What I find suspicious is that one hears so many stories about men or boys who just had to be (according to their doctors) circumcised later in life in the US, when in, say, Finland, where circumcising infants is virtually unheard of, the rate of circumcision later in life, according to a 1996 study, is 1 in 16,667. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision#Less_than_20.25_4 I'm just saying that when one views circumcision as a last resort instead of as a routine operation, the standards for when it is "needed" change considerably.

The thing I keep in mind when reading stories about boys who needed to be circumcised later is that pretty much every such story I read is about boys in the US. I suspect an American urologist's opinion about when a boys "needs" to be circ'd is much different from a European doctor's. Obviously, I wasn't there and don't have all the information about any particular case, so I'm not presuming to second guess any of the stories related here, but I'd be very interested to see stats comparing how many boys have circumcisions for medical issues past infancy in the US versus in countries where circumcision is very rare. I've heard about boys who "needed" to be circ'd because they weren't retracting at age 5 or 6 or 10 or whatever (completely normal) or because they got a UTI (the treatment for a UTI is antibiotics, not circumcision).

Our week seven is up!

3 intact boys here.

My middle DS had kidney reflux and is uncirc'd. He had to have a catheter several times by the time he was a few months old...this has been 7 years ago, but, as I recall, they pull the foreskin back just enough to see the opening. I remember reading something at the time (because I had all the same concerns you do) about it being possible to put the catheter in "by feel"...but honestly, I'm not sure that's really better than pulling the foreskin back just enough to see the opening. I'd just be really up front about your concerns any time he's cath'd and watch him like a hawk to make sure they don't do more than they need to do. I remember asking the nurses who were doing the catheter one time if they had experience with uncircumsized babies, and they just kind of laughed and assured me they did it all the time (this was at a big, urban, pediatric hospital). Things vary by region, of course, but the stats on circ/not circ'd are pretty close to 50/50 in the US as a whole now, so it's unlikely you'll get anyone who's not used to dealing with uncircumsized babies. I worried and worried and worried and researched and researched researched when Milo was a baby....and I was relieved that his foreskin was never an issue WRT to the reflux. No one we saw--from the perinatalogist to the pediatrician to the urologist to any of the nurses EVER suggested we should circumsize him because of it. It was a lot to deal with when he was a baby--we did all the testing and put him on prophylactic antibiotics when he was very young, and he wound up getting a breakthrough UTI anyway, so he had surgery when he was 5 months old (he had stage 5 reflux, though, which is the most severe and least likely to resolve on its own)--but after the surgery he was 100% fine. So all of that to say--I'm sorry you and your babe have to deal with all the tests and worries--but you'll come through it just fine, and it's so good that you know about it now; a lot of kids get multiple UTIs before they're finally diagnosed.

It varies depending on the day, but generally 4-5 hours (including independent school reading) Writing we're still tinkering with this year, but this week, for example, he wrote 2 one paragraph summaries of readings in various subjects (and will probably do one more tomorrow), dictation one day, and copywork one day. We're doing the MCT Town level this year, and once we get into Paragraph town later this month, I expect he'll be doing writing assignments from there 1-2 days a week in addition to continuing the summaries and dictations. He's a fairly reluctant writer (of assigned writing anyway); I'm hoping to work him up to writing 2-3 paragraph summaries independently by the end of the year.

I gave up on most of the paper crafts pretty early in with WP. We wound up mostly just reading the books, and the next year I put together my own second half of American history, just picking out books I thought the kids would enjoy.

:grouphug: FWIW, my now 15 year old dog, Oliver, was diagnosed with congestive heart failure at least 2 years ago now. We give him a chewable pill (Vetmedin) twice a day, and he's doing great (well, for a 15 year old dog). So it doesn't necessarily have to mean the end of the road for her.

My oldest will, mysteriously, only eat Honey Bunches of Oats (or Chocolate Cheerios, but we don't buy those as a rule). The others will eat just about anything, so I buy whatever's on sale and has whole grains and not too much sugar. Right now we've got Cheerios, Wheaties, and some kind of Fiber One in rotation.

DH is home, but I think we're doing school. It's kind of fun to do school when he's home sometimes so he gets to see what we do all day. And we're going to Disney in a couple of weeks, so we'll have a whole week off for that.

My 7 yo: math: 15-30 min, depending on the lesson, plus usually another 15 minutues playing computer games to drill facts reading: 30 min spelling: 10 min WWE: 10-15 min Explode the Code: 10 min other LA or logic: 15 min all rough estimates, but that comes out to just under 2 hours if you look at the top end of the ranges (and 30 min. of that is independent reading time; he reads much more during the day and at bedtime, but that's his assigned school reading). Oh, he also usually spends 15-20 minutes on Hooked on Phonics Master Reader

My oldest is 4th grade now and is starting over with ancients, so he's on track for 2 more 4 year cycles. I don't plan to stop and do dedicated American history this time through...it was really more about what worked for DS at the time.

This is what we did, though it was mostly because my oldest really hated SOTW, and I wanted to shake history up a bit and try to make it more interesting for him. I just found lots of high interest books to read and spent 2 years covering US history. It seems to have worked; we're doing SOTW 1 again now with all 3 of my kids, and this time my oldest thinks it's just swell. He says history is his favorite subject, in fact. ETA: oops--I misread your post. We did SOTW 1 and 2 and then 2 years of US history.

People have the right to own animals; they don't have the right to abuse or neglect them. All states have laws against animal cruelty, and most places have leash laws for dogs, too. I'd consider it the moral equivalent of a citizen's arrest.

My son's reading Michael Chabon's Summerland right now, in which the word for a sort of magic spell is "grammer." I'm worried reading it is going to make that spelling look correct to him. Darn that Michael Chabon!

Well, but who determines what's canonical? If it doesn't have anything to do with what's assigned and studied and discussed and written about in academia, then where does it come from? I read Morrison, and Faulkner, AND Wharton in college, and I would argue that they're all canonical. My M.H. Abrams says that: I think absolutely canon formation is subject to cultural trends, and a lot of what goes on in academia is a sort of jockeying for position for your pet author or period or whatever. That's always true. I don't think it's a uniquely American or uniquely modern phenomenon.

Ours is up! Off to read now, while DH and the kids are away at a football game :)

I think it's been quite awhile, really, since one could point to a standard canon of American lit that any fairly well educated high school or college student would be familiar with. I had a professor in college (uhh, not recently. Let's see...this would have been at least 14 or 15 years ago) who talked about this. He made his point by trying to find a single American novel that everyone in the class (of around 25 mostly English majors) had read. The Great Gatsby was the only one we could come up with. "That's because it's short!" he barked, in his fabulous Mississippi accent. So I think it's true that things shift and certain books are trendy to teach now that weren't 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, but I don't think it's true that there used to be a single accepted canon and now there isn't. An emphasis on multiculturalism is certainly at play now in in a way it wasn't a generation ago (and rightly so, I would say). I remember reading that Their Eyes Were Watching God was the most assigned novel in college lit classes, I think it was, awhile back. I read it for at least two different classes when I was in college. Hmm...I guess I would say that there's a core group of classics that endures and will always be widely assigned, but then there's a sort of second tier that is more susceptible to cultural shifts.

I love my electrolux. We inherited it from DH's grandparents; I don't know that I could bring myself to spend that much on a vacuum cleaner. But it was broken for a few months, and I went out and bought a cheap upright at Wal-mart...I finally gave up on it and paid (more than we paid for the cheap vacuum) to get the electrolux fixed. I'm totally spoiled. Once I wrote a poem about my electrolux, even.

It's tricky...you kind of have to train your ear to hear it. Try reading the poem in a really exaggerated, sing-song way, clapping on the emphasized syllables: I SAW you TOSS the KITES on HIGH And BLOW the BIRDS aBOUT the SKY; ...it's also not an exact science--it's not like doing a math problem. The meter in this poem is really regular, but more often you'll come across a lot of irregularities--at least in contemporary poetry.

I have a leghorn, and she's very nice. We tried one out on the recommendation of My Pet Chicken, which says, essentially, "don't believe the hype; leghorns rock." Ours is a bit neurotic, but she has tons of personality, is friendly, and is, oddly, our most likely to go broody chicken. Blue andalusians have a reputation for stand-offishness, too, but mine follows me around like a puppy. I like this chart: http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/chooks/chooks.html they list nearly any breed you'll come across with notes on egg production, color, and size and bird personality. The only genuinely not nice chicken I've had was a Welsummer. She kept running at the kids and pecking them hard enough to draw blood, so we finally sold her. But based on how different the personalities of my two NH reds are, I think there's probably as much variation in personality among individual chickens as across breeds. I'll probably try a Welsummer again someday; I was really excited about the dark brown eggs. I think you can't go wrong with one of every kind. That way you can have all different colored eggs, too! We have white, different shades of light brown, green, and, if our cuckoo maran ever starts laying, dark brown now! Fun! ETA: I also think handling them a ton when they're chicks makes a big difference in how friendly they are as adults. We made a point of holding each of our chicks at least a little every day, and people comment all the time on how tame and friendly they are. We bought two when they were a few months old and had been raised in a pen with a bunch of other pullets and no handling...one of them got used to us and is very friendly now; the other is by far our most skittish hen and avoids humans as much as possible. We've never had one we raised ourselves like that. Even the mean old Welsummer would let us pick her up.

We ordered the first batch from Ideal, bought two locally (the NH reds), ordered some more later from My Pet Chicken (I think they get their chicks from Meyer hatchery), and then got a "rescue chicken" from my aunt's neighbor (one of the Easter Eggers). At Ideal and My Pet Chicken, there's no minimum per breed. We did have to order at least 8 from MPC because we're not close to the city (if you're in a big city, you can order as few as 3), and then we sold the ones we didn't want on Craigslist when they were a couple of months old. Ours stay in a pen at night and have the run of our fenced backyard during the day.

We like having all different kinds so we can tell them apart (important for naming; we love naming chickens :)). Right now we have a white leghorn, a barred rock, a buff orpington, two New Hampshire reds, a cuckoo maran, two Easter eggers, and a blue andalusian. My favorites are probably the buff orpington, the andalusian, and the Easter eggers, but they all have their charms. The leghorn's the best layer, predictably, but they're all pretty reliable (although our oldest are 2 1/2 now and we've noticed them slowing down lately). The thing I'd worry about with getting them this time of year is that you'd be ready to put them outside just when it's getting cold (I don't know where you live...maybe you live in Australia, in which case never mind). IME, the hardest part about chickens is getting a predator-proof enclosure set up for them (the most expensive part, too). Once that's there, they're easier than cats; food, water, scoop the poop, and cluck at them and tell them how pretty they are and you're all set. Your cats won't bother them once they're grown. Your dogs...might or might not bother them (and by bother I mean "kill and eat"). Our dogs don't, but they're all herding dog mixes, so we had genetics on our side. I'd be prepared to need to keep them separated, but hope for the best. Have fun! Chickens are great!

I am not a chess player, but I just asked DH, who coaches the chess team at his high school, and he votes "corner"

That'd be awesome--thanks! I looked at your blog for ideas already, actually, but, yeah, it'd be easier if you'd just bring me a list ;) I'm not sure why I'm so overwhelmed by this. I thought we had a plan, and he was going to read Joy Hakim's Story of Science. But he's really disliking it so far, and I want to nurture this new something-approaching-enthusiasm he has about history. I've been looking through the activity guide, but I'm just not sure.