Youngest outgrew her shoes this morning. Thankfully I had already bought ahead for her next size when I saw her shoes on clearance last fall. She has to wear a certain shoe to accommodate her orthotics and it is $$$. I am glad we arent scrambling for that now, but I am going to start scouting sales to see if I can luck into the next bigger size for her.

Are you a side sleeper? From a PT point of view, try the clamshell exercise. Also look at piriformis syndrome and the relief stretches for that. I dont use a gel pad, it doesnt seem to help me, but the above exercises do.

So no mothers work in your community? Every child in your district has a SAHP because there is no childcare available? That seems….statistically not likely. Childcare affordability is definitely an issue everywhere…but most families ARE two income families…so childcare must exist somewhere.

✅breakfast ✅dishes ✅laundry ✅school with Youngest ✅administrative stuff ✅dr appointment ✅schedule med refills ✅kid thing 1 ✅kid thing 2 ✅kid thing 3

I didnt get plants repotted, but I did a thrift store dropoff and a hardware store return.

It depended on his overall workload for the week. He usually did all of the top half of the assignment, but sometimes we chose to do only some of the prompts/questions.

I have kids in public school, I have a kid I homeschool. Hands down, it is cheaper for me to send them to public school in my current state. We have free buses, free meals, no enrollment or book fees, no technology fees. Our district will even lend you a hotspot if you dont have home internet access. Our district also has before and afterschool care available on a sliding scale fee and meal pantries for families and clothing vouchers. In a previous state, it was cheaper to homeschool only if you had multiple kids all under 8th grade. Lost salary dollars are one thing, but I will also say at my age I regret the lost social security credits. I listened to the propaganda about how expensive childcare is, how much you can save by making your own bread and thrifting clothes, etc. without contemplating seriously that having fewer kids and getting them to age 5 and into school would have freed me up to return to work a lot sooner. Once you are out of the workforce a while it is so much harder to break back in. You can only “save” so much. At some point the hard reality of limited income + rising expenses (rising faster than income) comes to bite you.

Fwiw, the short answer and essay prompts in the workbook mentioned above are stellar. Oldest really mastered short answer and essay writing using those.

In public school my kids write a 3-5 page researched paper per semester, give a couple of slide shows on assigned topics, and do some notebooking activities. With my homeschooled kid, we combined ancient literature with History of the Ancient World by Susan Wise Bauer. We used about 90% of the accompanying workbook. Our ancient lit picks were the usual—Iliad, Odyssey, Aenid, Epic of Gilgamesh, Herotodus, The Republic, etc. If I were to do it again, I’d scale back a bit on the literature. It was overly ambitious and more college level than high school level.

If you want to try something while you wait to get her in with the new dr., start her on fluticasone nasal spray. It should lessen the runny nose and as it is inhaled it might also clear some of the cough. She’ll have to be off of it if you do allergy testing, but it shouldnt affect peak flow readings or spirometry if they do asthma testing.

Growing pains tend to be legs not fingers. For my kids it was primarily hips and knees. I understand the concern. Finger pain + genetic inheritance would have me seeking baseline bloodwork of a crp and sed rate and such….especially if you are seeing bilateral joint involvement, fingers or toe involvement, and morning stiffness that eases. I am sorry.

I’ve been detailing our living room furniture while Youngest works on stuff. We have a leather couch + set of leather chairs due to allergies…and I really love how buttery soft they get after I condition the leather. I have a love/hate relationship with spring cleaning, but sitting down after in a really clean room is so nice. I’ve had to let my daily standards drop a bit with kids, but it’s so nice to finally have all older kids where things don’t get trashed immediately afterwards.

✅breakfast ✅dishes ✅laundry x4 ✅vacuum and dust downstairs ✅water plants ✅school with Youngest ✅touch up ceiling paint in kids' bathroom ✅rehang shower rod + curtain with fresh liner ✅wipe out bathroom drawers (some debris from weekend projects) + mop floors repot tomato seedlings + weed back garden

We had a low key Easter. I found some confetti eggs (cascarones) we had forgotten to use last year and an egg dyeing kit. We had a confetti egg “fight” instead of an easter egg hunt. I didnt buy any Easter gifts. We had a nice brunch and dinner, and made some video calls to family, and really just enjoyed being together. We cut our grocery bill in half last month and we’re going to try to do that again this month. We’ve used up a bunch of stuff from the freezer so it will be more of a stretch, but I think we can do it. We’ve been spring cleaning and making repairs as we go along. We had such a long and cold humid winter that our bathroom lights rusted (!) even with using exhaust fans and a dehumidifier. We replaced those this weekend (on sale—not what I love style wise, but functional) and I touched up paint. We bought the tools for the stairs job and are just waiting for the lumber to come in. Dh saved about $75 with finding various sales on saws he needed. I’ve been really glad I stockpiled so many things. It’s been nice to not need to buy cleaning supplies or toiletries. It feels weird to use stuff up and not backstock it though. Ds needs work boots this month to meet the safety standards of the program he is starting ($300 for Red Wings) and some new jeans. My goal is to pinch enough from around the edges to make it happen. Plz keep your fingers crossed for sunny days. My hope is to generate enough of our own power needs through solar that at least $50 (and hopefully $100) can come from what we would normally spend on our electric bill. On sunny days now, we are generating enough to be self sustaining.

Edited: if you mixed 50/50 with evergreen fog, it should mix as you describe

Sw 7046 is Anonymous. I wonder if it got mixed with Morning Fog or one of the other Fog colors.

cake, finally

Have you tried giving her electrolyte drinks every day for a few weeks and seeing how she does? Nuun tablets were helpful when dd was dealing with post covid dysautonomia.

Re: previous generations—in my family of origin, lots of women all contributed dishes and labor. It’s just me and mine here—and not 6-8 other households chipping in. I have been cooking for hours while the kids dyed eggs and hung around. I am taking a break since we just finished up brunch and then I will head back to the kitchen to cook. we will have an early dinner and then do video chats with family.

The mammal to mammal transmission is super concerning.

Yes…economy offers basic pillow and blanket and one warm meal. I think you get headphones too.

Plug adapter We have the Epicka one from amazon. Our phones run on either voltage—we didnt need anything there—but the plugs are different Data card if you dont have an international phone plan. We use airolo. Snacks—Cinque Terre is a set of small towns where things can close unexpectedly, and there arent a lot of options to begin with. Pack some filling snacks or plan to pick them up for your daypack when you are there. We find it helpful to pre-pin locations on our maps (the favorite feature on our iphones) and then when we are on the ground have siri navigate us from where we are at to the store. Pewex is probably my favorite Italian grocery store, but Carrefour Express’s are everywhere. translate.google.com has a feature where you can snap a photo of something and it translate it directly. You can also speak into your phone and it will translate for you—in either direction. Make sure you are familiar with how the website works so you arent flustered using it for the first time.

I forgot to add--if you set up an amazon wish list---be sure to add cheap duffles or whatever you need for carrying, but set your limits on the number of items requested to what you think you'll be able to carry. If you know you can only take 3 bags, then you know you likely can't take 200 dolls, iykwim.

Ds's laptop has died. 😞 We've had a pox of things breaking ever since dh was laid off and I'm so over it.

Youngest placed foam valentine's day stickers in all of the hidden places in their shared room. Why? Where did they get the stickers from? I've given them a bottle of rubbing alcohol and tools from removal, but it's coming off one tiny flake at a time. Hopefully there will not be a repeat of this kind of behavior. I really had thought they'd grown past this.