One missed dose and I am cranky and tired. Two missed doses and I can count on a migraine. Asked my doc about this ... Her feeling is that we are all different, but she was not surprised that I am affected by a single missed dose. Some patients are lucky that way. :tongue_smilie: Maybe your son is one of the (un)lucky ones, too? I do think that lessening the overall number of missed doses would help him weather a single missed dose here and there.

Oh no. I'm sorry. :group hug: I have no direct experience with remediating mold, but have heard great things about the book Mold Warriors. It's a few years old, so there may be better options now. Lots of sympathy...

We did this last week, and had a blast! You will have a wonderful time just following along with your kiddo. No need for adults to have wands, like everyone else said. I think my kiddo liked this better than the waterpark! He loved both, but MagiQuest was the big hit. Have fun!

We have given out tiny goodie bags full of non-food items - the usual stickers, a glow in the dark bouncy ball, plastic trinkets, play dough, etc. We did light-up bracelets one year, which were a huge hit but a lot of them didn't work (Oriental Trading, what can I say?). We don't hand out candy because of DS's allergies, but have found that adding to the landfill with plastic trinkets doesn't feel right either. I really appreciate this thread, and the confirmation that the trinkets stuff often gets tossed. This year, I think it will be play dough, stickers, and pencils. Maybe. :) With our kiddo's allergies, we actually take him TorTing, then he dumps all of the unsafe (for him) candy in our cauldron to hand out, and goes inside to find the goodies left for him by the Switch Witch. I love the Switch Witch! She leaves him a nice toy, a little bit of safe candy, and a few Halloween items he'll enjoy.

I don't care for Caillou. But now I really would *love* some cornbread!

We love RSO, and have had a great time with Life. We are heading into Earth and Space now. I waffled between the two, and after research found that RSO tends to be more secular, which is why I chose it (at first). That may not matter for you, though. The author of RS4K is apparently not secular (you can search here, I think, for links to articles or posts to some boards she's written on the topic), and enough people noticed a bias in the upper levels to turn me off to the program. RSO has been a lot of fun for my science-loving kid. There's not a ton of writing, but just enough for a reluctant writer to get some practice recording observations, etc.

Sing, Spell, Read, Write for K. Expensive, and not a good fit for us, at all.

Swimming? We do weekly swimming lessons year round (indoor pool).

We made a basket of "firsts" for our son's birthmother. We were on a budget, but wanted to do something special. We hand wrote a tag to attach to each item in the basket: "For your first breakfast in bed" (handmade pancake mix tied up with a nice bottle of maple syrup); "For the first night you are snowed in together" (handmade hot chocolate mix with 2 mugs); "For your first game night" (a mah jong set from Chinatown); and ... so many more. I can't remember them all. If you have scrapbooking supplies for the tags, a nice basket and ribbon, you can make it very pretty. :)

This is what we do as well. My boy is also a wiggler. Putting the timer to good use here, as he is a big fan of 10 minute breaks. Sometimes 20 minute breaks. :)

Yum!

DH loves meatloaf. I, however, would rather chew on my own toenails than eat meatloaf. It's a texture thing, I have yet to meet a meatloaf with a texture I can stomach. Oh, and I feel the same way about meatballs. But I know I'm the odd one out here. :)

We have expensive laminate (we could have had hardwood for the price!) but we chose it for the scratching reasons... We've had it on one level for 4 years, and it looks great. We just installed it throughout the rest of the house last year. Still looks great. We have 2 dogs, with chronically long toe nails. :) No scratches. Our house is on the modern side, though. The style works. Oh ... This might be of interest ... We had a plumbing fiasco last year, and had to replace not quite half of our living room floor (3 years old, at the time) - when the contractor finished, it was impossible to tell the old floor from the new, so it really did hold up well.

Great! Thanks!

I'm fairly sure I've seen this discussed many times, but my searches have been less than fruitful. Will a 22" x 35" white board work for AAS? Or does it have to be exactly 2' x 3'? Will 35" make it impossible to put all the tiles across the top? We have been using a smaller board and I'd really like to set the board up as suggested, but haven't yet found an exactly 2' x 3' board that I like for our space. Thanks.

Looks like that name belongs on a license plate vanity tag, not a little girl. What were those parents thinking? ("Vanna, I'd like to buy a vowel, please.")

One more vote for Tuck Everlasting. :)

In no particular order: My kiddo is finally settling into the new school year, instead of fighting every moment of school time. We go on vacation soon! I can walk. Yep, I'm grateful for that every. single. day. 5 years ago, we were in the market for a ranch style house, as we thought I'd be unable to do stairs. Yay for my angel doctor! DH's mom just had a stroke, and she's okay. It was a wake up call. The baby slept through the night last night. :D

Pencils, smencils, markers, erasers, tape (my guy has a tape fetish), stickers, little notepads, art supplies, small snacks, little toys - some fidgety type things to hold while listening to read alouds, new headphones, dice (he loves dice), card games, anything little and fun that seems remotely school-related is fair game. The Target dollar spot probably has a lot, although I haven't looked this year as we have a lot of little extras already. I don't buy the pre-made cones, although they look cute. I make ours out of poster board and decorate with stickers.

Nice! We have spent way too much time in our local Borders, lamenting the loss. But, wow, have we gotten some great deals and knocked out some Christmas shopping. :)

My aunt and uncle are very involved with the Naval Academy (their son, my cousin, attended, and later taught there), and they are some sort of ... not recruiters but they do preliminary interviews or something along those lines. They are always very interested in homeschoolers, and find that home schooled students are very desirable. They are primarily looking for students with broad experiences, leadership type experience being very desirable, and they feel that homeschooling offers great opportunities.

I use an off brand, but can't remember the name. I've ordered them from laminator.com (I hope I have that right) and also from Amazon, whichever is cheaper at the time. They work well, as well as the Scotch brand.

We sometimes feel the Quantico booming, too. Doesn't help the post-earthquake jumpiness.

We use this: http://www.ikea.com/au/en/catalog/products/S49873878 I have laminated cards on each bin with pictures of the items inside: crayons; markers; colored pencils; scissors, glue, hole punchers; chalk; dry erase markers, erasers. The little buckets are so cute! Now I'm tempted to change everything out. :)

I think where food sensitivities are concerned, you could be right that people compare symptoms and support each other in finding diagnoses. I'm not sure about true IgE allergies which can become anaphylactic. That really takes on a life of its own. When my son (18 mos, at the time) was diagnosed with life-threatening allergies, we knew no one else with allergies. His reaction was extreme though - throat closing after first exposure to an allergen. He has grown into more and more allergies over the years, and I would definitely be cautious on guessing that *any* allergy is not life-threatening, unless specifically told by a parent. Some of the triggers for anaphylaxis here seem very innocent, and unless I'd witnessed it, I'd probably have a difficult time accepting that banana allergy can trigger anaphylaxis. Sesame seed, too. Neither are in the Top 8, and awareness of those is fairly limited. If it's a true allergy, subsequent exposures can be worse than previous exposures, so almost any allergy can become life-threatening. Of course, my friend, whose child is allergic to peanuts, "only gets eczema and hives" so - what do I know? But I do wish she'd carry the prescribed epipen when they're out eating "may contains"... :blink: I do notice that we tend, now, to gravitate toward spending time with other families with allergies, though, because we are all more understanding of each other's needs. Maybe that's part of the reason for the groupings you noticed?