I don't know if I would stay, but I think I would feel bad if I didn't. I also agree that your son may want to hang on and try Boy Scouts. It is VERY different than Cub Scouts and parents are expected to back off more.

Good for you! I need to lose about 80 pounds, so can I ask how you did it and how long it took? I may be able to do something next year that I'd love to do, but I'll need to be in much better shape.

This is not true. In my area, a person threatening suicide will immediately be admitted to the hospital for 24 hour psych hold. To the OP, you did the right thing by calling. She may be angry at you for awhile, but someday she will thank you. :grouphug:

My 4 year old is 33 pounds and she rides harnessed in a Graco Nautilus. In dh's car she's in a Britax Marathon.

My son will be 9 in a few weeks and he still rides harnessed in a Graco Nautilus. He wants to move to a different position in the car and I may let him start using it as a high back booster.

I am not willing to adopt a kitten until they are at least 8 weeks old. Six weeks is the absolute minimum and they should not be removed if they are still nursing.

I get that question quite often. We can opt for a test or portfolio review and I do the review. People seem shocked that we don't have to use school textbooks, take all the tests or check in with what we're doing. I finally started telling people that I homeschool so my child can have a *better* education. If I was going to have the school dictate everything, I would just put him back in school and use the time for myself.

I had the same problem with all five of my kids. They kept getting legs stuck in the bars. I finally solved the problem with my youngest but getting one of those "breathable" crib bumpers. They don't have the risk of regular ones because they are just mesh and they aren't strong enough to be used to climb out. I kept it in until she was out of the crib and never again had a problem with stuck legs and arms.

That's just weird. Maybe they have their own little group that wants to control everything and think you're stepping into their territory. I'm a Cub Scout leader and we had a new family who came to our committee meeting. We were practically doing cartwheels when we found out that they were interested in helping in leadership positions. I think I would stick it out if I had a child in the group just because I'd want to have some input into what this group does!

I think it looks cute on little boys. It's sort of the Christopher Robin look.

I was very, very thin when I got married at age 20 and I've gained A LOT of weight over the years. I have 5 living children, but I've had seven other pregnancies that were lost late in the pregnancy. As a result of my losses, I suffered from severe depression and drowned my pain in food. I also took, for years, medications that are known to cause large amounts of weight gain. Also, with young children, depression, financial issues and a physical problem that makes even walking difficult, it's been hard to find a way to consistently get exercise. My husband saw my weight go up and up and up over the years due to physical and emotional crisis. He saw my effort to lose the pregnancy weight hampered by other factors. He KNOWS that I didn't just "let myself go". He knows that I've tried to set up an exercise time only to have his work schedule throw me off or my previous injury flare up and cause me to have to stop for awhile. I doubt there are many women who could get through more than a dozen pregnancies, major depression, and meds and still look like they did at age 20. As for nice clothing and such, my dh and I have very few clothes and they are often worn. We spend our money to give our kids opportunities, education and clothes (since they grow out of theirs faster). Our clothes are clean and we bathe daily, but we're probably not "stylishly dressed". Today I NEED a haircut. I've needed a haircut for many weeks. Before reading this post, I called my husband to ask if he would mind if I dipped into the emergency fund so I can get a haircut at one of those cheap walk in places. I *really* don't have the money for a haircut and my kids need one too. (Think about the thread about "being broke".) My friend has offered to color or highlight my hair tomorrow if I get a haircut today and she doesn't charge me. I want to look nice. I want to find a way to lose weight (although I'll *never* look like a 20 year old bride again). Sometimes life gets in the way. Yes, I'm somewhat offended to think that others think I got the guy so I can just "let myself go" now.:001_huh:

It has me wondering if there's a single person in Hollywood with any creativity.:glare:

Last year was my first year of homeschooling and that's one thing I didn't get figured out. My dh rarely says anything about the housework, but he did start making comments about adding more "life skills" to the curriculum.:glare: We have many evening activities, so I'm going to try to make a daily schedule and stick to it. When I started having a day for aquarium cleaning, it started to get done more regularly and I'm hoping that will work for other stuff too.

My son does that and the pedi said its a tic. He told us to try to ignore it because bringing attention to it just increases anxiety and makes it worse.

I know people say not to over schedule your family, but this works best for me. If I'm paying for something and committed my child to it, I have to leave the house. For some reason, forcing myself to get out and interact with people really helps me feel better. In the winter, I just want to hibernate and that is not good.

I've only been on a few homeschool field trips, but they were much better than the PS field trips I've attended. The homeschooled children were more engaged and in one case, the tour guide said he would let us in a normally restricted area because the children were so well behaved. When I chaperoned for PS, the kids always acted like they had a day pass from prison.

It means I have about $5 in the bank, 20 cents in my purse and hundreds of dollars in bills that still need to be paid.

Weird. I have enough trouble keeping up with my real life. I can't imagine trying to remember who I am as an alter ego on the internet.:tongue_smilie:

On my paternal side, I know that my family has been here since the 1760's and both sides of the family have lived in a certain area of Kentucky since the early 1800s. I know that my ggg grandfather and his brother were Union soldiers in the Civil War and I've seen records of the battles they fought. I've also seen records showing that a grandfather's half brother was in the Revolutionary War. His wife got $51.33 as her widow's war pension! My maternal relatives were Irish immigrants who came later.

It's kind of ironic that this comment about "deep rooted families who have embedded racism" is in response to my post. Not only am I and my maternal line from the north, we live in an area where it's common to see houses that were part of the Underground Railroad and things named after John Brown. On my paternal side, I know that my ggg grandfather was in a border state, but he and his brother were both UNION soldiers who each re-enlisted in the Union army. As far as I've been able to tell, none of my family members ever owned slaves and they fought against slavery in the Civil War.

:lol::lol:

We have a drive-in movie theater just a few miles away. It even had the original screen until a wind storm damaged it about two years ago.

What is with those people? Are they really that desperate for attention? :glare:

I have to admit that I've always lived in the north, so maybe I just don't get the whole Confederate flag issue. My community is filled with houses and tunnels that were part of the Underground Railroad and John Brown actually lived and worked in my community in the 1830's, so I've always been more exposed to the "free the slaves" side of things and many people who are interested in Civil War history and might have a Confederate flag as an historical item. I've also always lived in racially mixed neighborhoods and I remember, as a teen, being perplexed when my best friend's parents didn't like that I had invited my black male next door neighbor to several social events.:confused: While reading the flag thread, I started thinking about why history is so important and fascinating. My dh was adopted as an infant. When his adoptive parents died, he found his birth mother who happens to be a German immigrant. She told us about being a child in Germany and fleeing the bombers flying in from England. Some of those bombers were probably being sent in by dh's adoptive father, who was an American soldier in England who coordinated bombing runs to Germany! She also told us, with some embarrassment, that her father was drafted and was a (reluctant) German soldier during WW2. Now my son has been dating a Jewish girl for many years and it's very likely they'll get married and I'll have Jewish grandchildren.:001_smile: Many of her relatives were killed by Nazis during WW2. So, my FIL may have been bombing the girl who would later become the mother of the child he adopted. The German soldier from WW2 will likely have great grandchildren who are Jewish. It makes me wonder how so many schools manage to make history seem boring!

I don't consider the Confederate flag to be racist, although I am aware that many people think it is and I understand that. If I saw someone displaying one, I would think they were either from the south or history/Civil War buffs. I admit that I think people become too easily offended by things that aren't meant to be offensive, so I have a hard time getting too upset by stuff like this.