We have some outside mounted plantation blinds. They block most of the light but not all of it. There is also always that one little crack that 5am rays of brilliant sunshine always manages to find though. But if you hang curtains over them on a rod that projects a little from the wall, it should block most of those persistent rays of morning sun. They don't even have to be blackout curtains unless you have someone who needs to sleep during the day. Honestly, I'm slowly replacing all my plantation blinds. All the bedrooms have blackout curtains and the public areas that I'm working on replacing now I'm using either just curtains or roller shades or Roman shades. If I have any more blinds in the future, they will be the kind that are between the double panes of glass. I despise cleaning blinds, lol.

We've done it many many times. My kids were seasoned little travelers though from the time they were very young and we invested in super comfy carseats when they were little enough to ride in them. Granted we were much younger when we did all the night traveling and still able to do all-nighters and be able to function on a few hours of sleep. I'm not so sure I could or would want to do it anymore. Last time we pulled an all-night drive was about 10 years ago now that I think about it.

My first thought was the Lehman's catalog. If she just wants to use it as decoration in her kitchen until she has actual use for it or just wants to use it as a novelty item for the kids, most of their churns are pretty and functional though maybe not the most efficient way to make butter.

My ex-husband was military and traveled often for work and often had extra duties that caused him to be not home a lot. I often thought of myself as a "married single mother" because I took care of the household stuff all the time for the most part. From mowing the grass to cooking to raising the kids to household repairs, it was all on me even when he was home usually. I just dealt with it most of the time, it was what it was. When we had extra money, I would go out for an afternoon and get a pedicure. That was a 2 - 3 hour affair usually with a quick lunch out before or afterwards. I didn't necessarily do it after he was gone for several days or weeks or months but I did do it from time to time. I either got family to watch the kids or traded babysitting with the neighbors or on rare occasion made now-ex-husband watch the kids. But that has more to do with why we are now divorced than anything else. My current husband actually sends me out and makes me go take an afternoon for myself now and then while he watches the kids. ;-)

I lean toward free range parenting also. My kids were 10 and 11yo when I let them walk about a block and a half to the middle school by themselves with their friends. They had to cross a 3 lane road but there was a crosswalk and a crossing guard. I'd say around 12 -13yo I let them run in the store with me sitting in the car outside. We never had a store close enough for them to walk by themselves. That is also the age I let them go inside to pay for gas while I pumped when we had to pay cash instead of a card at the pump. Where we live now in a rural area and my kids had to walk to the end of our 900 foot dirt driveway to the blacktop road to catch the bus for school. My older three were in high school/late middle school and my younger two were in early elementary. I had the older ones watch the younger ones at the bus stop but oldest ds had a cell phone and was instructed to call me if the little two were not listening about staying out of the road and being safe. If I had to come get the little ones from the bus stop and take them to school myself, they lost the privilege of getting to walk to the bus stop with the big kids which was a huge deal to them. I could see the bus stop from the kitchen window of the house FWIW. It is completely child dependent though. My general rule though, I wouldn't trust a 9.5yo to watch two younger siblings outside my home. One sibling maybe if they were mature enough and wanted to but not both of them. If the 9.5yo and 7.5yo worked well together and they could both be trusted to keep an eye on a 4.5yo I might give them a little more independence but it would be really situation dependent. I probably wouldn't let them cross more than a residential street together without me.

I have no contact with my parents and my sister chooses to have no contact with me despite attempts on my part to have a relationship with her and her kids. It is what it is. I don't have time or emotional well being to waste on any of it. I can't change them, I can only choose how I react to them. If they contacted me, I would cautiously give them the benefit of the doubt but the first time I sensed foul play or mind games, I would be gone in the blink of an eye. It honestly sounds to me like your sister means no harm and just wants to include you and your family. I seriously doubt she is oblivious to the fact that you and your family have be left out of family get-togethers in the past. Perhaps she is just avoiding the elephant in the room that is your relationship, or lack thereof, with your mother in an effort to bring the family back together and honestly believes she is doing a good thing. Who knows, it doesn't sound like you have straight forwardly asked her what her intentions are so any attempt to figure out her intentions is just a guess. If you really want to know ask her straight up what her intentions are. My personal belief is that in person or over the phone would be better than text (where body language and tone are often indiscernible) for this conversation . If you don't want to open that can of worms, politely decline and move on, it's not worth stewing over.

The most painful thing I've ever had is gall stones. Second most painful is kidney stones. Third most painful is abscessed tooth. Fourth most painful is drug free child birth. They were getting me lined up for lithotripsy but I was living overseas at the time and I would have to be air evac'ed to Hawaii for the procedure. I had a "hat" to pee in for the interim and thankfully I passed it before they could get everything lined up to send me out for the lithotripsy. Like Mercy said, passing it is a lot less painful than it moving down the ureters. Once it enters the bladder, the pain subsides a bit and passing it through the urethra is not any worse than a urinary tract infection except that it stops hurting once it passes. Mine was 10-11mm the first time too, I can't remember exactly it was 10+ years ago and I've had more since (having one does something like double your chances of having more). When I feel that familiar uncomfortable pain in the flank of my back start to come on, I begin guzzling massive quantities of liquids (mostly water) like my life depends on it. Cranberry juice is helpful to keep infection from compounding the pain. I also start popping cranberry tablets with every meal for the same reason. I've been able to pass every kidney stone I've had at home this way and avoid a lithotripsy. If you pass it, don't forget to save the stone. They can analyze it and possibly figure out what caused it and how to prevent future stones or see if you need more testing for other ailments that can cause kidney stones. Mine are related to my thyroid issues for instance so other than staying on top of my thyroid issues, there isn't a lot I can do to prevent them. But my first kidney stone was one of the first clues that my thyroid was on the fritz.

A good therapist who is experienced with working with children in therapy will do exactly what you are hoping for and will do so in a manner that makes your daughter slowly become more comfortable with talking to him/her. A good therapist will not bombard her with questions about things that embarrass her but work to build a relationship with her before working on the more difficult and embarrassing topics. A good therapist will not push her to talk about things she doesn't want to talk about until some trust has been established and even then your daughter has the right to say she's not ready to talk about that yet with the therapist. Yes, medication will help but so will working on reducing the need for medications with coping strategies. I also tend to self mutilate by scratching and digging my nails when I am extremely anxious or having an anxiety attack. I have scars all over my hands and arms from it. It's not an appropriate coping mechanism and I know that but I don't even notice that I'm doing it sometimes. I have worked on it in therapy and when I'm with a good therapist, in addition to my medications, I do it much less often. When I am just on medication but not in therapy for whatever reason, I start doing it more often.

Totally age appropriate for a 4yo to not be able or terribly interested in writing, particularly boys who have a tendency to lag a little bit behind girls on fine motor skills. Legos are a great fine motor activity for little boys. Work on a good tripod grip on the pencil. Scribe for him if he wants to write something so he gets lots of time to observe how to form letters correctly. My 6.5yo youngest boy is just now getting pretty good at writing legibly and he does like to draw and write. None of my other boys liked to draw and write as much as my youngest even when they were 6. I know the public schools around here at least really push for a child to be able to write their full name before entering kindergarten but this is not an age appropriate expectation for all children in my opinion. It has more to do with teacher convenience (if all children can write and recognize their name in print from the start of the year, they don't have to spend the first half of the year working on it) than any real benefit for the child. Sure some kids are perfectly capable of this by the start of K but there are just as many who aren't. It has nothing at all to do with intelligence.

I grew up in Phoenix with a solar hot water heater on the roof. I've always thought solar powered anything was neat. I've been trying to talk dh into converting our well to solar. As it is right now, if the power goes out, we lose water too since the well pump cannot kick on without electricity. And we lose power frequently out here in the middle of nowhere. When there is a big outage like we had a few years ago when we got a massive amount of snow, we are one of the last areas around here to get power restored. I would LOVE to go completely solar and off grid. It's a "someday" goal for me, dh isn't quite fully on board yet.

We keep all of our prescription medication in a document safe for both child safety and for keeping them safe from theft. A "friend" stole medication (pain medication from dh and anxiety meds from me) from us in the past so we keep them locked and hidden now. Every week, we fill up our pill caddies from the safe and just keep the pill caddies where we can easily access them but on a shelf that is difficult for 6yo ds to reach. I'm sure plenty of your dd's dorm mates will have birth control pills that are in a round pill caddy-like container where you just pop one out each day to take it so I'm sure no one would question her on a small pill caddy. You can find round pill caddies at dollar tree. Maybe she could keep a week's worth in the caddy and keep that accessible to take them but keep the rest of the month's prescription in a safe. Then she just needs to get in the habit of filling the caddy each week. If she leaves the caddy out and it gets stolen, that's a lot smaller loss than losing the entire month's worth.

Interesting. The first place I had ever heard of funeral potatoes was when we lived in eastern NC in the 90s.

I tried Flonase when we were trying out different meds to find something that worked when Claritin stopped working. I could not do it. The scent that it left in my nose for hours afterwards made me nauseous and having to spray something up my nose everyday worsened my anxiety. But I have known sensory issues so it wasn't surprising that I could not do it. I've been taking Zyrtec for 5 years or so now, the longest I've ever been able to stick with an allergy med and have it still work. Sometimes I have to take it twice a day when allergy season is at its height in my area. I've never had a problem with depression related to the allergy med, but different meds affect different people in different ways I suppose. I'm sorry you have a sinus infection OP. Those really do drain you of life for a while, or at least they do for me. Hopefully after the antibiotics have a chance to work you will notice a big change. *hugs*

Sounds like your allergy medicine needs to change or possibly the dosage. I take 10mg citrizine (24 hour Zyrtec) daily but I take one additional pill per day as needed according to my allergist if I have an unusually bad seasonal allergy day or if I suspect I may have come in contact with tomatoes (my main food allergen). I had been taking Claritin before the switch to Zyrtec but I managed to build up a resistance to it and it stopped working well enough to be even worth taking it, which sounds like the boat you are in. If your doctor is just sending you out the door because it is "just allergies" and nothing is helping, request to be sent to an allergist. "Just allergies" should not render you bed ridden all day when there are so many options out there to relieve your allergies.

When my now adult children were little, we lived in neighborhoods with yards barely big enough to justify a push mower and I would have never dreamed that I would let my young elementary age child drive a riding lawn mower on their own but my youngest son has always lived out in the country on 7 acres with large flat fields he can drive through safely on low. Then it occurred to me that when my big kids were little, I didn't know lawn mowers without blades being used as very small tractors was a thing so others might not either lol. I knew I meant the bladeless lawn mower that we use to ride around our property picking up stray limbs or with the little wagon attached pulling tools or cinderblocks to where we need them but then I remembered keeping a bladeless lawn mower isn't the norm everywhere. There is no way I would let him drive it around with sharp spinning bars underneath. He also knows there are strict rules on the lawn mower and if he breaks one even once he will not be given a second chance. He has had it ingrained in him that it is a tool that is normally reserved for grown ups, not a toy, and if he wants to help out around here by driving the lawn mower around he has to act the same way a grown up would/should when using it. Then again, we were given an almost new Ford 150 power wheels because it had been left out in the rain and shorted out the circuits. My husband was able to fix it and get it working again for ds but now they (dh and ds) are looking into getting a hold of a lawn mower engine to put in it so it will run off gas instead and go faster, more like a go cart. lol When my oldest son was 6.5yo, I would have asked dh if he lost his mind... 4th boy and 2 girls later, I just shake my head and tell them don't track dirt in the house with it. lol

See, unless the teens were being unusually reckless, like playing chicken with oncoming traffic or running over little kids on their bikes, if the HOA guidelines said it was fine within the community, I wouldn't have a problem with a teen driving a golfcart. I wouldn't even report a teen driving a golfcart around where I live now unless they were being reckless or doing something illegal, it's the child of 7 driving on a public road that would concern me. My youngest son is 6.5yo. He's allowed to drive the lawn mower on certain areas of our property but he's not allowed anywhere near the public road which is 1/8 of a mile down a private dirt road that he isn't allowed to go down by himself even on foot. He is supervised and has had lots of lap driving and instruction before he was allowed to drive one himself. Dh did the same on our property when he was a child. ETA: I forgot to mention the lawn mower does not have any blades and is essentially a cheap 4 wheeler. It's common around here to let kids as young as my youngest to drive old lawn mowers without blades through fields and pastures but it occurred to me that it's not common everywhere to have a lawn mower with no blades just for riding and pulling things around the property when you don't want to start up the tractor, lol.

I grew up in a golf course community near a town with a high population of retirees. Some of the elderly retirees, who presumably had licenses but at the very least were more experienced driving than a 7 year old lol, would also meandered and turned into traffic unpredictably on their golf carts. Just saying I don't trust anyone on a golf cart regardless of age lol. I know here, where I live now which is out in the country outside the city limits, children drive 4 wheelers, golf carts, dirt bikes, lawn mowers, tractors... without supervision but the second they are off their parent's property and on a public road, it is illegal for them to be driving and often the "vehicle" is illegal for use on public roads also. I would, and have, called the police and reported it if for nothing else but the child's safety. I'm not usually one to tell others how to parent but a child driving on a public road is endangering more than just themselves in my opinion.

That is weird because the themes should be global, showing everyone the same things if they are on the same settings. But it did work for me at least to change the theme setting and, bonus, the pages load faster on my agonizingly slow 3g internet connection lol.

Changing the theme from "Well Trained Mind v 4.3 (Default)" to just plain "Default" did get rid of the weird numbers for me. Thanks Arctic_bunny. In case someone else never noticed the theme setting before like me, it's down at the bottom of the every page under the social media buttons but above the blue footer tray. Changing it once on any page will change it on all pages for you and the numbers disappear.

My son (6.5yo) really likes this video but I will say that carrying and borrowing is/was an idea he really needed to play with for a long time before he started to comprehend it. He's quite good at math and very intuitive with it for the most part but he needed some "simmer time" with the idea of carrying and borrowing before it started to make sense for him. Playing with the nooms on Dragonbox Big Numbers really helped as well. Playing and experimenting with tens frames seems to help too.

Duolingo? Find some cartoons in French on Youtube to watch? My son likes Sam-Sam. If she is "too cool" to watch kid cartoons, maybe one of these French tv shows Here is a listing of Netflix titles with French subtitles Maybe find her favorite movie or tv program in French or with French subtitles When I was in high school taking French 20 years or so ago, I had a French penpal in France. I would write in French, she would write in English and we would help each other with writing the language more like a native speaker. I have no idea how my teacher arranged this but I'm sure something similar could still be done today with either a francophone from France or Canada or another French speaking country. Perhaps even someone on this board could help you arrange something like that. ETA: I forgot about this, here is the remake of Garfield and Friends in French

Why not spray the backpack with waterproofing spray. like the kind used for camping equipment, if rain is that much of an issue? Also a neoprene laptop sleeve to protect the laptop while it's in the backpack from accidental damage and an extra layer of waterproof protection.

It would depend on what you were putting the hashbrowns in I would imagine. If the recipe has plenty of liquid like a soup, it would probably be fine to just dump them in and maybe add a little bit of extra liquid to make up for rehydrating the potatoes. In a casserole, I'd probably cook them first and then reduce the final cook time so that they would have that bit of crispy-ness from being cooked in the pan first. I can't think of what else you might put hashbrowns in.

This. You can even have your older children listed as guardians with the doctor's office for your younger children so that is already on record that they can make decisions and sign for treatment at the doctor's office. All you need to do is sign the HIPPA paperwork stating that you authorize the doctor's office to share with the older children anything that they would ordinarily share with you.

Lol, my ex-husband's family used to make "Taco Mac" by mixing mac n cheese and taco meat together. Make the mac and cheese with nacho cheese, mix with taco meat and rotel as the pp mentioned and call it "Tex Mex Mac n Cheese" lol