I have noticed a strange phenomenon wherein my fasting numbers are highest when I eat the fewest carbs, even though overall my numbers throughout the day are fabulous. Like my fasting number will be the highest it goes all day. I don't know what to make of this, really. I think that people focus so much on the fasting number because they assume that's when your blood sugar's at its lowest point. But if that's not actually true, does it matter so much? I don't know. So maybe my musing is not very helpful :). But, like you, I wonder if it can really be better to focus on eating more carbs during the day to get the fasting level down if that means higher levels throughout the day. I'm pregnant right now, with a history of GD, so I'm testing my sugar regularly. My fasting numbers are lower now than when I wasn't pregnant, and I wonder if that's because I'm eating more carbs now....I often have a serving of potatoes with dinner, for example. I'm planning to just monitor at home and not take the GTT this time...I always fail the 1 hour and then have to take the 3 hour (which I've passed 2 times out of 3)....I'd hate to see how my body that's used to eating low carb would react to such a massive dose of glucose.

This kind of thing is part of it for me, too. My last name is strongly identified with the area where I grew up and where we now live....roads are named after me and all that :). DH's last name, on the other hand, is quite uncommon and also quite recognizably Eastern European Jewish. I'd kind of feel like a poser with his name.

We do have a mortgage, but my father in law is our bank :), so, as far as the seller was concerned, we were a cash sale. Our house was a foreclosure, and we were surprised at how little leverage being a cash buyer gave us with the bank. They only seemed interested in numbers; it didn't seem like they were willing to come down at all because we could pay cash. Had it been a real person instead of a bank, it probably would have mattered more. We had to submit proof of funds (i.e. bank statements) before they would even look at our offer. We also just sold our old house to someone making a cash offer, and we did take less than we would have otherwise....although not a lot less. We settled on $3000 less than what we had said was our absolute lowest, and I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have taken that if they hadn't paid cash. At least as important for us as the lack of a finance contingency was the fact that they could close very quickly (just over 2 weeks after we accepted their offer). We'd already moved, so we were paying two mortgages (although, again, to my FIL, so he helped us out a lot and was letting us pay interest only until we sold) AND we'd already had one sale fall through; it was worth quite a bit to us not to have a contract hanging over our heads for 45 or 60 days.

Yay--congratulations! In our market, it's very common for buyers to ask for closing costs. But just don't let it affect your bottom line....if you're willing to take x amount, then the closing costs get subtracted when you're figuring out your net, you know? we actually did wind up taking an offer that didn't ask for closing costs, but both of our offers before that did ask for them. It's kind of funny, we didn't even need closing costs when we bought our house, but our realtor asked for a small amount from the seller anyway, without even telling us she was going to do it. Apparently it's so common it didn't even occur to her NOT to ask for them.

I'm 37 and pregnant with my 4th. My youngest will be 7 when he's born. I have all the same concerns as you, but, really, there's just no way to know how sibling relationships will turn out, regardless of the ages involved. Or how I'll feel about having kids at home when I'm in my mid 50's (as opposed to being all finished at 47 like I would have been). You'd be going in with an advantage over me in that you already know what it's like to raise a kid with no close in age siblings....all new territory for me!

Kept my name. The plan was we were both going to change ours to both names (two words, no hyphen), but we....sort of never got around to it. We both have long and relatively hard to spell last names, though, so I'm glad we didn't, honestly. Kids have both names--mine then his--but mostly go by just his except on official documents. I've never had any problems having a different name from DH and the kids, but my brother and SIL just refinanced their mortgage and report that everyone at the bank was terribly confused by THEIR different last names. "I think a couple of extra trees had to die for the extra paperwork because we have different last names," my brother told me. I guess I've been lucky?

I'm scared to take my prenatal vitamin now.

I'd go with Katherine over Catherine, only because I prefer the K spelling for Kate/Katie (and I love Kate or Katie, btw)

Catherine is actually ranked a good bit lower these days than any of your other names (it might be up there at henry level if you combine spellings), so if you have no regrets about those, I wouldn't worry about Catherine's popularity. If you're going with a very common name, I think "popular in every age bracket" is the way to go, really--it means it's classic instead of trendy and will age well. I'd love to have a William, but, particularly with my other kids' (far less common) names, I just can't bring myself to do it. It's actually the number one name for boys in our state. But I almost get there sometimes :)

Jim Weiss CDs, audiobooks....we also work on poetry memorization in the car. I have a lot of CDs of poetry, and I pick a poem and play it over and over again until they (and I!) have it memorized.

:iagree: Sometimes I think I'm crazy and it's all in my head, but I see people describe improvement in the exact same kinds of behaviors over and over again. When my oldest does eat gluten, we usually get a few hours to a day grace period, then a day or two of extreme anger with nasty outbursts and then, on the tale end, weird manic, hyper behavior. Like I said, it'd be nice if it was easier to see the difference because he was a complete angel off of gluten, but I'll take what I can get!

My kids do a lot better off gluten. We did a gluten free trial mostly because my husband has psoriasis and my youngest has severe environmental allergies....and I've read that anytime you have autoimmune issues going gluten free is worth a try. No one's perfect off of gluten--my oldest and youngest, in particular, are still....intense children, but it does kind of take the edge off their worst behavioral traits. My oldest still gets negative and angry a lot, but he's able to get it under control and go cool off a lot easier than he used to. He gets angry, but we don't see the absolute rage we used to see. My middle DS seems to have better focus now. And, while he was generally my even tempered one before, he did occasionally have crazy, all out screaming tantrums that have pretty much disappeared now. I wish the changes were more dramatic, and now our family was completely perfect in every way :D, but they're dramatic enough that we haven't gone back to gluten.

If you'd said you usually keep it at 65, my answer might have been different, but I said I'd keep it the same. 75-79 is a very reasonable summer temperature; your guest is the one who's weird, so s/he is the one who should adapt :tongue_smilie:

:iagree: The first time in my life I never had any trouble with my blood sugar was when I started doing low carb (under 40 a day for quite awhile). I remember being a teenager and getting all shaky hypoglycemic....for a long time I just thought that's how people feel when they get hungry. When I'm watching carbs, I can go any amount of time without eating and never get low blood sugar (or high). It stays in that 80-100ish range, just like a normal person :)

I only lose weight (after the first few weeks anyway, like you describe) when I count carbs AND calories. under 40-50 grams + around 1300 calories (with moderate exercise; i.e. a long, hilly walk every day) seems to do the trick (and by "do the trick" I mean I lose a whopping 1/2 pound a week or so). On the other hand, I DO have thyroid issues. Last year when I was seriously low carbing, my TSH was borderline, but not enough for my doctor to suggest treating it and I didn't push it. I wish I had, because now I'm pregnant and was unequivocally hypothyroid when I retested early in the pregnancy. So it's being treated now, and it will be interesting to see what happens after the baby is born. I'm hoping I can just count carbs and not worry about calories and lose weight now that the thyroid issues are being addressed.

We listed our house during the school year last year. I packed up all the school stuff except what we needed right then....I got it down to one shelf of books that was in a corner of the dining room (our master bedroom had been our schoolroom before, but we converted it back to a bedroom when we listed). Almost all of the kids' toys were packed up, too--we kept out just what would fit in one cabinet with doors, so everything could be kept out of sight. My kids aren't that big on toys, anyway, so it worked out--they could still access the legos, and that's all that counts ;). With so little stuff, it was easier than I expected to keep things clean. We just made sure to put things away as soon as we were finished with them and never let things get to the point where we couldn't make things look presentable given 15 or 20 minutes notice. It helped that my kids are all a bit older--the youngest is 6. good luck!

have you had your thyroid checked?

We plan to do a wall with "built-in" Billy shelves, like this: http://www.centsationalgirl.com/2011/11/from-billys-to-built-ins/ I already know I won't regret it ;)

The Town practice is a step up in difficulty from Island. I would get Town if that's the level you're working on with the rest of the program

I like it. I'm a big fan of a long O in baby names :)

:lurk5: interested to hear what you find out. We cut out gluten a year ago for various reasons. With my older kids, I mostly see behavorial changes, but my youngest now gets bad stomachaches if he eats gluten (often even with stuff like fries from a shared fryer). I kind of wish we'd had him tested before we went off gluten. We did have my husband tested (his psoriasis is one reason we tried going off gluten), and it came back normal.

Ugh--I'm sorry! Those really are tough ages. I have an 11 year old and a 9 year old, and the 11yo has just, over the past few months, really started to act older. Playing with younger kids--kids he's been friends with since he was a preschooler, even--just doesn't work for him anymore. He'll hang out with his brothers when no one else is around, but in a mixed age group he's always with the bigger kids. I do feel bad for my 9 year old who used to be able to move back and forth between older and younger kids, but who now gets shut out of the 11 year old fun every time....all the older kids we know seemed to suddenly grow up at the same time. But that's just how it is--there's no ill intent, just real differences in interests and maturity between 9 year olds and 11 year olds. The 9 year olds will catch up again eventually!

ctrl + ??

Partially because of this thread, I just sent DH off alone to the car dealership today. I did make sure he called me before he actually bought anything. So I didn't have to deal with it at all, and he's coming home with my new (well, 6 years old, but way newer than the one he's trading in) Sienna! Hope I don't regret it....but it seems like he got a pretty good deal, and he says it's really nice. And I'm not especially picky about cars. ETA: and he tells me everyone at the dealership was very nice :)

ours is 9 years old, but I put more than 10 because I don't see us replacing it any time in the next few years. It seems completely fine to me.