a good stiff wind could carry her away. I haven't kept track of her shoe size in years but last I remember she was around a 12 or 13. There is nothing at all wrong with her, she's just a big, tall girl.

No, you are not the only one. Lots of people try to give me well meaning advice or what they consider to be comforting words to some very complicated situations I have going on in my life right now and I really just want to scream and throw things when they do it too. It is not particularly helpful to me and it just feels like a platitude they are throwing out there because they don't know what else to say but feel like they should say something. In a way, it makes me feel even more alone in my struggles even though I know that was not their intention.