I call my MIL "Mother" to her face and "Mother LastName" to others. My own mother has never wanted to be called Mother, so that works. Glad you posted this question, though. My eldest son is getting married and my soon-to-be-first-DIL and I have been discussing this. I'm just really not a first-name kind of person, so I've been struggling with this. She has no preference. I've always disliked the baggage with my first name, so I've been thinking about asking her to call me "Mama Jo" (Jo being my middle name and Mama being what all my own children call me). Does that seem just really weird? Sigh. I want to be a good MIL and not drive her insane, y'know? Although since we live half a country apart, this should be easier :D

We ditched the landline recently, but had our home phone # transferred to my cell. I spent $6.99 IIRC to buy an app called "Call Blocker". Wow, best $ I've spent in a long time! Sooo many of these calls blocked. Purchasers of the app report telemarketers/scams/etc, then those numbers are blocked plus any you personally blacklist. "Rachel" still leaves messages, as do the carpet cleaning people, but the app blocks a boatload of other stuff.

:grouphug: Ahh, Lynne, I'm so so sorry. After everything settles down, if you need to talk to another homeschooling mama battling cancer, feel free to message me any time. You'll be in my prayers :grouphug:

:grouphug: TSH is only one lab, and not necessarily the best. When we started getting Hashimoto's diagnoses around here I learned so much at the http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/ website.

You might want to consider, too, regarding your fear of letting your 11 year old use the stove . . . at what age will that fear go away? My 10 and 12 year old dd's, because they have severe food allergies and have an entirely separate diet, cook their own food. We did knife skills "class" and stove safety "class", but they've done very well. Dd 12 even handled an event well where someone before her had left a drip in the oven that caught fire when she went to preheat, remembering what she'd been instructed. Dd 10 and 12 also do ALL of the family's laundry here, with ds 6 helping distribute people's stacks. They kind of like this because they are allowed screen time during this :-). Dh does our grocery shopping, and we have GF, allergenic, and "regular" diets here. He does grumble about what he calls "exotics" but he's just learned to do a lot of phoning. We're on a tight budget, and a lot of our money goes to food because you're right it's expensive, but I want him to be aware of those costs for SO many reasons. Our budgeting needs to be based on realism, and GF foods are the reality - other things need to bend, not the food. Your dd 11 could go along and that could be their special time on the weekends. My dh has always taken someone along, and over time my dd's have become the experts on the "exotics", having more patience for all of that ;)

:grouphug: I kept typing out different things but nothing sounds right . . . as Wendilouwho said, there are a lot of us here who understand that crazy swirl of emotions. I personally decided that if I couldn't be excited (and I couldn't - it was just too hard) I'd at least send that baby all the love I could so that if it was another lost baby I'd loved him/her while he/she was in me. Which makes no sense, I realize, but comforted me. "I love you as long as you're here" was what I could hold onto. :grouphug: Prayers here.

I'm going to be mother-of-the-groom next summer, and one thing I was surprised to read that books early (at least in the town where we're putting on our rehearsal dinner) is rentals that you might need like tables, canopy/tent, that sort of thing. If your venue doesn't include that stuff already.

I'm on Armour and have Hashimoto's and am grain free. I don't have celiac disease. At first I went gluten free, but improved in the bloating department only when I also removed rice and potatoes. I'm still able to do dairy. If you love your dairy stuff, maybe do two or three weeks off grains/starches altogether (using whole 30 or paleo) and see if it improves? I have two sisters, two daughters, and a niece who all have Hashimoto's and do well on Armour. One sis and one dd tried Synthroid and Levoxyl and were miserable, but I know everyone is so different and reacts really differently to these meds. My sis is actually on Erfa and does better on that than the Armour, something about the binders.

Conceived while tandem nursing toddler/baby sets . . . twice. Babies #3, 4, 5, 6, & 7 were all conceived while nursing someone. No multiples.

:grouphug: We just went through a huge work-up through Children's in Seattle, and once there, our experience was really good. They're so set up as a referral hospital that it was all seamless. You know what really bothers me about your scenario? Your dh has the knowledge to push it through, and what we've seen having to do the same scenarios (we're both RNs) is that sadly, we can get listened to because we're "medical". I always wonder what happens to other parents in similarly frustrating roadblocks who don't know, since they don't work with it, where to push and how. :grouphug: Hope Children's gets you just what you need and that it's a super-nothing-bad diagnosis.

Our very favorite Paleo cookbook here is "Make It Paleo". The other two we have and use in every menu rotation are "Paleo Comfort Foods" and "Well Fed: Paleo Recipes for People Who Love to Eat". (BTW, I linked to Amazon for ease there; not affiliate links or anything). I've got too many blogs bookmarked to list here, for sure! But here are a couple of good aggregating websites: Chowstalker The Foodee Project

Another stainless and cast iron girl here. Three words: Bar Keeper's Friend. Although that actually might be two words. I love to pick up good quality stainless at thrift stores - they're there because someone has burned gunk on 'em, and I bring them home and use BKF and make them gorgeous :D. Just got a Cuisinart stainless windsor pan (wonderful for reducing liquids and making sauces) with lid this week that way. Even optimistic-me was wondering if this one was salvageable, but BKF and gentle SOS pad, and it is sooooooooooo gorgeous! Shines like brand new. I'm thinking someone made an awful mess with their first use, because once the gunk was off, it's pristine.

Nineteen years down, twelve to go :001_smile:

So true, so true. We just accidentally got a really good one at Goodwill, and it was a revelation :001_smile:. Like a good potato peeler. There are just those items that make you smile gratefully each time they're used.

I was 45 when I had #8. The pregnancy/delivery was no harder than any of the others. Well, except the pushing part . . . he had a military acynclitic posterior positioning :tongue_smilie:. You don't want to do that :D. I tell ya, one thing about being this age is that dh and I are so grateful every day to be in our 50s and parenting a just-turned-6-year-old. He has a health disorder that has him still waking like a newborn and needing night-time parenting, but the age brings both patience and the perspective that we'll blink and he'll be graduating. Wouldn't have missed it for the world. ETA: Uhmm, oops, didn't notice this was an old thread! Well, at least I didn't post in the same thread twice :-)

Jealous. I haven't been working on him quite ten years, though, maybe there's hope still. Until such miraculous moment, I continue to be his CPAP machine, counting apneas to 20 seconds then poking him to make him breathe. :banghead:

My OAS son and daughter both get rash/welts up their hands/arms when, say, peeling potatoes which they're OAS to. They're for sure not classically allergic, as they do fine with them cooked (potatoes being an example -dd in particular will rash on contact to all of her many OAS foods).

We use Virgin Mobile no contract. We have the plan that is $35 per phone per month, which gives you unlimited text, data, and 300 minutes of talk. We're mostly text-ers so this is great for us, and wow - finding the phone so handy for going online while out for maps, price checks, coupons, etc (but then, that's just having my first smartphone, not some glowing feature of VM). We have the Optimus Elite phones which are amazing. The only thing is that you need to check the data map first. We're fine here, but I noticed vast areas that aren't covered in the midwest.

Well, if it's a three-decade club I'll join 88, 92, 94, 96, 98, 00, 01, 06 And I can be in three life decades club too since I had babies in my 20s, 30s, and 40s :001_smile:. We're looking a little gray around the edges in here . . .

The duration of protection offered by the vaccine appears now to be about 3 years. They thought it would be longer, but are learning quite a bit during these recent outbreaks. See study Clinical Infectious Diseases here. Natural immunity after the disease is about 3 years as well. I don't have a print citation for that one - our pediatrician just offered that up verbally :001_smile:. Whooping cough itself cycles through communities - you'll read the headlines saying "Worst year in a decade!!!!" and sometimes there's an implication that "it's getting really bad!" or at least I see people I know interpreting the news that way. But pertussis has always been cyclical.

Wait . . . wait . . . this is a classical homeschooling board and we aren't throwing about Alan Rickman in "Barchester Chronicles"? :::::: wanders off, all confused and disoriented, whimpering, "I don't understand, I don't understand"

I used the Rustoleum countertop paint on my kitchen counters this summer. We're now making plans to install an IKEA counter pronto. The first coat does go on streaky, but a second coat took care of the color streaks, but left . . . texture streaks? How do I say . . . it isn't perfectly smooth, there are ridges. I followed the directions to the "T". A quick glance in my kitchen and it looks fairly nice. But I did this in June and already there are chips and especially corner wear, so if I were counting on this lasting for even a year I'd likely be bummed. But what really got me thinking? After I put on the first horrible smelling layer (like, it gives you an instant headache applying, even with fans on and windows open and wearing a mask) I was googling some specific application question. Found a contractor asking, "Why do people go to all of this trouble to buy BPA free drink containers, buy organic food, and then coat their counters in this stuff, where they're going to put FOOD?!!?" Oh. Yeah. There's that. The bathrooms now, that's a different story. In the master bath, when we moved in here 15 years ago I used some of that spray paint that looks like flecks/stone. I painted a layer of 1-2-3 Primer on it first, then the spray stone, then 2 layers of polyurethane. Just this year, 15 years later with NO touch ups, the paint is starting to wear off the corners/edges. And I've cleaned it all these years with regular bathroom cleaners. This is the spray stuff I used: http://www.rustoleum.com/CBGProduct.asp?pid=79 but there are other brands that seem similar.

My older children were just reminiscing about these as I start the whoooole 4 year family list all over again for the last time (we need a sort of bittersweet smilie). One of the first chapter books I read to a K/1st is "Did You Carry the Flag Today, Charlie?"

I like all the above but also personally check how bad it is for allergy sufferers. Even better if you have certain known family triggers you can check for. Hope you don't have to worry a bit about that, though!

Good gracious. Thank you VERY much. Who knew? This forum just keeps on giving - when I'm tempted to curtail my time here, I remember goodies like this :001_smile: