This is why I hate facebook. People (not necessarily your nephew) will treat it as if it's a private place and post the most personal information. It's the internet- not a diary. My mother posted pictures of me on facebook shortly after I gave birth. I was a mess (does anyone look good an hour after giving birth?) and she just posted them online, for anyone to see, without even asking me if it was ok. I was very upset. So yeah, I don't know if that goes against facebook etiquette or not, but in my own personal opinion, anything that gets posted on facebook is kind of fair game. Edited to add: for a laugh, check out failbook.com. WARNING: language and topics not suitable for children at this site.

Politicians are encourages to speak very plain every day English, even if it breaks grammar rules. Still, that is certainly not the word I would have chosen. He could have said he wanted Veterans to be treated "well" or "correctly" or "with respect". I agree with those who say that this is all very vague and non-specific but that is another thing politicians try to do. They want to say the things that will make the most people like them with the fewest people disliking them. :)

We taught our first to sign a little bit. I guess we weren't terribly motivated about it. I loved the idea of giving a child tools to communicate before they could actually say words. But in practice, it didn't really reduce her frustration. I think we should have given her more time to "get it". It didn't help that my father was around a lot, and he thought the whole concept was moronic, so I felt silly doing it. I can't find the book we used. I think it was called Baby Signs, but the Baby Signs on Amazon has a different cover (a new edition, I think) so I'm not entirely sure.

Thank you. I just so happen to be taking a class and I have a working .edu email address. I wish I had known about this a couple weeks ago before I ordered stacks of books, but oh well. SOTW is coming in the mail soon and I have a feeling there will be some more book orders in my near future. :)

My daughter got a Vivitar for her birthday. Normally, I'm pickier about cameras but she can be rather irresponsible and I delayed actually deciding to get her a camera and then didn't have time to do any research. The picture quality is truly terrible but she loves it and doesn't mind/notice. I don't consider it a camera that she will keep using for very long. Probably in a couple years, we will buy her a new one. I bought http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0025VKVOC/ref=oss_product that camera for my seven year old for her 8th birthday (I know this seems young for a camera but she's the more responsible of the two). I have opened the box and held the camera and it seems much nicer but I can't say anything about picture quality because her birthday isn't till October and I didn't put the battery in or take pictures or anything.

Maybe people aren't posting "I never got pregnant while on any birth control method." It's less interesting. :) But let me say, I've never gotten pregnant while on any birth control method. *knocks on wood* Let's keep it that way. ;)

I would get up, make an extensive to do list. But what usually keeps me up is knowing I have a lot to do and worrying that I'll forget something. If it's something that don't have any solution that I can take action on in the next day, like money issues or whatever, (this is going to sound silly), I picture putting the problem in a wooden box, closing it and locking it and shoving it to a corner of my mind and then deliberately thinking of something else, usually something silly like trying to remember in detail the plot of a book I read recently or something. Something enjoyable that won't keep me awake and something that I won't mind dreaming about (no horror books!) when I do fall asleep. This doesn't always work, but I keep working on it because I want it to work and I'm convinced it's a matter of practice. :)

This literally had my laughing till I had tears in my eyes. :)

Oh and you probably know this but give your dog time to adjust to the new puppy. When we got a second dog it was because our chihuahua had separation anxiety. (My kids were attending private school and I was in college so we were gone a lot.) So we decided to get another dog so he wouldn't be alone all day. We joked that we got a dog for our dog. Anyway, we brought Monster home, this fat, fluffy, clumsy shih tzu puppy and Zeus (the chihuahua) flipped out. He freaked if Monster got anywhere near him and hid under the furniture from him. A week later they were playing together and a year later, and now they're best friends even if Zeus prefers to lay in the sun and Monster prefers to lay in the air conditioning.

My family pets growing up were Goldens, and I adore them. They are sweet, tolerant of children, loving, affectionate, obedient and smart. The thing is... Certain Goldens can be very hyper. If I was you, I would visit the family if at all possible. You should be able to meet the parents and see how relaxed they were. When my parents picked out our puppies, we would roll them over onto their backs and cradle them. If they would allow this and relax in your arms while you scratched their tummies, it was a nice calm dog.

"I didn't wear it, I didn't take it off. So I'm not going to look for it." Often said with: "It has a place. Why isn't it in it's place?" Also there's the classic: "If it was so important to you, why was it on the floor where [bad thing] could have happened to it?" For various aches and pains: "Go lay down and rest." For tattling: "Do you want me to solve this?" (The right answer is, no. Trust me, you won't be happy with my solutions.)

Ok, apparently people here don't like Jane Austin. As far as how my parents' parenting has changed over the years, you'll have to take my word for it that it was definitely for the worse. My parents were very involved in my life, too much so, in fact, but at least there were rules and I followed them. I would expect them to relax over time with the younger kids, but things have really fallen apart. By contrast, my youngest siblings are out partying, getting arrested, getting pregnant... And more. I won't go into the messy details. I think there's a knee-jerk reaction to defend a parent from a child's criticism, but do realize that I know my mother is doing what she feels is the best she can in her situation which is certainly a difficult one, but I feel there is more she could have done for my sister. Not wanting to read anything except Harry Potter and Twilight is simply an example of what I'm talking about and not the whole story. And Jane Austin is my favorite author, so that's why I picked her. I loved her at 14 and still do. :) And Emma was by no means the only book I attempted to get my sister to read.

I have a 14 year old sister that is quite intelligent but has been raised without anyone pushing her or motivating her or even providing her an environment where she can thrive. And now, at the age of 14, it is difficult to get her to read anything without Harry Potter or Twilight on the cover. She won't challenge herself in any way. She had a very different childhood than the one I had, and I wish my mother had done and would do certain things differently with her. And what do I say about this? Nothing. Oh, a few gentle suggestions to my mother (who doesn't take criticism well, to say the least). And when my sister came to stay with me I tried to get her to read Jane Austin's Emma (which I feel is the most accessible of her works). But no, she started it, lost steam about a third of the way through. She's intellectually lazy in the extreme. I'm not sure what you can do but tell her to mind her own business. And obviously model the type of respect you expect from her. I've been lucky in that regard with both my parents and my inlaws.

They were certainly in a good school, and we've been very happy with it. In some ways it's sad to be not going but we're trying to look on the bright side and focus on the freedom we'll have and the extra activities we're going to indulge in. We live in a state that is extremely free with regard to homeschooling law and an area that I hear is very active with homeschoolers, though I really don't know that many. Older Child is remarkably unhelpful about what she learned in history over the past year, but I'm pretty sure she'll be in book four. Younger Child had more information about what she studied and I do remember her coming home with a very strange message written in hieroglyphs. I guess I'll just keep them separate. They could probably survive if I combined them but actually having a history curriculum pointed out that has the time periods already divided up is hard to resist. I was actually eyeballing the Writing with Ease, probably getting that for Older Child.

Thanks for the quick replies! I have not read The Well Trained Mind yet, but it is in my Amazon.com shopping cart right now waiting for me to be sure there's nothing I want to add to the order. (And also for me to dig through my books and make sure that I don't own it already because I could have sworn it was around here somewhere...) :001_huh: I have read that article about multiple children and I could follow that method but I worry that if they go back to school, they'll have missed some content along the way somewhere by skipping back and forth. I guess that's what it boils down to. I guess I need to keep them separate if I want to possibly send them back to their school. I appreciate the curriculum recommendations and will check those out. I grew up being homeschooled, but right now I feel like any brand new homeschooler- overwhelmed with choices and options and a long list of things I feel I need to accomplish over the summer. I have a meeting with both of their teachers sometime over the week so I can get a clear idea of what they just got done doing.

I am going to be homeschooling my children for the first time next year. They will be in second grade and fourth grade. They have both attended a Classical Christian private school for their entire education. We are very happy with the school and are only pulling them out for financial reasons. We hope to spend the year getting our finances back into shape and hopefully send them back the following year. I want to provide continuity and have them ready to reenter their school. Though, to be honest, we may end up homeschooling for two or three years. We'll have to see how it goes. But I don't know how to handle history. They are being taught history chronologically and are obviously in different time periods. Their school divides time into four time periods and starts in first grade and starts over again in fifth and again in ninth, if that makes sense (I think a lot of classical educators do this). Should I just resign myself to teaching two different histories? I want to combine classes as much as possible so for, say, art, I don't want to have to come up with two different projects to relate to two different histories. Also, is there a history curriculum anywhere designed for classical educators that divide up time like this? I am just having trouble with this particular subject.