I wish we'd had at least our youngest (the one who has the strongest and most immediate reactions to gluten) tested before we stopped eating gluten. It just seemed like such a long shot, particularly since his dad tested negative. I still would be surprised if he has celiac as opposed to just pretty serious gluten sensitivities. I have no intention of putting him back on gluten at this point, but, fwiw, there are a few reasons I'd like to know for sure if he has celiac. We'd be more careful. We're already pretty careful, and don't have gluten in our hosue, but we do stuff like let him eat fries cooked in shared fryers at restaurants. Sometimes he gets a stomach ache from this, usually not. If it's just a short lived stomach ache, not a huge deal; if it's doing hidden damage to his body every time it happens....then, yeah, not good, of course. I also think that a diagnosis would make things easier in certain situations as he gets older. There's a summer camp near here specifically for celiac/gluten intolerant kids, but you need to have a note from a doctor in order to go there. I think our ped would probably give us one just based on my account of his reactions, but I'm not sure. And then when he goes to college, I wonder if it will be an issue that he doesn't have a diagnosis when he needs special food. Also, I'm just a curious sort.

:iagree: Two of mine are geminis. It would be silly to expect them to maintain an interest in anything for longer than 3 days ;). (the other one is a Sag, who's so interested in pretty much everything that he's just as content to spend years learning about one thing as to move on to the next incredibly fascinating topic)

I LOVE this one: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/flank-steak-with-garlic-wine-sauce/

You don't need two tickets unless you want to be there earlier than 4 (the party officially starts at 7, but, historically, they let people in starting at 4). We went last year....it was fun, but I doubt we'll do it again any time soon. It's a lot of money for what it is. Although we did it as part of a week long trip. If you're doing it as a one day thing and buying party tickets instead of park tickets, it's much more reasonable. Earlier in the season and/or not on a weekend will probably mean lower crowds. In our experience, the lines for rides are mostly great; the lines for characters and the crowds for fireworks and the parade are pretty big.

Is that what we're basing it on? HIV rates in populations that don't circumcise? What were those HIV rates in European countries where pretty much no one is circumcised again? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_HIV/AIDS_adult_prevalence_rate Let's see....United States: .6 Finland: .03 hmm......

Thanks everyone! I'm going to call the ped tomorrow (we haven't found a pulmonologist or allergist that we're thrilled with yet, so I'm hoping she'll have some ideas)....but I like to go into such things armed with some information.

So I think Flovent makes my six year old act like a whiny, emotional, tantrumming little monster. He's been SUPER melt-downy lately (he's been on flovent for a year now), so I took him off the flovent for a few days as an experiment. I might be imagining things, but it sure SEEMED like he got a lot better right away--better able to control himself, got whiny only when really tired instead of....all the time, etc. But, really, with the ragweed kicking in, it's not the best time of year for grand experiments. He was fine for a couple of days (he's also on Claritin), but last night he was really congested and wanted the inhaler again. So he took two puffs, slept great, and this morning has had at least 3 big meltdowns and it's not even noon yet. Sigh. He has mild asthma, but most of his symptoms seem more allergy related. He only has asthma attacks when he runs around in cold weather, and not at all since he's been on the flovent. He's allergic to pretty much everything, according to allergy testing....dust mites (and we could do a better job with that....he has the special covers for his mattress and pillows, but I need to do a better job washing sheets more often, keeping stuffed animals out of his room, dusting, etc. Maybe we could get rid of his carpet sooner rather than later if that would make a big difference). Spring pollen, oddly, seems not to be a big thing for him--it's more the early summer (grass pollen?) and then ragweed in late summer/early fall. He gets headaches and bad nighttime nasal congestion. Getting long--sorry. anyway, my question is....is there anything other than flovent that will tackle the congestion without the behavioral side effects? We've done the nasal rinses in the past, but it's very hard to convince him to do them, and they seem not to help enough to make it worth the battle. He was also on Nasonex for awhile last year, and that seemed to help, but it eventually starting making his nose all bloody. Plus it's another steroid, so would it have the same side effects? What else is out there? I want him to feel good AND be pleasant--is that really too much to ask?!

I don't like crocs, either, but I wear them at Disney anyway. ANYTHING else and I get blisters. I bought a pair of Keens for Disney once and had to return them before we left; they were too heavy, and they rubbed against my heels. I bought Danskos last year for the Disney trip....they were fine if we were only going for a few hours, but if I tried to wear them all day--blisters.

yes. Until we had DS6 tested for allergies last year and figured out why HE feels bad so often, I never made the connection. I thought I just got a really bad cold that dragged on for months every year at exactly the same time. Knowing that I can take zyrtec to make it mostly better and that I don't have to live on Afrin and ibuprofen for weeks at a time has been very helpful.

The old pastor at our church was talking about atheists once and said something like, "a lot of times atheists will talk to me about not believing in God and then they'll describe the God they don't believe in. And I think, 'I don't believe in that God, either.'" I have that experience a lot as a liberal Christian with mostly atheist/agnostic friends. She kind of reminds me of that. I don't like that kind of homeschooling, either. I think perhaps her self-proclaimed disinterest in getting to know the homeschooling community is showing here. I must admit, I'm a little more susceptible to the "you're hurting society" anti-homeschooling argument than to most. But, then, it just doesn't much sense when I break it down. For one thing, I think at least one of my kids might be more trouble than he's worth to our poor local public school ;). My husband's a public school teacher. I could just as easily argue that any smart, well-educated, competent person who chooses another career instead of teaching is doing the public schools a grave disservice. But I don't, because that would be silly. Teaching is one profession people can choose. Public school is one way to educate children that people can choose.

My 6th grader is just over halfway through, and I give him 30-40 minutes to work on it. Sometimes he finishes a lesson in one day, sometimes it spills over. We're not worried about taking more than a year to finish, though. It's also not the only writing program he's doing (he's working through MCT Voyage and doing writing assignments from Bravewriter's Boomerang)

It would bother me a lot, and it might well affect my friendship. Whether it should or not....I don't know. I don't necessarily deal well with disapproval.

This was a long time ago, but I took both and did considerably better on the ACT....I plan on having my kids take both.

It's lower carb than beer! I read a study somewhere or other that wine lowers your blood sugar. So....take that for what it's worth.

I don't think 8 hours is an excessive amount of time for a healthy dog to be home alone. Don't suppose you want to get another dog to keep him company? :D

I only answered the first part....I've done two with an epidural and one without. It's hard to say which I prefer....my without birth was definitely my loveliest birth, so I'm glad I did that one without meds. But I'm pretty sure I'd get one for my first labor again without a second thought.

When I saw the perinatologist, she tried to move my due date because I was measuring something like 10 days ahead. I'm sure of my dates, though, so we kind of wound up in this standoff, with her saying, "well, we really like to change it when it's more than 7 days off...." and then looking at me. Finally I said, "I'm not going to tell you I want you to change it, because I don't." And she left it alone. Of course, next time I was there, baby was measuring just 3 days ahead and everyone was perfectly content with my unchanged due date. Turned out it didn't really matter anyway, though....my midwife told me that she only changes the due date is the mother isn't sure about dates AND the earliest ultrasound is more than 7 days off (I was only 6 days ahead on my first ultrasound. So she didn't care what the perinatologist did anyway :).

I forgot to mention that making my children brilliant is also part of my plan :D. Really, though, I hear you....our income will help them out a lot if they can get into, say, Harvard--since we would qualify for free tuition there. Other than what, who knows? I'm head in the sand/hope the HOPE grant's still around-ish about it. Although I will say that my experience was very different from yours. My mom's income was low, but I don't think that's what made the difference....I had a full tuition merit scholarship to UGA, and I happened to start the year the HOPE grant started up, so they wound up eliminating my merit scholarship and giving me that instead. I worked part time (full time in the summer) all through, and my parents gave me a small amount monthly toward living expenses. I graduated with no debt. As of right now, it seems like my kids could have a similar experience at an in-state school, but it's hard to say what things will look like in a few years.

I would be surprised if the HOPE grant went away all together....it's just too popular across the board for any politician to want to be the person who says it should go away. They just made some changes to it that are supposed to make it more financially viable long term. Anyway, I'm sticking with believing it will still be around in some form, because we don't really have a back-up plan (well, staying relatively poor is our back up plan, I guess. DH is a teacher, and if he sticks with that our income should be low enough that we qualify for a lot of aid). DH used to use college costs as an argument against having more kids. "We can't afford to send four kids to college!" I always told him, "honey, we can't afford to send ONE kid to college."

Well, if you're looking to break your attachment to the house, I recommend having two mortgages for awhile. You'll be more than ready to be DONE with the old house by the time you sell :D. That's what we did....we didn't really intend to; we listed our house first, but then the deal on our current house seemed too good to pass up, so we went ahead and moved. It worked out well in the long run, but it was a tense couple of months. And we only did it because we knew we could afford to sell the house cheap enough that it should sell fast....we took a decent sized loss, but we had a lot of equity so we could afford to do it.

This is the kind of thing you save money for!

:grouphug: I think about this already, and my oldest is just 11. I was only 2 hours away for college, so I came home for weekends several times a year, but I ended up never coming home for summers or any period longer than winter break once I left. I hope my kids want to come home summers at least, to ease me into them being gone.

yay! If only ice cream were the solution to all of life's problems! :D

Well, we started it over the summer, but we're reading Great Expectations. It is (a bit surprisingly) a hit all around so far.

I eat Just the Cheese sometimes....it's like little chips made from cheese. I buy them on Amazon. You can also crisp up cheese in the microwave. Chocolate....if you can work your way up to liking (even preferring!) 85% dark chocolate, it's pretty low carb (and a good bit of fiber). I have good luck with the recipes on healthy indulgences blog, too.