I voluntarily chose one for my last two (although my most recent baby was born before I could be induced) because I have very fast labors and a low pain tolerance. My 5th child (and also my 3rd) was born without pain meds as I went too fast, and it was quite traumatic. I never want to have another unmedicated labor if I can possibly avoid it. Induction allows me to have the epidural in place.

I know how hard it is to be caught between doing something you really don't want to do (disappoint your sister in this case) and something you absolutely can't do (expose your kids to your mom's drama). It sucks. What helps for me is to say to myself, look, this isn't me disappointing this person - it's not what I want to do. It's just what I have to do because of x circumstances I can't control, so I don't have to feel guilty about it or tie my ego into it; it's not really me doing it. And in your shoes I would tell your sister ahead of time, and I would do it right now. I would be completely honest and as devoid of waffling or emotional guilt as possible. "Dear Sis, DH and I are excited to attend your wedding! Unfortunately we can't bring the kids as I cannot expose them to the emotional drama between me and mom. DH and I will be there for the ceremony but I think we'll leave pretty early from the reception. [then something nice about her dress or the music or some other inane comment.]"

I have also tried a variety of oven mitts, partially because we've been living in VRBOs all summer and partially because I lose things. My favorite ones still are the ones my daughter makes from those potholder kits. They're durable, they're not huge, they actually protect from heat pretty well, they're sturdy but also moldable to your hand, and I like them.

I'm sure I started this exact thread years ago, but it was an old account and my search skills are not making it turn up in google. I have 7 kids and I still don't know exactly what things to get for a horde of little ones. We are sort of starting over with stuff -they have stuffed animals and small cars and other vehicles, but that's mostly it. My inclination is to get a set of wood blocks, some fake food (they loved the fake food at a place we stayed over the summer), and maybe some play weapons? They like guns and swords and etc (which in their cases are all sticks from outside). I think maybe also they could use a small cart to push things around in. Anyway, what else do little active kids like? They're 7, 5, 3, and 2. They enjoy building things and destroying things and making messes.

All of mine are two ingredient (according to your rules). I cut up the vegetable, I coat it in olive oil and salt, and I roast it. I do this with zucchini, potatoes, turnips, onions, bell peppers, squash, sweet potatoes, etc. I do do a very simple salad. Green leaf lettuce, green onions, oil, balsamic. Then if you want you can add: avocado, tomato, red bell pepper, kalamata olives, feta (haven't found a good nondairy so we don't do the feta ever)). But as long as you have the onions and the EVOO/balsamic it works well.

Anecdotally, I had a root canal in NZ when we lived there. Of course I had no insurance, but no one (I was told) in NZ carries dental. It was $600 NZD for the whole root canal. About $450 USD at the time. I paid cash. Here in the US that would be $2k or so.

I am an American who has not had significant problems with health insurance, but I am pretty healthy so it is hard to say. When I was poor, I was on Medicaid (when pregnant) and the kids were on Medicaid. I didn't need health care otherwise as I am fairly healthy. If I got sick I just lived through it. For a while when we were poor we qualified for a free health clinic care sliding scale thing at the local teaching hospital and DH got a mole biospied there for free. Also when pregnant I got free dental care, which was great. Then we made money and now I pay OOP for all health care except catastrophic, which I haven't used. So I just pay $100 or so (usually less) to see a PCP if I feel it's really necessary. Vaccinations are still free. I think between all the kids, we've only had one emergency room situation (knee stitches, $1k or so) and everything else has been either fix at home or see the NP at a walk-in clinic or PCP at cash rate for $100 or so and the cost of the (generic) prescription. But that said, I'd totally support single payer, and I say that as a conservative. Single payer or totally private market make sense to me as viable options. The mix of them is what is killer - government money, so no profit motive in giving out money, but private providers/insurers, so a profit motive in procuring money. Not a great combo. IMO same problem afflicts higher ed to some degree.

I buy my nearsighted glasses at zenni - I get the $6.95 pairs or if I feel like a splurge the $12.95 pairs. I buy several at a time. when my frames break and I don't have a backup pair (this happens yearly as I have bad EF skills) I duct tape them. People look at me weird but I am too old to care. ? when I was your son's age I just went without or bought some from a thrift store. $ was scarce and I wasn't asking my folks for new glasses when I knew it was my fault they were lost or broken.

And re: the bear, when we went by the dumpster that serves the ski resort, a lady and her son were there cleaning the trash the bear had gotten into and strewn everywhere. The ski resort management people didn't have enough bear deterrents, I guess. Anyway, we helped them clean it up (it was largely our trash - not a lot of people staying there in summer!) and they were pretty nice people. They said if they cleaned up after the bears people were less likely to want to shoot them. but they also said the bears were everywhere, not just that set of condos - they said some condos had permanent lines of trash going from the dumpsters off into the woods. "well, but when ski season comes and they're renting the rooms for $$$$/night they get the trash cleaned up, right? No, she said. Everyone just sort of ignores the trail of garbage leading off into the woods while they pay $500/night to stay in the condo and ski. Very weird, tbh. but seeing the bear was cool. Much bigger and more serious looking than I'd anticipated.

Aggressive driving is really not my speed. I was raised in Texas (until I was 10) and while I think the elaborateness and formality of social interactions would probably make me crazy if I moved back, I did really like the way Texans (who seem to be 90% of the tourists in southern Colorado) drive. People drive fine in the rural Midwest, at least where we are. They are slowish but they stay right except to pass, and most importantly, if you do pass them (or if they want to pass you) there is no tailing or honking or flashing of lights or whatever. I did see a lot of great wildlife in the northeast. I saw: a bear (at a ski resort pilfering the trash) a weasal a peregrine falcon (looked it up when I got home) a porcupine a blue heron

the ones I like are from honeyrunfarm on Etsy https://www.etsy.com/listing/62913510/tapered-beeswax-candle-set-10-long?ref=shop_home_active_21&ep_click=1 They're the only ones we've ever found that don't drip at all, just an even clean burn

She is beautiful and so pink! Congratulations to you and yours.

Oh, and also, being back in the midwest, the first thing I noticed was how dyed everyone's hair is. Like, everyone. All women dye their hair. I do miss that about New England. I have some gray (I am 34 but an early grayer) and I liked feeling like it was okay to go gray as I got older, and that getting older and showing signs of it as a woman was okay too. I do feel frumpier in suburban midwest.

Oh, and I have to say for the record that we spent a month in between the NE and the midwest in South central Colorado. Drivers there are largely Texans and they are soooo polite. They move right over when you want to pass them and when they want to pass you they keep a distance that says to me "I'd like to pass but I'm not being rude about it" and then you move over for them and it is just good all around. But one day I was driving down the highway and a guy wasn't moving over when I wanted to pass. no big deal, I just passed him normally (instead of his moving to the shoulder to be passed I passed in the opposite lane, like it works in most of the US in my experience). Unlike the rest of southern Colorado/Texas drivers, he then tailed me (like 10 feet behind, obnoxious and dangerous) for the next 5 miles. Guess what license plate his car had? NY. That is all I have to say about drivers in the northeast. although in NYC they seemed competent if a bit zoomy, upstate NY was as depressing as the rest of the NE re: driving.

I love updates on threads (especially ones I read several years after the fact as a google search) so I just thought I'd update this thread. We signed a lease on a house in the Midwest. We loved many things about New England - the food is phenomenal, the environment is largely clean and very beautiful, the weather is decent (in summer!). But we didn't fit there. I underestimated how important it is to fit in where you live, even for introverts, or maybe especially for introverts. Anyway, we moved back to the midwest after a summer of looking around for a place in New England and we're quite happy overall. The water is not as clean. The food is not as good. But we got a nice place for the money and I don't feel quite as out of place as I did. Hilariously, though, I find myself accidentally omitting social niceties that our (now fairly rural and almost-South midwestern town) expects, so I think they think *I* am a rude Yankee! sigh, can't win

We don't have small appliances, even a toaster (although I can see the use of one). We do have that nifty can opener from rikon that doesn't produce a sharp edge but just releases the seal. It travelled through many states with us.

Do you think the dog situation is long term or short term? That is to say, in like 6 months do you anticipate being able to leave the dog alone for 6 extra hours a week (3 swimming sessions, say), or is it one of those dogs that will always need people to be with it as much as possible, in which case you need a long term alternative to your preferred exercise?

Good news! I have a 13 year old who could have been left with 2 younger kids at age 11 - but I have a 10 year old who cannot even be left by himself, much less with other kids to be responsible for. Maybe for 15 minutes. Maybe not. So I voted yes, because you think it would work for your kids and I trust your judgment as their parents.

But again, is that really legal? If the elder decided to file charges to have the trigger locks removed and the person who placed them prosecuted, couldn't he? What I mean is, how is it legal to lock up someone else's possessions and remove the keys? eta: I would be very hesitant to do something illegal to someone who was disposed toward irritation with me to start with, especially if it wouldn't solve the problem in the long term (that is to say, in this case he could buy another gun)

But how do you "get rid" of someone else's guns? You can't steal them, or sell them and say whoops I sold them, or whatever. If he can buy a saddle he can buy another gun, and you (hypothetical you who stole his guns) are now in jail on charges of theft. The mom, maybe, could - is she in theory owner of them or part owner? But it doesn't sound like she's willing. And again he could just buy another one tomorrow.

We never did Santa at all. But my dad was pretty committed when I was a kid. Once he got up on the roof with some apples for the reindeer. He had a bad back so this wasn't a casual thing. I had pointed out that the reindeer were probably hungry too. Anyway, the apples rolled off. So he climbed down the ladder, cut them in half, took them back up. Then in the middle of the night he went up and ate parts of them. For my little sister, we were living in a posh-ish apartment when she was 3 - white carpet, indoor fireplace, etc. He burned a fire in the fireplace, then after she went to bed stomped in the soot with his boots and marched around the living room making Santa tracks.

My sister is an actress (though not a super accomplished or famous one) who nannies as a day job. It's super common among her set of actress friends in NYC. They're 20-something, they need to be paid decently but have flexible shifts, and they need something that isn't career-oriented (because in theory acting is the career). Often 2 or 3 of them will share one family, so if one of them books a gig for a few weeks, the other ones can pick up the slack with that family.

Also, I should say that I did learn a few very useful things from people who'd done well in my classes a year or two before me. One was a way of studying for IB history tests, which were just timed essays. The way they worked was as a mimic to the actual IB History test; you were given 4 essay topics a week ahead of time. He would draw 2 out of a hat on the day of the test, and you had to write one of them (you had 50 minutes). So you only needed to prepare 3 of them, because you could always discard one. What I would do is during math that day (always a snooze) I would outline the three essays. Then to memorize them (this is what I learned from a girl a year older than me) I would remember the number of sub-points I had for each essay. So like if the essay where "homeschool ideologies" (obviously the class was different, it was IB HL History of the Americas and it would be a question like "how did soandso's development of suchandsuch affect suchandsuch situation in the 19th century at [specific place]), I would have say radical unschooling, 3 subpoints, then wtm, 5 subpoints, then charlotte mason, 4 subpoints, And I would just remember: essay question 1: 3 5 4. Essay question 2 (set of 3 numbers or set of 4 numbers). etc. Then as soon as he pulled the question out of the hat, I'd write down the number series associated with the question I wanted to answer, spend 30 seconds shorthanding the points and subpoints, then write the essay. Most of the class spent a ridiculous amount of time prepping for these things. Like, the day before they'd all get together and plan out the points and subpoints. Then they'd prewrite (!!!!!) all the essays. Then try to memorize the essays wholesale. I thought it was kind of insane, and not great training for the end of course IB test anyway, which was the whole point of doing testing this way.

I wasn't a usual student. But not all students are usual students. I didn't need to do 90% of homework to master the material. I did it, when it was necessary to do it for the grade (about which I cared very much), surreptitiously during class. Band class was a good time for doing homework because the band director (and we had an excellent, top-rated band) spent 30% of class time talking about his heyday in the army or his life as a young band director in the 70s or whatever. I get that classes take a certain amount of time; what I'm saying is that I didn't need that much time to be taught the material. So the teacher would present it once; I'd either have already known it or would assimilate it the first time, done. Then the teacher would have us practice, or discuss (during which time everyone else would ask inane questions or have inane ideas, ime), then she'd teach it again a different way. I only needed the first 10 minutes of class. I took IB Psych as an audit. The way an audit worked at my high school was the opposite of the way you'd think; I did get a grade for the class, but I didn't attend. I just read someone's notes, usually the day I was going to have to take the unit test, always during gym class (we either bowled or walked around the track - it was a "lifetime activities" class), then took the test after school. I did read the books (Freud, Skinner, etc.) and write the papers. I compose at 10 words per minute so a 1200 word paper takes me about 30 minutes to outline and 2 hours to write start to finish. For a high school level work, I didn't need to revise. Now there are also kids who have to work much harder for lower level achievements and classes. I got the IB Diploma; I took the hardest classes offered; I was a NM scholar. On the other hand, I also played the flute. I spent an hour a day practicing the flute, and I was still only barely good. Not the best at my school, and not in the top 15 flutists in the state. It took a huge amount of effort for what seemed to me second-rate results - but I loved it, and I liked having to work hard at something to be decent at it. There was a girl 2 years ahead of me who was as good as I was (better, because she was 2 years ahead) without practicing at all. She just knew how to play the flute. She got a new piece of music, she sightread it, came out great. Every time.

Well, I was technically in school for 7 hours a day and did about an hour of homework outside of school, but the input/output required for me to get that same education, if I weren't spending time waiting for my peers to be taught, would have taken much less than 3 hours a day. And I got an IB Diploma.