Mrs Tiggywinkle
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Posts posted by Mrs Tiggywinkle
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1 hour ago, catz said:
Oh, I think having a auntie time like this is pretty special, I bet she is having a blast. You made this happen for her when you had 10 balls in the air. I think kids get to know over time when parents are doing the best they can with the tools and time they have available. ❤️ This is the kiddo that you took to FL on her own not long ago too right? You're doing great mama, hang in there. It takes a village.
I worked so much overtime last year and was able to take each child separately to either DisneyWorld or Universal. It’s crazy to think about but I knew my sister would be moving out of Florida and wanted to go while she was there lol.
But I somehow pulled it off and each child got a special trip alone with Mom.
I feel like I use the family village too much. My mom grew up in a multigenerational household and always talks about feeling like she had three moms because her grandmother and aunt watched them while her parents worked. But I also sympathize with my grandmother, who was a nurse in the 1960s and 1970s, and they struggled to make ends meet. My mother’s comments on all of that ring in my ears.
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It seems every time I turn around with DS7 we need to see another specialist. Now it’s cardiology. And GI. We already see developmental peds, ortho and neuro. He needs orthotics, which our insurance doesn’t cover. He doesn’t qualify for a Medicaid waiver because he doesn’t have a diagnosis, so we’re seeing genetics again. And now he has astigmatism so there’s more specialists.
I think you all are right and we will need to let my parents pay or at least help with DD10’s school. I truly think she’d resent me forever if I tried to homeschool her because I just don’t have the margin for all the social stuff, but she’s depressed in PS. I told DH today that if I cannot get DS7 up to second grade level by fall I refuse to send him back just to fall further behind and we need to figure that out.
The real issue today is DD10 has been asking to get highlights in her hair, and the only available time for months at the salon was late this afternoon. But of course I work tonight, so I asked my sister in law to take her. Her aunt picked her up after the half day at school, went to lunch, they’re getting pedicures and then getting DD10’s hair done. I’m taking DS7 to speech therapy and orthotics fitting then going to work for the overnight. And I worry that someday she’ll feel like I picked the boys over her, which is not at all what I’m doing.
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9 minutes ago, Starr said:
I understand about the money but having your parents pay for her school sounds like the solution. It will still be exhausting enough having them in three different directions. Maybe you can get him to accept that you have unusual circumstances, not that he's not a good provider. He works hard. And his parents are giving you a lot.
He works seven days a week between running a two person contracting business and being a paramedic supervisor. And he makes good money especially for our area. But every time we start to get ahead, we get walloped with more medical bills. we just can’t climb out of that. But he struggles with feeling like he’s just not doing well enough because we can’t seem to get ahead.
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We have some STEM day camps that DD could go to next year(too late this year). She is doing a veterinary science camp next week which will be good for her.
I looked into tutoring for DS7, but all the quotes were $70-100 hour which is steep for the limited benefit we’d get. DS7 needs a lot repetition to grasp a concept and then more repetition for mastery. So even with tutoring we need to continue working on concepts daily. Not necessarily worksheets, but I will cook with him or count sticks on nature walks(we’ve seen 3 sticks, look, there’s 4 over there, how many sticks have we seen now?) or whatever kind of fun things I can come up with for the concept we are working on. So while not really hard to do, it is time consuming. But it needs to be daily for him. DH is more than happy to work with him on worksheets on his days home with the kids, but I still need to plan everything out and then modify it for DS7. I have a master’s in special Ed and that’s also why paying a tutor $100 to do what I can do also kind of rankles.My parents will pay for DD’s private school if I ask. DH is funny about it. There’s a pretty significant wealth disparity between our families now, even though I was truly poor growing up. But his parents save us so much money by providing overnight childcare, and my parents can’t do childcare but are happy to help out financially. But DH would really struggle with letting them pay for it. They sometimes grab medical bills off my desk if they’re here and pay them(high deductible and medically complex child—last year we had around $30,000 in medical bills we paid for) and DH feels like he’s a bad provider when they do that, but I also know they’re financially able and want to. I could also take it out of my 401K if push really came to shove.
I just feel like I can’t win. To be fair, my mental health is zero right now and I’m sure I’m catastrophizing too.-
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I don’t want to hijack another thread, but I am really wondering this. How do you manage when your children have competing needs? How do you not give the easy child less when the complex child just requires so. much. energy.
I am really struggling. My kids are in PS, one in a special needs school and the other two in gen Ed. Oldest is 12 with ASD/anxiety. His grades are great. His last IQ evaluation though dropped him from 128 to 97. That means he lost the enrichment program at his SN school for kids who need the extra academic challenge. His standardized test scores are abysmal, despite having a 98% grade average. But the school is fantastic for developing social skills and giving him the rigidity and structure he craves.
then there’s DD who gets completely lost in our family. She’s truly academically gifted and absolutely miserable in PS. The plan is a small Christian school next year that can meet her academic needs and she can do early college there. But—$$$$. We can afford it—if I keep working full time. I could never fill her social needs homeschooling. I’m sure she’d continue to fall through the cracks if I was homeschooling because I just cannot give her the academic challenge she needs because her brothers just take up so much time.And DS7. So fun. Such an absolute joy. A medical mystery with cognitive and physical delays. He’s not reading anywhere close to the end of 1st grade and doesn’t understand the math concepts. He’s somewhere 8-12th percentile academically but the school says it’s just fine and plans to pass him onto second grade. He’d thrive being homeschooled. He gains so much during summer breaks and vacations. I think I can probably get him up to second grade level or close this summer, but not if I’m working full time.
But then I can’t afford to send DD to private school.If you’ve read this far, thanks. We’re tossing around various solutions, but it’s a constant theme in my life. I can’t manage the boys’ needs and still give DD the time and attention and everything she deserves. I don’t want her growing up resenting me, but sometimes that feels like it’s inevitable.
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One of my cousins got married at 19. They couldn’t even go on a honeymoon without their parents paying/taking responsibility for the hotel room.
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I hate driving.
My husband hates my driving.
So he drives and everyone is happy.
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50 minutes ago, Harriet Vane said:
YES. I do not understand why there is this rabid insistence on doing all the things exactly the same way that we did before covid.
Why does food need to be at every event?
Why can't people open windows?
Why can't we purchase and/or install air filters? Or cheaper and just as easy, at the very least run fans at windows to create a wind tunnel and force regular, healthy air exchange?
This doesn't have to be this hard.
My next round of conferences are all in the northeast in October and November, where it’s way too cold to be outside or open windows. And most of them are at conference center/hotels who are not going to install expensive air filters when they’re still booked every week with something and people are still booking hotel rooms regularly.
I think WTM forums are a small subset of people who care and the vast majority have just accepted living with catching Covid.
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As far as conferences, I’ve been thinking about this. Covid is going to be around for the rest of our lives, presumably, and part of my career relies on conferences for exposure and networking. I can’t not attend industry conferences 4-5 times a year at least and stay in my career, and I expect that many other people are in the same boat.
So I really don’t know what the answer is. There’s a lot of pub crawls/dinners/get togethers where masking would be all but impossible but are pretty important for networking. I truly just expect to get Covid twice a year.
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49 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:
I will say that I'm very interested in this kind of take -- that is, what the effect of this would be psychologically. Physically, the kid is obviously fine.
(Please don’t quote this so I can delete)
My mom was very similar, though I think some of it was anxiety over lack of money vs nutrition, but she got into some homeschool fundie groups that were all about grinding your own whole wheat and eating most vegetarian, and that was really rooted in anxiety. And I struggled to eat due to texture issues and then could not eat what she provided and it turned into a big deal. I mean borderline abuse in some ways big deal. I just wouldn’t eat and she would either create a major issue or just not feed me. I could go two days without food if nothing we had was edible to me. I know now that we were below the poverty line and what we had was what they could afford and buying me special food wasn’t possible but as a child it just felt like uncaring and rejection.
My BMI was around 14 in my late teens. Once I was on my own and could live on grilled cheese and cereal, I gained to a healthy weight.
The result is that whenever I am in a PTSD flare, as I have been for around two years now, all my food issues also flare up and I really struggle to eat. That upsets my husband and causes issues. He is trying hard to be more understanding now but having grown up in a healthier family and not having sensory issues he really doesn’t understand. I cried over dinner the other night because I just could not eat the pot roast he made no matter how hard I tried and then I felt bad because he was trying to do something nice for me(we alternate cooking nights and it was my night but I was really struggling that day). he quietly slipped out of the house and got me a milkshake and then made me a grilled cheese, which made me feel worse(I did eat, but it was the only calories I had all day).
So that’s how it all flares up in me, but that’s only one story.-
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3 minutes ago, Farrar said:
I'm in my mid-40's and I do too... and I know many people who do as well. But also, I know people who don't - and several people in this thread have basically said it's just their dh. And I know many people who have strong networks, but none of them are in that inner sanctum - that a lot of topics are off limits except with their spouse. Which doesn't mean they don't have active, happy social lives, just that their expectations about that doesn't include spilling about private stuff, even after years of friendship. Whereas the younger folks I know - they definitely have fewer boundaries about stuff with close friends.
Like all things generational though, it's a big generalization and obviously won't apply to everyone. If I'm even right in my anecdotal observation.
It depends on the age, too. I had a group of 8 really close friends in my 20s. People I trusted and could tell anything too. After getting married and having a baby fourteen months later friendships fell apart. I’ve never been able to regain any of that.
If you had told 23 year old me that 40 year old me wouldn’t have any real friends, I’d have laughed at you.
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1 hour ago, Kassia said:
Same. DH is wonderful, amazing, and supportive and I don't know what I'd do without him but there are a few issues that we strongly disagree on so we just don't discuss them. Or there are things he just doesn't understand and it's not worth discussing (not his fault). I have friends but no one I can just talk to about anything and everything.
Yes. This is better worded than mine.
At the moment I feel like we disagree on everything and I’ve giving up trying to discuss things. He’s an extreme isolationist, has never had more than one friend and never felt the need for any, does not want to have people over, does not want to meet people. I am not really an extrovert but I’m very lonely. He likes where we work(he’s a supervisor) and I hate it, but every other job offer I have gotten is at least a $20,000 a year pay cut and more half been in the 50% range. So we don’t talk about work because it’s a fight. Right now we can’t rationally discuss schools because he hated brick and mortar school so passionately that he wants no involvement in our kids education and thinks formal schooling is worthless, but then he liked being homeschooled but is adamantly against homeschooling our kids, two of whom are in a school that rates highly but we’ve found to be poor academically in practice. I finally told him last night that he has to decide what is more important to him. I can either work full time or I can get our two youngest children up to grade level before fall. We can’t have both when full time at my current job is 57 hours a week. We moved back to his hometown, and he loves it here, but the school and the kids’ dislike of country living is a problem(they miss having other kids in the neighborhood to play with, and there is no place here to ride their bikes because people drive stupid on these backroads). So that always dissolved into a fight.So at this point, I really don’t talk to anyone about anything important.
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1 hour ago, TexasProud said:
None.
Same. Even though I trust DH, there’s so much anymore that we disagree on that it’s not worth discussing.
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It sounds like she talks to you about cleaning. If you have a good relationship and want to help, could you rent a steam cleaner for them and offer to come help steam clean for her?
I had three in 4.5 years and I am just now starting to feel less overwhelmed. The nicest thing anyone has ever done for me is my MIL offering to fold laundry. 😂😂. She sometimes just stops by and takes the kids for an afternoon so I can clean or helps by tidying up the kitchen. But we have the type of relationship where I know acts of service are her love language and this isn’t her way of telling me I’m a lousy housekeeper(also I am a lousy housekeeper but I’ve accepted that part of me lol).
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26 minutes ago, TexasProud said:
I have spoken at three conferences this spring, all filled with everyone from EMS to critical care nurses to EM physicians, and there was never a mask or social distancing in sight. I really think most people don’t care if they get Covid anymore.
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Metformin did that to me—I also have pcos. After about two months the doctor took me off Metformin and the bleeding stopped in a few days.
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DH was, um, very exposed both times I had it. He had to repeatedly test in order to be able to work and never tested positive.
I think it’s a total crapshoot who gets it and who doesn’t lol.
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I have a growing suspicion that even the boosters aren’t working as well against whatever latest variant is out there. But that’s how viruses work; they find hosts and the mutations that can evade immunity are the ones that spread.
I really base my entirely unscientific belief on how many people I am seeing who are having Covid for the second or third time and are triple vaxxed. A significant number of these people are really really sick, even if they don’t meet the high threshold right now for hospitalization.Two local skilled nursing facilities have Covid outbreaks again. They are 100% vaccinated, including all the workers because it’s required. All workers and visitors in those facilities wear masks and the patients that are able to wear a mask wear one when they are outside their rooms. Most of these people have had Covid once and many have had it twice, even if it was asymptomatic they know because they’re tested twice a week in the nursing homes still. And many are really sick, but may not be reflected in hospitalization statistics as they have do not hospitalize/do not resuscitate orders.
There really seems to be no end in sight. Every time HCW feel like we can catch our breath, it starts up again.
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3 hours ago, heartlikealion said:
I plan to sign up for a trial of Paramount Plus because I think you can watch the newer seasons of Young Sheldon on it and we were both disappointed that HBO Max only has seasons 1-4 of it.
My prickly kid and I love Young Sheldon and have really bonded over it.
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So. Bizarre.
DS7 seems fine. His heart rate is high 60s and he’s running around, so I am okay with that.
But DD10 is tired, headache, not herself, so I plugged the Spo2 probe on her…and her heart rate is in the high 40s-low 50s. which is not normal for her at all. (My kids attend my EMT classes and are the Guinea pigs for students to practice taking vitals on, so I’m probably more aware of what’s normal for them then most people) I confirmed the HR manually and with my own EKG because I’m that mom.
Covid tests are all negative. I found out the test the hospital did yesterday was a PCR, not a rapid like I’d assumed.
I think all my kids are seeing the pediatrician tomorrow if I can get them in because this is just weird. Maybe a bizarre virus but then I think DS7’s white count should have been elevated? I’m clueless.
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6 minutes ago, TexasProud said:
Yeah, but Quill pretty much said that if I do not have a sit down dinner we are cheapskates and worthy of being judged.
In my area you’d be totally judged lol.
I also think it comes down to what the wedding is about for you. For many people it really is about the community aspect more than an individual bride and groom. Many religious traditions also emphasize the community part of a wedding. It was unthinkable in my husband’s church when we married to not have an open to the church event and then a potluck meal in the decorated gym. I was from the sit down dinner with a DJ, alcohol and dancing tradition and that’s what my family expected. Now I wish I’d incorporated more of DH’s tradition, even though I really wasn’t aware, because it led to a lot of hard feelings and now he wants nothing to do with church at all.-
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He’s bouncing off the walls now but his heart rate is still what I’d consider lowish for his age. And now his sister is complaining of a headache.
I “borrowed” a spare heart monitor from work for the night so I can keep a pretty good eye and do EKGs and such while monitoring everything. But at least he’s definitely not lethargic.
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We had a small wedding with just close family; basically an elopement except it was at my home. DH’s aunts made all the food, my mom made the dress, my sisters made a dessert bar. It was beautiful.
Then we had the big wedding for friends and family a few months later. It’s not really uncommon in my family, Two of my cousins and a sibling have done similar things with a private ceremony for legal purposes and a large religious ceremony and reception later on. But in 2009 apparently no one out of my family did this, because we actually did get a lot of flack about it from some coworkers and church friends.
After a very difficult time in our marriage(that wasn’t really publicized, only maybe two or three people IRL knew) we had a very private vow renewal. I mean it was just the two of us and our kids. Then we had a photographer take pictures, because our wedding pictures hadn’t turned out well and I always wanted new ones, and we hadn’t ever done family pictures. It was sweet, private and meant more at that point than our original vows, because for better or for worse were no longer just words or ideals. And it was meaningful for our children to see us make those promises before them and before God.
So maybe I have done the multiple wedding thing lol.-
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5 minutes ago, Elona said:
The only thing confusing me about Covid being a possibility is that Covid generally causes a fast heart rate, not a slow one. My resting heart rate was insane - I am usually in the low 60's and it was constantly in the 90's, going to 115 and 120 in my sleep. The nurse said they were seeing elevated heart rates a lot with Covid. That said, I certainly don't know all there is to know about cardiac effects of Covid, especially on kids.
MIS-C can cause bradycardia but he doesn’t have any other symptoms. Right now he’s looking and acting totally fine, happily eating ice cream.
I did find out sort of backhanded that two kids in his class were diagnosed with Covid late last week but since there’s no more contact tracing I had no idea to watch for that.
DH had presumptive Covid in spring 2020 when we couldn’t get testing and had profound bradycardia during it and for two years after. It’s just recently seemed to better. But we chalked that up to him having a VSD repair as a baby and sometimes illness makes his heart act weird.-
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S/o Balancing kids’ needs
in The Chat Board
Posted
My dad is talking to DH. He’s framing it as they can gift us the money or put it in an education account as a tax write off. My dad dearly loves tax write offs.
My parents can easily afford to pay private school tuition through her graduation. I am sure they’ve given my siblings money over the years and they like things to be as equal as possible, anyway.
DS7 needs 1:1 almost constantly. There are a lot of issues at play, but he and DS12 are constantly vying for attention and they truly just both need a lot of it. At the very least DS7 needs to be constantly line of sight supervised. There aren’t behavior issues as much as cognitively not understanding basic danger signals and getting into things that you’d expect from a much younger child.