I do not think my oldest will have kids. My son used to say he never would because he didn’t want to pass down his mental illness to anyone. But then he met “the one”. She teaches special ed and convinced him that even if their kids inherit his brain, there are ways to still give them a happy, successful life. I think they have some baby names picked out. My middle child hopes to adopt, but I really hope she does a ton of maturing before then, because right now, I don’t really think she would make a good mother. My next daughter says babies are uglier than potatoes and only wants to have trendy dogs and money. My youngest probably will, but I didn’t have her until I was 43, so if she has them late in life, I might not get to know them. I thought that by having 5 kids, I would have grandchildren for sure. I’m trying to improve my health and keep my strength up so that I can be very involved with my grandchildren, hopefully on a daily basis.

So, we are in California and are staying at home from here on out except for daily swim practice in an outdoor pool. Dh and middle daughter are in Texas selling our house there. Buyer has 3 elementary aged kids going to school in person. The whole family now has Covid one week into the school year. The dad was in our house on Friday. Dh and Dd were both wearing masks. The mom came by on Saturday when Dh was doing a repair outside. I don’t think he was masked because he didn’t know anyone was coming. My family members are staying with neighbors who are both elderly and immune compromised. I told them to pack up now, and go stay in the empty house. I’m so glad to be on the other side of the country right now!

My sister moved to Ottawa a few years ago. I almost fainted when I found out she spent this past summer in Texas. She said Canada was so locked down that she was “losing her people skills.” LOL.

We used to live in a low cost of living area, and were able to get a great deal on our first house. Ten years later, we sold it for double what we paid, then we bought another house with acreage, ten years ago, and we are under contract to sell that for almost double what we paid for it. We are now in a very high cost of living area and plan to stay here at least until our youngest graduates in 6 years. We may not buy again unless there is a sharp downturn in prices. For now, we are just doubling up what we contribute in our matched 401k. It feels weird not to own a home, but we will reassess each year. For now, we have a lovely rental that is well below market price, but I know how quickly situations can change.

I have a friend who is very anti mask and anti vaccine. She even asked me to let her know if I found a source for fake vaccine cards. She broke up with family members over the holidays because they wanted households to sit together at Christmas dinner and for everyone to mask when they were not eating. I thought something might shift in her thinking when she lost someone very close to her to Covid, but it didn’t change anything. In fact, I couldn’t understand the reasoning, but she has somehow rationalize it so that she believes her loved one was actually killed by the measures the hospital used to prevent and treat Covid. She feels that her loved one would have lived if the opposite political party was still in power. I love her dearly, but nothing will shake her from her stance and knowing how she has responded to this crisis has reignited my passion to make sure my kids get the very, very best education I can possibly provide.

I had a bad case of this a couple of years ago. I told Dd that I thought I was anemic. She said that was probably an old wives tale. The obsession with ice was then joined by a full blown addiction to……wait for it……parsley. I knew which stores in town had the best parsley. I would drive to different stores so as not to buy more that 6 bunches at any single location. I didn’t want to be forced to talk about it with curious cashiers. I tried to limit myself to only eating one bunch a day, but seldom succeed. I couldn’t sleep because all I could think of was one tiny bit more that I knew was in the refrigerator. I’d sneak out of bed trying not to wake my husband. When I finally got help, my hemoglobin was below 6. I’m sure that the excessive vitamin K I was consuming contributed to my multiple blood clots, but if it wasn’t for the blood clots, my stage 3C cancer would not have been discovered before it progressed to stage 4, so I guess I could say that I owe my life to my parsley addiction. It feels silly to go to the doctor because of cravings, but I do think this warrants having a blood panel done.

Valentine Wiggins is excellent!

Nymphadora Tonks!

In addition to training, I would see how he reacts to these calming treats on Amazon. “NaturVet Quiet Moments Calming Aid Dog Supplement, Helps Promote Relaxation, Reduce Stress, Storm Anxiety, Motion Sickness for Dogs” My daughter discovered them after rescuing a very anxious big dog during the lock down. She needed something to help her dog make a cross country road trip without being panicked the entire time. She gets the ones without melatonin. They worked great on the trip and helped her dog stay calm when meeting her new roommate and her roommate’s dog. I bought some for my Maltese because we are out of town with her at the moment. I need her to be calm at restaurants and in the car and hotel. I bought the kind with melatonin because my vet says it is safe for dogs. Our Maltese is also around 5 lbs. I give her 1/2 a treat twice a day and she has been absolutely perfect. I also left a package with my son who is watching my big dog at home. She gets very anxious when I’m gone. He said he only had to give it to her once, but it helped her to just sit with him and not bark at every person who walked by or closed a car door. I think that they might help your dog calm down enough to allow training to be more effective. I’m not a dog expert, so I may be totally off base, but they sure have been helpful for us.

I was teaching kindergarten, and during nap time, I was writing a letter to my husband about my frustrations with our infertility struggles. One of my students kept raising his hand. I asked if it was an emergency, if the school was on fire or if he needed to go to the restroom. He said, “No, but it is an emergency.” I told him to quietly get up and come talk to me then. When he got to my desk, he said, “Sometimes it takes a really long time to get a baby.”

My cup is 14 ounce, and I fill it half way. I’m down to one cup a day, and contemplating giving it up altogether, but haven’t quite made the leap yet.

My autistic kid and my kid with debilitating depression and anxiety have no trauma history either. The analogy I always think of is to compare these brain difference to someone who has a pronounced limp. I think of them as symptoms or results that could be caused by many, many different things. One person might limp form a club foot which formed prenatally. Another person could limp because of bone cancer which might have an environmental aspect. A third might have limp because of an injury. This is why I believe things like changing an autistic child’s diet to gluten and casin free can have a huge effect of one individual and absolutely none on another. And, of course, if an individual already has a genetics or acquired issue with one leg, also getting a physical impact to that leg is just going to magnify the problem. That is how I view the trauma contribution. In some cases, it is enough to cause the brain difference. In other cases, it compounds an issue that already exists, but just because a person walks with a limp, it does not follow that there has to have been some impact to the leg at some point which caused it.

I haven’t finished reading all of the replies, but I wanted to say that my sister had hyperthyroidism. One manifestation was anxiety and rage. She was fired from her job, and almost lost her marriage. She was able to treat it with acupuncture and Chinese medicine, but every once in a while, I notice her behavior inching back that way and tell her to get a blood panel done. My oldest has autism and anxiety. She does not want to be medicated or treated at all, which is fine with me because she is functional and happy. Except, she suddenly had enough stressors to push her over into non functioning. She said she was edging into mania and went days without sleeping, yet she couldn’t get anything done like combing her hair or cleaning her kitchen. She is usually very high achieving, but suddenly her hair was felted and her kitchen was crawling with maggots. I wasn’t able to just fly to her and comb her hair and clean her kitchen, so I first sent her a shipment of vitamins. Right away, she said that the magnesium made her able to sleep. I suggested she also try L Tryptophan, which she said stopped the shaking from anxiety as soon as she took it. With that little bit of help, she was able to push through and get her stuff done and mentally step back and identify the problem as pandemic isolation. She then drove across the country to move in with a friend where she could still work remotely, but have her support people near by. The vitamins and supplements didn’t fix her problems, but they gave her enough relief for her to fix her own. My son’s anxiety and depression are so extreme that he needs to take multiple psychiatric drugs three times a day just to live. His psychiatrist says that he doesn’t prescribe benzodiazepines for very many patients, but my son is the very definition of who they were made for. We clearly have some chemical imbalances that run in my family. Past generations death with them by becoming alcoholics. Both of my siblings are in recovery. I’m proud of my kids for doing the hard work to get real help instead of just drinking themselves to oblivion. For myself, I have always struggled with anxiety but have been able to push through it and reach my goals and avoid some familial pitfalls, but the trauma of my near death experience changed that. My oncologist and family doctor have been working with me for a year trying to treat the spike in anxiety as a short term response to trauma, but now they believe it has cause me to have PTSD and that I might not ever be able to function unmedicated again, so they sent me to a psychiatrist who I’ll see for the first time next week. In my case, I have a clear, inherited tendency to chemical imbalance which was exacerbated by trauma. The good news is that when my medication is right, I feel better than I ever have in my life. I had no idea that it was possible to feel so calm and happy. If I hadn’t had pulmonary embolisms and aggressive cancer, I never would have known there was help so I never would have sought it.

I know 3 people who have done this. One had the J&J shot early in the year and just got a Pfizer booster. The other 2 got one dose of AZ and were unable to locate the second shot, so they came to the states and also got Pfizer. None of them had any side effects other than tiredness. My pharmacist said that demand is down so low that he gives one shot from a vial and ends up having to to toss the rest.

Do you know the song from The Greatest Showman that goes ”Never enough, never, never….”? That is what I heard in my head when I read your title. My youngest kids are older than yours at 14 and 11. They have always been homeschooled, but still see their friends 5 days a week and have FaceTime or gaming contact 7 days a week. And guess what? It is never enough. In a way, I’ve given in and made their people my people, so we are all basically one family now. We just spent 3 days together putting on a trials and finals championship swim meet and at 9:30 in the morning, we meet to start a 7 day vacation with the kids friends and their families. The kids literally call the other parents Auntie or Uncle followed by their first name. I suggested we switch which car the kids ride in every time we stop to get gas so we all get a turn with them. My favorite example is when they had morning practice at 5:30, then another mom took them to breakfast and an activity and lunch and an activity and asked if Dd could stay for dinner, then took them to get boba, and finally brought Dd home at 9:30 at night. I could still see their tail lights leaving my house, when the girls texted each other, “I’m lonely.” I have had introverted kids too, and I’m pretty introverted myself, but I want to make sure that you understand for certain personalities there is no such thing as enough social time.

I know several people who got J&J vaccine early on because that was all that was available to them at the time. Some are worried about becoming carriers especially because they work with kids under 12, so they are getting additional shots by just not mentioning that they already had J&J and then saying that they don’t have insurance so that the new vaccine isn’t listed on their insurance. No one I know has had an issue yet, but I’m keeping an eye on it.

My dream is to homeschool my future grandchildren.

This is what I do as well. I’ve been married almost 30 years, and I do remember dissatisfaction around the 15 year mark. It stands out to me because my own parents divorced after 15 years. I just want to point out that what is not negotiable has changed for me over the years. In my family, we tend to “take things seriously”. By this I mean that things are a big deal to us that are not even a blip to other people. This has some good points, but it can also be emotionally draining. Five out of five of my kids have anxiety and they clearly inherited it from me. My oncologist thinks I now have PTSD from my brush with death due to blood clots and advanced cancer, which means that many of my coping mechanisms that worked before I got sick aren’t working for me anymore. Since I have been medicated for my anxiety, I can see how much anxiety contributes to my making a mountain out of a mole hill. I don’t feel like I’m more passive or too accepting now.I’m not on a SSRI, just Buspar and a beta blocker to control the physical manifestations of my anxiety, but there is such a big difference in my ability to see situations more clearly and really evaluate what is and is not negotiable for me. Before being medicated, I’d obsessively ruminate on Dh’s flaws or an imagined slight. Now, when that process starts, I’m able to say, “Number one, that is not even an issue at all. Number two, it happened ten years ago. You need to move on and think about something else.” And I have the help to actually be able to do it. Issues in my friend group used to keep me from sleeping for weeks at a time. Now, I don’t ignore them, but I take action, say what I need to say, and am able to not constantly dwell on it. I wanted to mention this because I think Not a Number has the right idea. This is what I try to do in my relationships with my kids as well, but it only works for me when I can accurately discern what is truly negotiable and what isn’t.

When I have an MRI or a PET scan, I wear whatever mask I want, and as I’m lying down, about to go into the machine, the tech switches it out for a mask without metal. I realize that the facility may have told you to make sure to bring a mask without metal, but in my experience they would still make me switch over to the mask that they provide.

20 years ago, when I cut off my mother, I asked my priest who was also my mother’s priest about that scripture. He told me I was absolutely the hero for breaking the cycle and the highest honor I could give my mother was to have a healthy family and raise emotionally healthy children. He did tell me that it wouldn’t be good for me to try and damage her relationship with other people. I never tried to get my siblings to cut her off and there were people who “took my mother’s side” at the time because I wouldn’t talk trash about her to anyone but she sure told plenty of lies about my husband and myself. Now those people have had enough time to see her for who she is. They regret horribly not being part of my life for the last 20 years and for not getting to be close to my children. But I feel like I maintained my integrity no matter who it cost me.

I have some insight into both sides of this. My mother has a personality disorder and refused to give me the space to make my own marriage and new family the way I wanted it, so I cut her off over 20 years ago. I have no contact with one of my siblings and a surface relationship with the other. That all works fine and dandy for me. I also have one child who constantly rewrites history and in her retelling, she is always the victim and I am emotionally abusive to her. I ask my other kids, “Is there any way this happened?” And all 4 of them say no. My version is the version they lived and experienced and now remember. I don’t think my kid is lying. I think she is genuinely confused. This happens with her friends and roommates too. I read about something called “tendency towards interpersonal victimization” which describes her to a T. She isn’t cutting me off and I’m not cutting her off, but it is clear that she doesn’t trust my interpretation of events the way that my other children do. She is also my husband’s favored child, so he never told her no about anything while I insisted that I love her enough to be the bad guy and actually set limits for her and tell her the truth about her behavior. So I see both sides of it. I get to be both the ungrateful child who cut ties with her mother, and also the evil mother who is never good enough. My husband wonders if part of it is just an inherited personality trait. My best friend swears to me that my daughter has been this way since she was tiny.

No. I don’t want to divide my time and money between my kids and some future spouse. I also would not want my husband to ever remarry. If we were to lose each other through death or divorce, I would want the remaining parent to put all of their focus into the family we’d have left.

Are your babysitters vaccinated? My oldest got the J&J vaccine and next month she goes back to babysitting her favorite kids after 2 years away from them while she was getting her masters. I sure wish there was a booster shot available for her to get. But otherwise it feels pretty low risk.

In a way, I feel like we never unlocked. We never stopped wearing masks indoors, even after being vaccinated. We didn’t go back to in person church and won’t until January when my youngest is old enough to be vaccinated. We have been having swim practice and swim meets all along although they were scaled down and didn’t have food or spectators on deck. We have probably one house part per month with maybe 10 fully vaccinated teens and their parents. The kids do all the rest of their socializing outdoors. This is when year round beautiful weather is almost worth paying California housing prices. I am letting my kids have as much time with their friends as possible before fall when I feel like we are likely to have more strict mandates again. Edited to add that we also haven’t eaten inside a restaurant since before COVID and don’t plan on going back to doing that anytime soon either.

My almost 15 year old likes a boy who likes her back. This means that they play games online, go to the amusement park with groups of friends and sit next to each other in the car. I think he is coming over next week to bake a cake with her, and I think his mom has something planned at their house for them to do the following week. Her best friend likes a boy who likes her back, but they aren’t allowed to tell anyone because their parents are more strict. He borrowed my Amazon Prime to buy her a birthday hoodie because his parents wouldn’t approve of his buying a gift for a girl. I overheard her dad telling another parent that the girls and boys don’t interact very much. I told him that things are changing and it is age appropriate for them to start pairing up a little. He said, “Shut up ma’am. No one is talking to you.” Of course, he is teasing, but the next day when we were talking about the boys, he told his daughter, “Don’t make Daddy go to jail. I love my freedom!” I told him not to put her in a position where she feels like she has to lie or sneak. On the way home, I told my Dd that I was going to keep advocating for her friend to have a right to just openly like a boy. And the boy she likes is so smart and sensitive and funny and humble and secure and considerate and from a great family, so that isn’t the issue at all. I really don’t think they should be made to feel like they are doing something wrong. We will see how things change next summer when they all start driving and working. Until then, I’ll keep having get together at my house where the kids can hang out and be together without going on actual one on one dates