I let her play with water in her high chair tray, and that will occupy her for a few minutes sometimes, but I don't have an actual sensory bin thing with water. With all the snow we have though, soon the yard is going to be underwater so I'll just bring her outside in some galoshes and let her have at it. 😁

It's possible. She certainly seems more sensory-seeking than the other way around. She has a variety of toys and general stuff to play with, but I don't know much about how to provide more sensory input for her without doing some research. Which I'll probably have time to do in about five years, lol. I've got dh wrangling the baby right now, but he can't handle much of her without getting really frazzled.

Watching Spirit on Netflix, lol. That's the only thing that she'll sit quietly for. I've broken down and let her have one or two cartoons a day for the sake of my sanity. Otherwise, it's a complete crapshoot as to what might occupy her for more than a few seconds.

Once the snow melts, yes. But right now everything is buried under like three feet of snow. And I'm not even exaggerating. The snow at the end of the driveway on either side is over my head. I mentioned this stuff to her ped at her eighteen-month checkup, but he just nodded and said something about toddlers being a handful. I think he assumes I've forgotten what they're like because it's been so long since the last one. I think if I want a referral I'm going to have to get a second opinion.

I don't know if you guys remember my last post about my younger dd, but I could really use some tips/advice/commiseration from those of you who have survived having a high-needs toddler. She's eighteen months old, and I think I might actually lose my mind. I know this isn't all toddlers because I've got a ten-year-old, plus I've seen other people with toddlers actually, you know, not acting like crazed demons. 😂 I covered some of this when I posted before, but she's just so EXTRA. She's going from the minute she wakes up until the minute she crashes at night, with maybe a half hour nap if I'm lucky. She still wakes up at least six or seven times a night. She needs stimulation constantly. She never, ever, ever sits and plays by herself. Never. She wants me to read to her and then she wants me to play blocks with her and then she wants me to carry her around the house to look out all the different windows because just one window isn't good enough and that's just the first fifteen minutes of the day. The worst part is that she's huge and freakishly strong, the size of a normal three-year-old, so it's really hard to contain her. She can reach the front third of the kitchen counters and the table and will pull everything down. She's not allowed to use them but she knows how to turn on every electronic device in the house. We have to keep the computer chair in the hallway behind a tall childgate because otherwise she turns on the computer and messes it up. (It's a touch screen all-in-one so we can't just put the keyboard away.) When she can't reach it because the chair is put away, she grabs the edge of the computer desk and shakes the entire thing until the computer wobbles within reach. If I hold down the desk so she can't shake it, she crawls underneath and yanks on the cords. I had to move all the furniture away from the computer desk because she was climbing it and then jumping to the desk. And no matter how many times I remove her from it, she keeps going. It's not just computers, she's like this with anything she wants. If I give her a bath, she's trying to walk on the edge of the tub like a balance beam and then she's climbing the built-in shelves to get the adult shampoo and then she's turning on the water and the showerhead and opening the drain and so on. I almost have to pin her to the side of the tub to wash her hair and by the time she's clean I'm soaked from head to toe and exhausted. Homeschooling my ten-year-old is ridiculous. Younger dd thinks it's funny to stand there and scream like a siren whenever I try to do a lesson with older dd. I have to hold her the entire time I'm teaching. I can't wear her in the Ergobaby because she thrashes around so hard she almost knocks me over and I'm worried she'll rip the seams or break the buckle. If I try to put her in the high chair she slams herself against the back of it so hard it almost breaks the adjustable seat. There is zero way to contain her beyond the gate in the hallway, and even that's becoming iffy because she's almost strong enough to pull it out of where it's wedged. She doesn't seem to have any kind of developmental disabilities that I can see. She says over seventy words, occasionally puts words together, is able to follow instructions easily (if she's in the mood) and understands every word I say to her, so it's not that she's angry because of an expressive or receptive delay. And really, she's rarely ever mad. She's pretty happy while all this stuff is going on. It's the rest of us who are stressed and upset. She thinks it's all tons of fun. Oh, and if you remember my last post, it no longer takes two people to change her diaper because she now keeps herself busy by kicking the wall hard enough to knock the pictures down. 🙄 She's awake now so I'm typing with one hand... tips? Advice? Normal toddler techniques are NOT working. At all.

I know this isn't the case for everyone, but part of the difference between our mental loads is that when dh leaves work, he doesn't have to think about it anymore. (I realize that's not true of all professions.) He gets home, he relaxes, he doesn't think about work. Whatever he was dealing with becomes someone else's problem when he walks out. But I never get a break from my own mental load. I don't get to clock out and let someone else take over for a shift. If I relax, it means something isn't getting done because there aren't enough hours in the day and I am always behind on something. Every second of every day, I'm running a mental triage of what needs to get done next and what can be put off a little longer. When I go to bed at night, I'm thinking about the stuff I didn't get to; when I get up, I'm thinking about what I have to get done. I think that starts to wear on a person in a way that the mental load of a regular job with set hours doesn't. Part of this is that I have the world's most exhausting toddler who I have to monitor or entertain constantly while I'm doing everything else; part of this is that dh is terrible at housekeeping stuff and even if he does (rarely) help out, he typically screws it up in a spectacular way. Oh, and I do everything for dh because he just won't otherwise. I monitor his meds and refill his prescriptions, I keep track of where he leaves everything, I pack his lunch to take to work, I do his laundry including his work uniforms, I schedule and keep track of his appointments. Having a dh who was better at adulting would probably help. I need a vacation, I think. 😂

As for the researcher, she appears to be legit and apparently received a fellowship to study underrepresented homeschool families as well as homeschool families with special needs. My guess is that a curriculum supplier or a special needs group of some sort shared the emails of homeschool families with her en masse. Or sold them. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.nbccf.org/assets/newsletters/LeslieContos.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjvnvyz1fbgAhWNHjQIHeJ2A4EQFjABegQIBxAB&usg=AOvVaw2ypA6KmcYxHaxstM9TQBJW&cshid=1552190432833 The link opens a pdf that's a press release for the fellowship announcement.

One other thought- it could be that he uses the spatrick3 email address for research correspondence and the email address listed on the website for student correspondence. It isn't at all unusual to have multiple email addresses for different things.

It would still have to be someone at the school, scam or not. You can't get a .edu email address unless you're affiliated with the institution in question. It isn't like gmail where anyone can make one. So the easiest thing to do would be to email their administrative offices and ask.

The problem is that it can be difficult to find friends who will support you when you decide to remain in an abusive relationship. There's this idea that if you remain in an abusive relationship for any reason, you are a coward who doesn't have any self-respect or love for your children, and you deserve what you get. People don't always realize that many women stay for very good reasons- usually because children are involved and custody issues are a bitch. My dh is bipolar and was extremely abusive during his alcohol-fueled manic episodes. As we worked through the merry-go-round of finding the right med combo, I had more than a few people tell me how I was a horrible person for staying, and didn't I love myself and my children and want better, and leaving would be so easy because there's a ton of support organizations and on and on. I had done the math, however, and I knew that if I stayed, dh would remain on his meds, the manic episodes would be minimal and hopefully end completely, and we'd have a stable financial situation because he has a good job with employers who are sympathetic to his mental health issues. If I left, I would have been living in poverty, dh would have gone off his meds before long and probably gotten fired eventually, and he would have likely ended up with at least fifty percent custody because he had a home and a stable job and I wouldn't have had those things. So I could have my child in a financially secure home with one stay-at-home-parent and with a father who was abusive to me once in a while, or she could spend half of her life living with a likely unmedicated bipolar person who was also drunk constantly, and the other half living in poverty with a mom who would have to work all the time and leave her in daycare for most of her waking hours. It was a shitty decision, but I don't regret choosing to stay because it was the best thing for my child. And dh did find a med combo that worked, he hasn't had a manic episode in years, and our marriage is pretty darn good now. So if any of you have a friend who says, "My spouse is abusive but I'm going to stick it out," maybe listen to what he or she has to say before you roll your eyes and tell them they need to leave no matter what.

Yeah, I wouldn't be terribly worried about rabies unless I happened to live in an area with an unusually high number of cases. The odds of getting rabies from a cat are as close to zero as it's possible to be without actually being zero. I'd ask my neighbor to let me know if the cat started acting weird, but I wouldn't demand quarantine procedures or anything.

Just out of curiosity, why does the fact that the brand was sold to Petco mean you can't buy it now? Did they change the ingredients? My cats get fancy grain-free dry food but cheap canned food, so I'm probably not the best person to recommend a new brand.

Once it was determined that the cat was utd on shots, I'd just keep an eye on things and go in if there were signs of infection. On a related note, I wonder why it is that cat bites seem to be so serious in some cases and not in others? I have four cats, and I've had several more over the years. I've been bitten and clawed more times than I could count, between cats getting too wound up playing, having to apply claw caps and flea medication and give the occasional bath, and having to separate cats having a spat, and I've never once gotten an infection. Maybe if you have cats you build up a resistance to their bacteria somehow? Two of my cats go outside during the summer, too, so it's not that they're only indoors. Though they pretty much just go out and lay in the grass, lol.

I'd have to go with elephants.

It can help to set a time limit. I've learned that if I don't repurpose something within a week, it's going to sit collecting dust forever. So after a week that kind of stuff goes no matter what.

And they should be fired. But asking a child for their name, age, and where they're going doesn't make a TSA agent a perv or a bully.

It can be. I have OCD and I used to have hoarding tendencies when I was younger. I wouldn't call myself a full-blown hoarder by any means, but when I had to throw something away, the anxiety was terrible. I kept WAY too much stuff because even throwing out, say, a notebook with notes from a college class I'd completed three years ago made me feel like the world was coming to an end. What helped was Celexa and basically exposure therapy- I made myself throw out everything I didn't need until it became easier. It was really, really hard at first, but it got easier pretty quickly. I'm mostly past the hoarding tendencies now, but I still get panicky when I have to get rid of anything my kids have made or donate their old toys. In my mind I'm like, what if something happens to one of the children and her toys and drawings are all I have left of her? It's silly, but that's the kind of thing chronic anxiety makes you think about. I have to remind myself that we can never know the future, but in the present we have a home that's a thousand square feet and if we keep every single toy and article of clothing and drawing we'll be wading through mountains of stuff.

Mine was the name of my queen dragon from way back when I was involved in Pern play-by-email. The 90s were a simpler time. 😂

Yep. For me it's exactly the same sort of sensation I get when someone plays with my hair. Sort of a tingly, relaxed feeling. Definitely not a sexual thing. If someone thinks ASMR is sexual, they're doing it wrong. They can be really helpful with insomnia for some people, too.

If having TSA ask you screening questions to prevent child trafficking is something that makes you feel icky and you think you need to "take a stand" against it, you'd probably be better off driving. My kids having to give their name and age if we flew is pretty much the least invasive thing I can think of and I can't for the life of me imagine why anyone would having a problem with it.

I think it's always better to learn a language from multiple sources. We're learning Norwegian and we use Mango, Duolingo, downloaded textbooks, and youtube videos of native speakers. Most language programs have strengths and weaknesses, and if you use multiple programs that complement each other you get a more solid foundation.

Same here. When I stand at the end of the driveway, the snow on either side of me is up to my shoulders. And we're also going to have below zero temps this weekend. I love being outdoors and we have snowshoes and skis and baby sleds and all that, but I'm so over winter for the year. It seems like every day for the last month and a half has either been dangerously cold or a freaking blizzard. Being cooped up in this weather with a toddler and a grumpy tween is ridiculously sucky.

I agree that he needs to be tested for mono. I had it as a teen, and by the time they figured out it was mono and not strep I was so dehydrated that you could pinch my skin and it would stay that way. They told me if I'd waited another day to come in I likely would have died. He needs to get checked asap. Dehydration can happen fast when you're that sick. Tell him to demand IV fluids if he can't swallow.

It depends on the illness and where we're going. For example, younger dd just got over Fifth Disease. If we had anyone in older dd's GS troop who was pregnant or immunocompromised, we all would have stayed home from the meeting on Tuesday just in case. And for something like the flu, we'll all stay home. But if one of us has something like a cold I don't think it's necessary.

I tried CBD oil for my OCD/anxiety and all it did was zap my energy and make me sleepy while doing nothing for my anxiety. I think I'll stick with wine.