My 10yo doesn't like them either. But she does love using the magnadoodle. :lol: I second the baking sheet/cookie tray idea. That is what we use (with my 5yo and the rare times my 10yo wants them)

We play fashion show too. :001_smile: We take a day off from school, I dump the contents of our rubbermaid boxes, and we have a free for all trying on anything. The little ones especially like trying on things they know are too big or two small. :D But yes, this is the girls. I'm betting our son won't be so thrilled when he's older. For now we'll just dress him up during the clothing change day. :lol: I save clothes from my first to my second dd (2 years apart), and again between my #3 and #4 DDs. (2.3 years apart). But there is a 3.5 year gap between #2 and #3, and an even bigger size gap (#3 dd is tiny for her age). So I give things away rather than keep them for 4 years. I wind up getting many hand me downs from friends/family anyway - for example we only need to buy her maybe two pairs of pants this fall. I love the local consignment sale's 1/2 price day and also yard saling when I can, so replacing what I gave away isn't very expensive. I do wash every day so we don't need a ton of clothes anyway. I'd rather *someone* be using our clothes for those 4 years than watch them rot away in our rubbermaid.

Thanks for posting this - I'm so slow on the uptake with the new board changes, I didn't know where to find anything. I'm usually tech-savvy, too! :001_huh:

The only one I really knew *right away* (the next day) was my second. We struggled to conceive our first, and so on my 30th birthday my dh gave me a card that said my present was having another child, whatever it took. Well, it worked! LOL The next day I woke up and just felt "occupied" and not alone. I knew before my cycle was due with all the other girls, and our four losses. But our boy? Nah. Maybe because we finally threw caution to the wind and stopped tracking everything. Maybe because I actually got a full (.) *while* pregnant with him. :001_huh: This is such a fun thread. I love hearing of other women being so in tune!

Currently, we outsource only some extracurriculars (usually P.E., sometimes art, althought then it's just my mom teaching! :001_smile:) but I fully intend to outsource more for the high school years. I'm pretty sure I *could* teach all of them, but I don't think I *want to*.So there. :lol:

Ack, you're scaring me! I just added it all up - the 6 years we've done so far plus the 18+ more years for my baby, then more if there's another... 25+ years!:svengo: I'm too old for this. I'm going to take a nap. :lol:

Typically 1 32 gallon can full. But that's a minimum, it's usually that but rarely less. Our neighbors, who all have many fewer people per household and none in diapers, all put out more, so at least when I look out my own windows I feel like we're doing pretty good. ;) (Don't ask what it looks like around birthdays or Christmas time :001_huh:)

Thank you Jessica - very helpful. I know I've seen Rupp's book at the library, and the Core Knowledge series. That's what I've been doing - but I feel like I'm tweaking the life out of them to use for a girl who's advanced in many ways but not others LA wise, and her dyslexic-ish sister. :001_huh: So I felt very off track and not trusting that, for example, SL or R&S knew what they were doing when they said something was a certain grade. :tongue_smilie: And since I spend so much time tweaking, I figured I'd better figure out what the goal really IS, or knowing me, I'd be running them all in circles. :D

How do you know *what* a child should be able to do at a certain age/grade? Do you have a scope/sequence or list of goals that you like? I'm currently using SL 4's language arts for both my advanced 3rd grader and my struggling 5th grader. They are both floundering, but in totally separate ways. Since I now want to tweak it, I really feel like I need a list of what that age should know (realizing, of course, that all children are different and progress at their own pace ;)). It all seemed so easy to me in K-2, but now *I'm* floundering. :tongue_smilie: I need a goal, so we can reach it! (This is new for me :lol:) Anyone care to share what they use? Thanks!

This is me, word for word. Me too, except I'm 39, and starting to look it. :lol: I was very often mistaken for someone much younger 10 years ago, though. It's funny - as a child I thought (and was told by adults whom I trusted) that I was wise beyond my years. I *felt* 40 at 9 years old. Now that I'm almost 40, I don't feel much older than the children sitting around my dinner table. :001_huh: Wha happened? :lol:

Congratulations!! Beautiful name. :) I hope you enjoy every moment of your babymoon! :grouphug:

* I'd like walls back in our master bathroom. It's been *years* :001_huh: *Pull up the carpet and either refinish the wood underneath or lay something else. I'm convinced it's affecting our kid's allergies/eczema/autoimmune diseases. Dh is not so convinced :tongue_smilie: *Re-do the kitchen. It's old and falling apart, but not a desperate *need* (just a desperate *want* LOL) *Divide up a big room downstairs into a family room and extra bedroom so that my 4 girls don't have to share a 9x9, awkwardly planned room. *Now if I could dream - knock down the wall between the kitchen/dining room. Knock down the deck and build a two story addition: a school room under a sunroom/screened porch. But really, I would be happy with walls in my bathroom and my kids to stop itching, sneezing, and losing hair, LOL. :tongue_smilie: ETA: forgot painting. We may actually do this soon: paint the livingroom/entryway.

Sending lots of labor vibes your way!! I had four girls in a row, then our baby boy (who turns ONE today! :)) I carried like a boy more for the first two than any of the last three. The Chinese gender chart was wrong at least half the time too. I craved healthy foods for my firstborn (girl) and I think my third? (girl) but then all the others I had a very hard time staying away from junk - sweet, salty, and savory. I think I wanted FAT and strong flavor. I remember the first two had low heartbeats, and my boy had a higher heartbeat (I'm just breaking all the rules now, aren't I :lol:) I felt pretty good for the first two, and sick as a dog for the first half of pg for the last three. My skin and hair were all over the map too - great for some pgs but not others, and my hair was wavy for some and not others. The onlyl two things I see as different with boys/girls in my pregnancies is that my girls were all early, and progressively so: 7 days, 11 days, 14 days, 16 days. But then baby boy came around, and while he was early by a bit, he was later than all the others (3 days early - well, he was induced, but I was already in labor when I got there). That, and the fact that I just could not manage anything even remotely creative when I was pregnant with the girls. No crocheting, knitting, sewing, scrapbooking... anything. But with the boy, I couldn't get enough of it. I just wanted to be making something every day. That was weird. :D

I can't put it as eloquently as these women, but if you subtract out the details of your post (farm, coming back from Switzerland, etc), I could have written the "emotion" of it, word for word, right down to having a handful of a 3yo (well, yours is 4 now :001_smile:). Although mine *wont* play by herself and spends our whole school time trying to interrupt me. "Mommy, Mommy, MOMMY! This is important! Ummmmm...look Curious George has a hat on!" :001_huh: I don't have any answers --if I did I couldn't have written this post, LOL, 'cause I'd be fixing whatever was making me feel so funky about life all the time -- but I've got a ton of empathy for you. :grouphug: :grouphug: Maybe it's just me, but I feel like once you hit 4+ kids, you just can't compare yourself to someone with less, because the dynamics of your life are just so dramatically different. With that comes the fact that you have less people to look to for guidance -- people who have BTDT and can give you advice (no offense, of course, for anyone here with fewer kids who is giving advice! It's all helpful, just some of it isn't as applicable). I too often wonder why my life seems so hard, with my indoor plumbing and supermarkets and all ... but it does. Really, very hard. Maybe you can give us all a cyberlecture on how the Swiss stay so organized and neat, and we can all give you major kudos and applause and rep points, and you'll feel a little better. ;) (OK, so maybe that's just MY dream, LOL...) More :grouphug::grouphug:. I sincerely wish I had answers for your "non-questions". For all our sakes.

:grouphug::grouphug: No great advice either, just hugs and stories of BTDT.

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch - I'm loving it so far! Maybe Swallows and Amazons next, or whatever we're supposed to be reading for our SL core ;)

:iagree:

I would! I'm very interested in that kind of blog right now because we are in the not so distant future hoping to do the same ourselves ... as well as several other parts of the house.

Is it rude of me to ask? :lol::001_huh: I just returned two "extended loan" DVDs (they get 21 days because they're "educational") 9 days late. $30! I got discombobulated because I thought they were due with the rest of our books. I think that's my highest one time fee, but I've racked up plenty in drips and drabs. I *know* someone can beat me. Make me feel better, will ya? :tongue_smilie: This was just one little chink in a day overflowing with them...

I love it too. We take a day off school, dump *everything* in the livingroom, and have a huge fashion show. It's fun. Then again, I've got 4 girls who are into that sort of thing. I'd probably hate it if I had 5 boys. :D

Our favorite used to be Smart Balance Light (it is totally dairy free - is that what you're after?), but since discovering Earth Balance at Trader Joe's, that's our new favorite. :001_smile:

Happy birthday everyone!!

Always willing to help put a smile on someone's face. :)

Love it!! Thank you so much - I have been needing some ways to bow out of a little of the instruction here and there for my kids, and this will be so helpful. :001_smile:

Praying for him and all of you. :grouphug: