Jane in NC is into finding collecting these to pass on to those who are interested. She has a list.

My standard poodle was 9 months old before he entirely quit having accidents inside. I hope yours isn't that difficult. He is smart, just not ready.

I have an only who is given tons of hand me downs in clothes and toys. I can't even imagine how much stuff you have to go through. I almost go crazy with just what we get.

I know how to ride and bike and dd is just getting to the point of riding without training wheels. She rode 1 1/2 miles on the bike trail with me earlier this week. This weekend has been good. I am starting to get things together for a 900 mile trip with dd to visit family. It will be my first trip that long with it just the 2 of us. I worked with a guy whose wife would make and sell Lumpia and pancit at lunch time about every couple of weeks. Yum!

My dog is doing well. His eye is not 100% yet, but is expected to heal. He will go back to the vet on Monday for a check up. After talking to the vet and knowing that neither dog was leashed and no one saw it start, dh decided we aren't going to report it.

We are away from home for extended periods of time some of it in extended stay hotels and some in apartments. I only have a 4 yo and a dog not three under 10 kids. We rent a storage unit if we are in an extended stay hotel. I have about 9 crates of books a crate of puzzles, several games, a couple of plastic tubs for toys of which all but 1 are stored and I try to rotate toys. You probably wouldn't need so many books if you are going back once a month. We have computers, movies, a kindle, school stuff, a grill, a cooler, bikes, crockpot, electric skillet, rice cooker, dh has some tools, medicine box of the stuff we use most, a file box for important papers. We have yet to stay in an unfurnished apartment, I figure we wouldn't travel with furniture, because you can often find used stuff on craigslist for a reasonable price. A mattress is about the only thing we would buy new.

I am glad that my parents thought that school was very important along with going to college. I am thankful that my parents took me to church and that was one of my involved activities. I have had some eye openers about things that they always tried to blame me and am learning through raising my dd that was their parenting not me. Just a couple of quick examples are I wouldn't keep a dress on, I didn't take care of baby dolls, and I couldn't sing. I have learned that you can teach even young kids how to behave in a dress and that are times that it is appropriate to wear it, that kids have to learn how to take care of toys whether it is baby dolls or anything else, and most recently that being able to sing or hear music to play an instrument can be taught with ear training.

I would tell my dh for the sake of the friendship with your friend that this won't work. You will end up resenting her. You said your 13 yo has some outside activities, maybe she could just come over during that time to help out with your 2 yo and then drive them to and from co-op. The 13 is old enough to help you with anything you need. I could not deal with a situation like that and it would really stress me out and likely hurt the friendship. I just could not do it and would expect dh to realize that.

If I tried to insist he pay the vet bills, my friend would most likely give him the money to do so and I don't want that so we just aren't going to do that. My friend has been very reasonable with this and went with me to the vet and was very apologetic that it happened. We also aren't going to make a claim against her homeowners policy. My boy is moving around pretty well now. The sedatives have completely worn off. He is still oozing just a little bit from 1 puncture and his eye is looking better. Thank you guys for listening.

He has not had any breathing difficulties since right after the attack yesterday afternoon. Thanks, and we are keeping an eye on him.

The owner can't afford to pay the vet bills and the money is not a major hit to us. I'll talk to the vet on Monday and see what they say and in the mean time we will take care of our dog.

I have not been afraid of dogs and generally get along with most dogs. I am not the owner and would guess by the way responded to the whole thing he will not wiling have his dog put down. The pit was not injured before the fight as far as I know and didn't seem injured after the fight. I know nothing of the bloodline and next to nothing about the dogs homelike other than the owner wasn't upset or really even remorseful about it. For my friends sake I am not going to speculate about how the pit is being raised. Like I said dh and I were coming to the conclusion last night of not visiting out there when the owner is there, because his dog likely will be there as well unless there were decisions made by our friends last night after we left.

The emergency vet didn't say anything about it and my friend was there will me at the time. They said to take him to his regular vet on Monday and have his eye checked again. I will talk to dh and see what he says. I don't know the last name of the owner, so if we do report it I will have to go back and get the information through my friend to do so.

We are fortunate that he is going to be ok. We were at a friends house and someone in there extended family had their 9 month old pit bull there. No one saw it start and the pit had my dog by the neck when they were first seen fighting. I spent the afternoon at the emergency vet, we were pretty concerned about his eye. He walked in on his own, they shaved the area around his neck, gave him pain killers, antibiotics, and did an eye scan on him. He has several puncture wounds one of which was has still been bleeding some. They say his eye will heal and that it doesn't look like any long term damage after doing a scan of it. Our friends were really upset and sorry that it happened. Unfortunately the owner of the dog was making up excuses and was pretty much proud of the pit. There are some family dynamics there that I am staying out of and won't get into. I didn't realize how much our friends disliked and distrusted the dog, we had been around it 1 or 2 other times. They are now keeping their dogs entirely separate from the pit. I now get to nurse my fur baby back to health and field lots of questions from my 4 yo dd about dog fights and about will our dog be ok. Our dog will not go back out there with us if that member of her family is there and last night dh was saying he is figuring that we shouldn't be there when that family member is there either because of dd and I have to agree with him. It is really a sad situation, they live on a small farm and we have been able to give our dd and dog a fair amount of freedom while out there that they really don't get anywhere else because we live in the city and the dh and wife are really good to us and love my dd like their own grandchild. I feel bad for my sore beat up dog. ETA: When I take my dog into my vet tomorrow I will talk to them about reporting.

The one that we visited it was family Sunday School and open discussion, it was led either by a pastor or elder. There were several large families that made up the church and it worked for them. If I were to try it in a non family integrated church, I would try to set up a family sunday school, kind of like how we have often times done in a bible study. Let the little ones have something to do like color or cut out paper or something mostly to keep them busy and everyone else participate. Little kids still get thing from listening and are welcome to ask questions. My 4 yo has sat in our ss class when her teacher didn't show up and we didn't have a problem. There have also been times when other parents brought their young children. it felt weird as a parent letting dd come, but if it was clearly a family class it would have been much less weird. It does take patience in training your kid to quietly sit and do something, but isn't any different than church. If I ever decided I was going to be in 1 place long enough to try it, I would just add it as a class instead of replacing all the classes with it.

Just because someone is a parent doesn't mean they are gifted at teaching in a classroom setting. if I am going to do Sunday School I will just do it at home and only attend church. It is much less stressful for me to teach a lesson to my dd than to a room full of other peoples kids. I became an engineer not a teacher for a reason. I have been to churches with integrated classes and much prefer that for a Sunday School setting. That being said the denomination that we are part of does not do things that way.

Can your dh take the one Sunday? I am not a good Sunday school teacher and really struggled with it when I spent a year teaching the high school class. My talents are just in other places. I can cook, I can organize, I can visit, I can do lots of other things that I am much more comfortable with and I am now willing to say no when it comes to teaching Sunday school or vacation bible school either one.

Honestly, buy a point and shoot and do some studying on lighting, composition, framing etc. Take lots of pictures and look at what you like and don't like. If you then decide you want to learn a DSLR you will be more motivated to do it. I have Nikon DSLR and a Nikon point and shoot and I can get really good pictures with both because I have learned what it takes to get a good picture.

If he likes scuba, he may like sailing as well. Sailing is one of my passions, and I like Scuba as well. There are lots of sailing cruisers who travel the world.

I have many times waited in the car with dd even in the middle of the summer in the south. I would be totally ticked if a cop said he had a problem with it and we couldn't be left in the car. As for filing police reports, be really careful because they can and do make your life miserable with extra driving tickets etc. I've had that happen with extended family.

I think a major loss at that age is really hard. My dad didn't die at that age but my parents divorced and my father was extremely angry. I didn't have anything to do with him for a long time. He passed away when I was in college. It still affects me today, but not nearly as much as it did then. Does he have any really good male role models through church or scouts or something like that who would spend time with him and encourage him? I don't know how I would have turned out if there hadn't been some people to step up where my dad failed. I am sorry you and he are going through this.

My avatar is a pic that I took and I have looked through and didn't find anything else. I am sorry you are having to go through this SWB.

I am of the camp of prepare for the worst and hope for the best. I don't think that our government would be honest in the early stages of an outbreak here and I don't think our healthcare system is good enough to deal with a large outbreak in this country. I also think it would cause wide spread panic here. I have been reading a survivalist forum that has been discussing this for months. Someone on there showed that this was following an exponential growth curve at least a month ago. It really wasn't a surprise to see it in the news.

At those ages wouldn't something like a local Kindermusik class be much better. We travel around a fair amount for dh's work and that is where I have met a lot of friends with kids my age. Also the local parks if you go several times a week you will find people with kids in that age range. I drove 45 minutes for Kindermusik and a Spanish class in one area, but we were rural and driving into the city at that time. I did make friends through Kindermusik that time too, so I am not against driving, but what you are talking about doesn't really sound like it fits what you are looking for.

Happy Birthday!