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Another vote for Barkeeper's Friend. As my husband says (in awed tones), "something that actually does what it says it does!".

Do you know about the unofficial "Year 0.5"? There's a yahoo group (mostly files rather than messages, I think) here. I didn't follow it as a schedule but I did use some of the book recommendations for my son's K year.

Seems to work without it. I think I saw this in a Nigella Lawson recipe. Maybe it has to do with my yeast? I get it in bulk from my local co-op, and I want to say it's called "Active Dry Yeast," but I'm pretty sure I've tried this with the stuff in the package at least once or twice and it's been fine. Also, I don't know if this is relevant, but I'm going for a very sandwich-friendly loaf, so I'm not terribly worried about nice big holes or textured crust (if I were, I'd go the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes route, which produced something much more along those lines, at least for me).

This won't help with your specific questions, but it might help with the overall process. When I buy my flour, instead of putting it in canisters, I make a "bread mix" in half-gallon mason jars. One mason jar holds two loaves' worth of flour, salt, sugar, and yeast. Then, when it's time to make bread I just dump it all in the mixer (Kitchen Aid) and add warm water. My mixer will only handle two loaves at a time, so I make bread 2-3 times a week for a family of four.

Oh, absolutely. By "self-defense" I meant a defense of my own time and head-space. I just don't have the thick skin necessary to participate in internet debates; I spend hours stewing over perfect responses, etc. Somewhere (Pinterest, maybe?) I saw a quotation to the effect of "you don't have to attend every argument you're invited to," and I find, because of my personality, that that's extremely sane advice.

See my signature :001_smile:. I'm a lurker by personality and by self-defense. I have learned so much from this and from other boards, but a) I don't like to repeat what other people say, b) I don't like to keep myself up in the middle of the night composing posts for controversial threads, so I avoid those like the plague, and c) it often takes me so long to think through a response to a thread that everyone else in it has already moved on (so sometimes I feel like a lurker and a thread-killer, which is quite a neat trick, huh?). My general rule is that I try to repay the knowledge I've gained with whatever knowledge I have to offer. The imbalance between the two is huge, but I agree with Rosie--this is not something to spend lots of time feeling guilty about.

Not to derail the thread, so feel free to PM me, but Joanne, can you point me to resources, internet or otherwise, about this point? I've thought for some time that my son has some sensory-seeking issues and that the standard advice of "fill up his attention cup," etc. seems to backfire. For the OP, I have very little actual advice in dealing with this situation--I had some of what you describe, though perhaps not to the same extent--but the one thing I wish I had understood better was not to take it personally. I experienced a lot of rage and resentment during that time period and it would have been easier for everyone if I had, urm, rolled with the punches more. It sounds as if you've got that angle well in hand, but since it's the only wise thing I have to say on the issue I thought I'd offer it up. :001_smile: Oh, and it did get better--I think maybe somewhere between three and four for my son.

Another relative newbie, but I consider myself CM and lovin' it. I wouldn't say we've implemented everything we "should" yet, but I am trying to structure our family and learning rhythms based largely on her principles (I've made it through I think about four of her books, and she is so, so wise). CM reminds me of what I liked most about my own upbringing, and I think it's likely it will remain a permanent part of our lives.

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Lots of good thoughts above, but I'll add a few that I think haven't been mentioned: 1. While I'm sure bringing books, etc. works wonderfully for many kids, we actually found that for my son, he did better with nothing. I think when he had materials he would get overstimulated and then bored, then I'd give him something new, then [repeat ad infinitum]. This is also true, albeit to a lesser extent with my almost 2-year old. 2. On Saturday I read the gospel passage during our afternoon snack time. My son gets a lot more out of the service when he can recognize elements of it and is often quite proud of himself for doing so. If my husband is there for snack time, we usually talk about it a little as well. There are a number of resources for this, but I get it here (link is for next Sunday, but you can get from there to other dates). 3. Singing various parts of the Mass (the Gloria, etc.) at home has also helped, especially with my little one. I did it once by accident because it was stuck in my head, and she got very excited--now I make a point of singing them, especially on Saturday, and then pointing them out right before we sing them in Mass. 4. Someone probably said this already and I missed it--can you put the littlest one in a carrier? We had my daughter in an Ergo right up until a few months ago (when my husband had some back problems and I got too gosh darn pregnant) and while it didn't work all the time, it definitely cut down on the physical effort of keeping her from banging her head against the pew, squirming terrifically, etc. 5. Weird but true--saw this on a forum somewhere--I actually try NOT to pay attention to the kids unless their behavior requires it. Interacting with me stimulates them, and it seems to work better for me to model the kind of attention I'd like to see them giving. 6. Finally, if this doesn't apply to you, feel free to ignore completely--but I wish someone could have told me to a) pray and b) not worry about what other folks are thinking. I left Mass any number of times with both a kid and myself in tears before I finally realized the that my angst reflected just how much other people's opinions mattered to me and how little I was focusing on God during the service. I'm much more relaxed now and am actually feeling enriched, rather than traumatized, by church time. We still take the kids out if they get out of hand, but I don't take it nearly as much to heart, and that has made all the difference. Okay, I also have to confess that our single best strategy with my son, who is not an easy kid, has been to bribe him with watching a Sunday movie if he's good enough. :o

We have a pretty consistent routine (all of us really thrive on it), but we do different things in chunks throughout the day. In theory it looks something like this: Read and maybe discuss a poem at breakfast. After breakfast, my husband works on reading and German/geography/catechism (these don't happen every day and they only need to happen in the morning because of my husband's schedule). Sometime around 9:30 I do math and handwriting. After quiet time (around 1:30) I do an Ambleside reading and have my son narrate. In a perfect world, the toddler would still be napping. Alas, we do not live in a perfect world. I do a Bible story, Bible passage, or saint's life during snack time (maybe 3:00) several days out of the week. In theory, we do crafts/handwork/science/nature study "sometime" in the afternoon. I would not at this point say that these habits are quite established. . . In the evenings we do some listening to music and my husband reads from a chapter book before bed (the kids also get shorter readings individually in their own beds, but those are request-driven and I don't know that I can really call the 5000th reading of a selection from 101 Military Bombers part of our homeschooling curriculum). There's a logic here--we try to do the hard stuff in the morning and then move in the direction of greater entertainment and more hands-on over the course of the day. In my head, the breaks we're taking now would be fleshed out later with independent reading and projects as the kids get older. So I'm thinking that over time the day would look less "chunky" if that makes sense. But I like to think that we would also not be drawing hard and fast lines between learning and living times; I really think of this approach as integrating learning with our lives rather than having a list of things that take us all day long to get through (may look like the same from the outside but it makes all the difference in how I feel about it :001_smile:).