For me, I would skew towards the more challenging class... but it would greatly depend on the environment in each class and how my child was likely to respond to it.

Can I just use this thread to rant about my brother's nutritionist? He's just been diagnosed with diabetes, though he's probably had it for a good decade and just refused to control. His doctor put him on meds right away (he didn't know WHICH meds off-hand, just "meds").. and his nutritionist told him to cut out sugar. Well, yeah, definitely cut ou sugar, but she told him to replace those snacks with things like sandwiches, and to make sure to add in more fruit to his diet. SANDWICHES AND FRUIT?! My brother is a food addict (as am I, though I've gotten it under control in the past year), so he's replace cookies with toast and jam, tons of oranges and bananas, etc, and is getting annoyed that he's following the advice perfectly, eating a "healthy" diet, and its not putting a dent in his numbers. ARG. I've tried talking to him about it, but even trying to follow the guidelines of "60g of carbs or less at a major meal" is overwhelming to him given his existing diet and general food history. Trying to do less than 50 a day is, I suspect, insurmountable to him, so he writes it off as his baby sister's uninformed (and crazy) opinion. This bad nutritional advice is literally killing him and it is so frustrating. :(

Prayed! Thank you for posting again with more information as wel. At 22 weeks the survival rates are low, but far from non-existent, especially if they made it through the first day. There is certainly hope, and the hospital sounds like it's well-equipped to handle them. Update us when possible?

Sounds like you guys have an exciting couple of years in store! Well, except for the dead car and the Scouts fundraising. ;) Are you going to be staying in the same place you're living now? I know you've had a lot of problems with housing, so I'm hoping you won't have to tackle that again if you try to extend your lease for the next few years.

He had 11 foster kids. Unfortunately the baby's crying or I would go through all the various source links to verify the legitimacy of this, but in reading up on him tonight, here's what I stumbled across (feel free to correct this if the info isn't accurate, of course!): "During his involvement in the Malheur standoff, the 11 foster children that were in the care of Finicum have been taken away. Finicum complained that those children were he and his wife’s major source of labor and money on their ranch, reported Time Magazine." That statement made me sick to my stomach. Edit: some quick googling while trying to nurse the baby seems to show that he had FOUR foster kids. Not sure if that means he has 11 of his own in addition to the 4, or 4 of his own, plus the 4 making 11. Either way the original article I read was clearly inaccurate.

I have two under two right now, while I'm homeschooling my older three (grades 6, 5, and 3). The baby is only one month old right now. It's... tiring, lol, but not horrible. I spent the few months leading up to the birth helping the older kids be a bit more self-sufficient in their education. I plan out their schoolwork for the week and then each day they have a sheet that tells them what to do with a stack of books they'll need for their assignments that day, and they sit at the table and do their work. When I'm not busy with the littles, we do subjects that they need me for. (Doing science experiments, helping them understand tricky math, reading history stories, etc.) If they run in to problems with something, they set that subject aside and know that I'll help them tackle it when I'm able, and move on to the next thing in the meantime. It does, however, mean that I don't really get a break. The little give me a bit of time and rather than taking a nap I have to go over schoolwork with them. Housework really only gets done at nights after DH is home, and when he does get home I'm often burnt out and need a good long break before I can get to doing anything else. I'd suggest having a large stock of freezer meals ready for after the baby is born, and relax your housekeeping standards. A lot.

Unbelievably, according to this the emergency manager who changed Flint's water source and decided not to treat it and covered it up, etc, is the same guy who is charge of Detroit's public school and has made the decisions that lead to those conditions. How is he allowed to continue doing this? It's deeply disturbing. ETA: after reading more research it looks like the emergency manager is living quite the high life, too. High salary, private chauffered car, and his own security team for when he actually has to venture out in to the field and see the conditions other people are forced to live in.

YAY! I am so happy for your family!

This is where I'm at right now with my one year old. It's a nightmare just getting her out the door and in to the van, screaming every second of the way, arching her back yelling at me as I try to strap her in, etc. So I'm suppose to wrestle her for 5 minutes to get her coat on, get her safely to the van only to wrestle her back out of her coat again, strap her in to the carseat while she screams bloody murder, then put her coat over her so she doesn't get frostbite while we're driving somewhere? Not like that'll work anyway, she's already taking off everything that's not lierally strapped on to her while we're driving. As in, I buckle her in and she takes off her boots and throws them. Then she takes off her socks. Then she screams because her feet are cold, surprise surprise. There is no "warm up the van ahead of time" option, we have idling laws here: it's literally against the law to leave your vehicle running to warm it up. Right now I use a thin winter coat to keep her safe (and have been putting woolen tights on underneath her pants so she can't strip them off her feet), but in a week or two that won't be good enough and I honestly don't know what I'll do. She will throw off a coat that is not buckled in place with her, and if the temperature goes as low as it has the past few winters (-40), she will be at very real risk for frostbite. It's just not as simple a choice as some people here seem to think it is. I may very well have to choose between adherence to carseat safety, risking my baby getting frostbite, or keeping my older children cut off from all outside social contact for several months of the year. Edited after going out on winter roads to take my kids to therapy, lol: I'm not saying it's all well and good to ignore guidelines re: puffy coats. Given the above options, my best bet will likely be to let let her freeze her buns off and assume that once she gets cold enough, she'll keep the blanket on that my older kids keep tossing over her from the back seat. I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes there is no perfect solution that allows everyone to be as safe as possible at all times while still actually living their lives, and that we have to be careful to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

From what I can see, it looks like once you've trimmed the stems there may be quite a bit of space between the stalks... it is possible to use that space between them to grow anything else, or do brussel sprouts have a fairly dense root system? I'm wondering if I could plant some late summer lettuce between the stalks, which would save me space elsewhere as my other plants (peppers, etc) get larger closer to harvesting time.

The cost of vegetables thread has made me start planning out my garden earlier than normal this year. ;) In the past year I've FINALLY managed to get most of my family to start eating brussel sprouts, but they're not cheap. I'd love to add them to my garden, but I'm not sure how easy they are to grow, how effective it would be to grow them in a small urban garden (about 300-400 sq ft), how much they actually produce, etc. Does anyone have any experience? Is it worth it or would I be better off using that space to grow something else?

Southern Ontario, cauliflower (non-organic) was $8 a head at the cheapie grocery chain store. No idea on what the prices at other stores would have been.

If it's an actual friend, posting about their own progress on their feed and not trying to sell supplements or a progmra or anything, I think it's fantastic. They've worked hard, accomplished something that they're proud of, and are sharing their joy at their accomplishments with their friends. As long as their intended message is about THEMSELVES and not about the readers, I'm thrilled my friends are happy. If, on the other hand, it's a sales pitch or in any way about people other than themselves, it annoys me. If people have questions for the person about how the achieved their goals and that turns in to a respectful conversation about it, great, but if you're using our friendship to pitch me something or trying to make others feels bad about their bodies, that's not cool.

I call electric ones elements, and gas ones burners. Canadian here, but I have no idea if my answer is typical for my region.

I don't AVOID camping when I'm on my period, because we only get a few chances to camp each year and I'm not going to make the family miss out on them because I'm menstruating.... but it does pretty much suck. Aside from that, the only thing Aunt Flo really stops me from doing is exercising self-control, lol.

Yeesh, neither I nor the author are saying Curious George is an evil book, or that this is the correct interpretation of it. I loved this story, AND I (and my kids) love the original Curious George, it's not one or the other. This is simply an interesting take on it that provides some well-placed and well-phrased, if depressingly truthful, insights along the way. It's not a critique or commentary on the original book.

One of my favorite authors reposted this today. I don't really know what to say about it, except that the title is certainly accurate, albeit not in a horror-movie kind of way. I thought someone here might appreciate it as well; it's very... haunting, I suppose. http://the-toast.net/2015/11/02/childrens-stories-made-horrific-curious-george/ There are a lot of other stories on the site, but this one stood out to me. Many are worth a read if you've got some time, though!

Yes, it should be fine. My 7, 10, and 11 year olds saw it, and they're all quite sensitive to violence and cursing, etc, but they loved this. The 7 year old was white knuckling it through some of the fight scenes, but it was in a "oh wow, I hope the good guys win!" kind of way, not a genuinely scared way.

I just found out that the guy who played General Hux is the same actor who played Bill Weasley! WHAT? The charcters look so remarkably different, I never would have guessed!

I love this show, all the more because some of the main characters and storylines annoyed the crap out of me. That's what made it feel so real; these people make stupid decisions and sometimes good things happen despite their choices and sometimes the $(&! hits the fan. It all felt very human, I guess. It did take a few episodes to get in to it, but I'm so glad I stuck with it.

I got Buffalo, NY which is about as accurate as possible given that I live in Southern Ontario which wasn't an option (the test is US only). The other two cities it gave me I have never visited. (Newark and Pembroke Pines, FL)

I don't have any pictures around of our specific dresser, but it's similar in style to this. DH has a lot of thick, heavy work clothes, so we made sure to get a dresser with super-deep drawers that can hold those sorts of clothes without a problem. That being said, it's still a relatively small chocolate fountain. (link if you're interested; the reviews on it are saying it's too loud, hmm... I guess we'll find out!) I got the fountain, btw. I found some more laundry to put away, waited until the baby started crying, and then passed the pile to DH with a "Could you please put these away before the party? I need to feed the baby." About 10 minutes later he emerged from the bedroom with a hastily-wrapped box and a sheepish expression on his face. :lol:

Not so much "disappointing" as "forgotten", but DH bought me a chocolate fountain for Christmas. I know this because DH is horrible at hiding gifts and his it in one of his (very deep) dresser drawers... when I'm the one who ends up putting his clothes away because he never gets around to it, lol. It wasn't for anyone else, we plan out all our gifts for family members and friends together. He even dropped a hint about it a few days ago when I was making chocolate truffles and was at the tricky final stage where you enrobe them, about how one of my gifts might make this a lot easier. He forgot to give it to me. I put away laundry again this morning and it's still there in his drawer. We're having a Christmas party with extended family is just a few hours and it would be REALLY nice to have it around for the party... but I'm not sure how to go about reminding him to give me a Christmas gift when I'm not supposed to know about it, lol.

Big Fish (loved this movie but it absolutely fits the criteria) Transformers. The whole series. Fast & The Furious. Also the whole series. Iron Man, the whole series.

I think what Tammy is saying is that you've been looking at this as a friendship. You've thought of it as give and take, a relationship where you can both depend on each other. To her, you haven't been a friend... you've been a support system. Your role in her life is to give her strength, help, advice, conversation, etc. You've been approaching this as a two-way thing, but for your friend it's always been about what she gets out of it. Now that you're trying to move into a role that is something other than "I exist to support you in your life and for no other reason," she's unwilling to give back. I'm not saying that's even necessarily a BAD thing; I think all of us have relationships where we take more than we give, and we do tend to take those relationships for granted. However, it's important to be aware of the nature of the relationship on both sides so that you can invest in it appropriately.