You can ID marble in the field by pouring vinegar on it and watching it fizz... I would never have it on any place that got a lot of wear. Emily

My experience with public high school is that every class that isn't seen as a pre-req for something else gets watered down over time until it is a shadow of its former, possibly excellent, self. My kids have stopped taking classes that aren't AP or pre-reqs. So, an interesting general chemistry class that is seen as the final chemistry class students might take will be made easier and easier until it ceases to be interesting or useful. Hence the draw to the rigor of calculus that is taken by future engineers instead of financial math taken by humanities majors. Goodness, my science/math CS/bio major kid is taking AP Lit next year because his other English classes have been such a disappointment. This is my kid who doesn't even like fiction. It was his choice. To quote him, "If I take AP Lit, I'll learn something. I don't think I'll learn anything in English 4; I haven't in English 3." This is at a top-5 in state public high school. Emily

Maybe Hello Fresh, because it is practical, takes some pressure off the whole family, and fills a need. I know families who have had Hello Fresh subscriptions during family crises and even used it as a way to help their older kids learn some cooking skills they had previously neglected to teach. Emily

I finished taxes yesterday and submitted them last night. The money will go into house upkeep and car replacement funds, I think. Maybe some will go towards a few outside classes for the kids. I got my second paycheck and am putting half directly into my IRA. I do need to be careful about the feeling of having extra money, so I am trying to budget my pay towards one-time purchases or special savings (new windows for the house? fixing up the siding?). I prepped four more freezer meals last week. I get home from work between 5:30 and 6:45, depending on the day, and dinner is a mess if I don't have it prepped. I can drop a freezer meal in the crock pot or instant pot before I leave for work and then just need to prep veggies, which I actually like doing, when I get home. DD13 has been making a salad of some sort most nights. I don't really feel like eating out, though, because I now calculate the cost in my hours worked! I didn't go back to work so that we could eat out; that isn't what I value! Emily

This. I am signing up for a tea subscription to give me something special to replace a different bad habit with. But for me, that habit is about the ritual and relaxation (as well as about being an adult), but I see that the habit is not helpful.

WRT school transferring - they never transfer perfectly. Both my kids were tested when they went to high school and got placed based on tests, not lists of classes they had done. This required reviewing first, though, because they were basically given finals for every class, starting at Algebra, until they got less than 80%. With this process, there are kids who are taking Algebra for the second time because they didn't learn it well enough in middle school. It makes a lot more sense than the process my school had when I was a student, that placed you based on transcript and not actual learning! Emily

With my oldest, we did a full year of math (play-based) before any reading. The last thing you want is to teach your kid to associate reading with misery. I totally agree with all those who said to wait. Be like the Finns; wait until he's seven. 🙂 Another thing you could do if you want to keep going is choose a couple reading things, ie flashcards, Bob-style books, phonics book (my favorite is Bear Necessities), and then let the child choose one task to do every day. My daughter (turning 6 this weekend) only reads maybe 6 words a day, but she is making progress and starting to build the habit of turning letters into words. I don't work with her on reading for more than about 2-5 minutes per day. But she's my fifth, so I'm pretty confident. I don't know if I would have had the confidence to be so relaxed with kid #1, when I felt like I needed to prove I could homeschool. Emily

UPDATE: I think it is out. She says everything feels normal. She took a long bath, put some shampoo around her ears (to loosen it), and put her ears under water for multiple long periods. After that, she seemed back to normal. Before bed, though, I also did ear wax drops and had her let it sit in her ear for ten minutes. Then she laid with the ear facing down for another ten. There was a bit of white foam, so many there were still some small particles that came out.

Yes. No success. (I had her laying down and was holding her still.)

Hi all, DD5 came out of the bathroom very distraught. She put a small (about the size of oatmeal) piece of paper up her ear to "dry it out" and it got stuck up her ear. I can just barely see it, but can't get it out. It is definitely wet. She seems distraught, but says it doesn't hurt, just feels weird. What should I do? (We just had the big talk about never putting anything up your eyes or ears.) Emily UPDATE: I think it is out. She says everything feels normal. She took a long bath, put some shampoo around her ears (to loosen it), and put her ears under water for multiple long periods. After that, she seemed back to normal. Before bed, though, I also did ear wax drops and had her let it sit in her ear for ten minutes. Then she laid with the ear facing down for another ten. There was a bit of white foam, so many there were still some small particles that came out.

I wouldn't, unless your student recreates in math. DS17 did AoPS precalc, but I didn't have DD15 do it. I might have her take it later this year, but only after she has finished a regular precalc, to help her go deeper before calculus.

Our best trip was when we had the kids research and plan where to go. They became passionate about the places they researched! One guide even overheard my daughter talking and gave us a free hour-long tour because it was so exciting for him to hear such an excited kid. When we did that, I made a long list of things I thought might be interesting and told each kid to research a few and decide one that we should do. My cousins loved the Spy Museum, though it is a bit pricey. We went to the Air and Space by Dulles to see the shuttle last summer, but decided to skip downtown DC until this or next summer.

Absolutely. But when you see really low grocery budgets online (not necessarily here), it may reflect people who have really changed their diets to be cheap. I have friends who are absolute tightwads who spend next to nothing on groceries, neither of whom has or wants a full-time job, but I would never eat like they do unless things got really dire. I am glad to have me/DH work a bit more so that we can eat food that is more varied and so that I can enjoy cooking more. Emily

I spend about $1200-$1400/month in a VHCOL area on groceries and household goods. I effectively feed six adults and one child. My philosophy on groceries is that I will only spend minimal extra time to get the cheapest thing. So, if I'm stocking up on two weeks' worth of meat and canned goods at Aldi, I'll buy the Aldi produce even though it is more expensive than produce at the local market. Then, on the week I don't go to Aldi, I may buy some dairy or bread at the produce market even though it is more expensive than at Aldi. People like Amy Dacyzyn make major changes to their diet that I'm not willing to make. I've made shifts: I never cook only meat as the main course, except on a birthday, and I usually double the beans in recipes. So, I make chili with 1 lb meat and 2 lbs pinto beans. Amy D. told her kids to stop eating fruit, it was too expensive, and eat popcorn. I tell my kids they can eat fruit and veggies whenever they want. I found it really really stressful when I was trying to absolutely minimize our grocery budget. I started hating cooking and shopping, and I even began resenting my kids when they got seconds. Emily

Turned down the heat a few degrees. The bills have skyrocketed and I don't think the few degrees have made that much of a difference. 🙂 Looking to do some cleaning and redecorating in my bedroom. I am going to focus on cleaning and decluttering this week and see what sort of difference that makes. I almost finished my taxes but then found an error in the TurboTax software. After spending 30 minutes on the phone with help, they suggested I clear everything and start over (!!! - and who knows but the software won't do it again) or pay an extra $$$ to get higher level help. I may just pay a professional to do it. I got into an endless, undeletable, loop for foreign tax exclusion and even found a discussion about the problem online. Argh. We're doing well on groceries. Emily

DS took AP Chem as a sophomore without a prior chemistry class. He needed to show algebra competence. He got a 5 on the AP test. It is typical in his public school for top students to take AP classes starting their sophomore year without having taken the class before. There are multiple sessions of each AP science offered. This is very different than 20+ years ago when I was in school. At my school then, there was only one period each of AP bio/chem/physics and priority was given to seniors. This was in a very well-educated affluent suburb with a top-100 public high school today. Times have changed! Emily

Two weird presents my husband liked a lot - a SpaceX hat (they have all sorts of gear on their website and a Dr. Cheese T-shirt that commemorated a 1982 Cal football game when the band went out on the field before the game was over.

I just talked with my two high schoolers about looking for jobs. We didn't plan around jobs last summer and went on vacation at the beginning of the summer. In retrospect, that made it so they couldn't find jobs. I told my oldest one (almost 17) that we won't be planning vacation until after he finds a job, or at least until after he makes an excellent attempt. Both will take a class or two this summer unless they have demanding enough jobs to make that impossible. Dd15 will take AOPS Python and something through the community college or her school. Ds17 might take a guitar class for fine arts credit for high school. The performing arts department is a shadow of its former self due to COVID and he isn't excited about having to take a fine arts class for a whole year. Emily

No, not yet. He finished the class in August (took it from Jan-August, I think) and is taking the exam this spring. He's a really good studier and test taker, though, and will review with a Princeton Review book beforehand. He actually prefers the style of AOPS classes to live video classes.

So, my kid (ds16) really liked AOPS Calculus and was well-prepared for the Mulivariable Calculus class he's taking now. There were definitely problems my son didn't solve, especially because there were multiple free-response questions that could be turned in until the end of class. He's got pretty good time management skills and is a self-starter, but when he got really frustrated, he sometimes didn't finish those. Then, being a perfectionist, he got really overwhelmed and frustrated by the end of the class. Some questions he finished quickly, some he took multiple hours on. (We were on a road trip when the class was ending, and he'd sit in the middle seat, talking out his solution to me and DH as we drove up the east coast!) That said, he's got an amazingly intuitive understanding of calculus and limits and derivatives. BTW, none of us love delta-epsilon proofs, and the first few weeks cover those. DS almost quit during those. OTOH, I first hit delta-epsilon proofs as a freshman at Caltech. It was a rigorous and rich class. Just like other AOPS classes, Calculus gave something like ten problems a week. A normal class would give a lot more, but less deep, problems. I think the work is more because the problems require a more complete theoretical understanding and a student can take rabbit trails that end up being wrong. Still, while dd15 has mused about taking it next fall, I am encouraging her not to. She doesn't like working on long problems the way DS does. She got annoyed by her last AOPS class. She recreates in math because it will look good on her college app, but ds recreates in math because he loves the puzzle. She'll probably take normal Calculus BC, and that'll be fine. Emily

I am hopeful that DS's braces are paid off. I still need to pester the insurance, but this month's bill was for our remaining $0.06! That was exciting. I did a major grocery run and plan to put some meals in the freezer tonight. That way I can easily toss something in the Instant Pot before I go to work on busy days. Emily

I'm three weeks into my new job and this is how I feel - I just don't have the same amount of time to be out of the house and spend money as I did beforehand. I am still cooking like a full-time SAHM, though, so the grocery bill hasn't gone up. Actually, it has gone down because I am going to the store less and buying fewer extras. I just entered my YNAB purchases and I need to make it a priority to do it earlier. I do not carry a smart phone, though, so I do need to do so after-the-fact. Maybe I should enter things every Saturday morning, and teach DH to enter his purchases on his own. Emily

I felt that way last winter and don't feel that way this winter. One really important change for me was changing the people I was friends with. I no longer spend time with local stay-at-home-moms. We never clicked and it turns out that spending time with them was making me feel hopeless, like I'd never have good friends again. Instead, I reached out to native Californians and people who studied math/science. I have three good friends now. One is a 70-something OB-Gyn, another is an analyst, and the third is a Californian who teaches college writing. Our kids don't play together and we spend time together on evenings or weekends. It was a paradigm shift to drop at my SAHM activities. But it made a huge difference. That might not be at all helpful for you, but I hope the fact that last winter seemed hopeless and this one doesn't is encouraging. Emily

Oh my goodness yes. We repainted the living room, have a new-to-us couch and set of easy chairs, a new-to-us table and eight chairs downstairs, and a new rug. There is danger in staying home and noticing. I don't think we can repaint the homeschool room until most of my kids move out. There is just too much really heavy and big furniture. And by then it'll need a new carpet. And the bathroom to be redone. Uhoh. Started week three at work today. This is the first January in years that I haven't felt like a total slug. I like what I'm doing, I feel like it is making a difference, and I am learning something. So far the afternoons are working out alright with the kids.

That used to be the case, but not anymore. I had to get my first pair with a prescription through a service, but now I buy them online. discountsurgical.com is my goto.