If our church is trying to do this, it's news to me. We are usually the only family with children in the traditional service. Other than Bible Study, I think the church has a knitting circle. There were half a dozen middle school and high school kids in the youth group when we had our old pastor, but they all seem to have slowly drifted away since this new pastor came along. I don't know much about the circumstances of him leaving, but it may have something to do with declining attendance. It's a big problem around here, and there's a lot of hemming and hawing about combining churches and closing some down. There were only 20 people including my family at the early Easter service. Three or four people have needed Hospice care in the last year. A different pastor won't change that. Maybe no one is trying to draw the younger crowd around here because of the age of the population.

Cute! Our neighbors raise them too. I heard the first of their bottle babies bleating this afternoon. I can never get over how little they are when they're first born, but they sure grow fast!

Maybe someone's watch fell under a chair or pew, or into a holder for a Bible or hymnal?

I drank a few Mikes (how ironic) at one sleepover during the tail end of high school. There was another sleepover where some of the girls were prank calling a boy they liked, but I wasn't involved in that. Otherwise, sleepovers involved tons of popcorn and movies or boardgames and having fun. There were never any advancements from fathers or older siblings. I have great memories of those sleepovers. The parents weren't usually supervising very closely, or if they were they never let on. It wasn't as though someone was sitting in the room the whole time. For my birthday party in 1st grade I think I invited every girl I knew for a sleepover. My mother swears that she didn't think any of the parents except my close friends would say yes, because she knew NONE of them. Well, 21 little girls in sleeping bags completely covered the floor in our living room, dining room, and kitchen. It was probably crazy for my parents, but I still remember loving it. We did all sorts of stuff for our sleepovers. We melted wax and made candles. We watched Pride and Prejudice, Gone With the Wind, and all sorts of other movies. We cut each others hair in high school, with permission from our parents. We'd clean our rooms. We'd bake cookies and cakes. Some of it was probably a little nerdy, but it was mostly just a very comfortable familiarity that I had with my friends. We liked spending time together. During the school year my sleepovers were limited a bit by my cross country and track schedule. Obviously there weren't any the night before a meet, so Saturday nights were usually the only night during the year that I could visit anyone or have anyone over. During the summer though, a couple of my friends and I were back and forth alternating houses every day. My sleepovers were absolutely wonderful. I hope that my children will be able to have the same fond memories.

I really, really like that. I probably couldn't watch either of them today, but I watched both Death Proof and The Devil's Rejects in the theaters when they came out. In both cases, there were parents with kindergarten-age and younger children.

I've been almost exclusively line drying my diapers for the last few months. I have 1 who is dry except for nights, and 2 in diapers. I've switched my loyalty from the diaper service quality prefolds to plain old regular flat folds. They dry much, much faster than the thicker diapers. I can line dry the flat folds in an hour on a sunny day, and it took me two full cycles on the dryer for a load of quilty prefolds.

Quinceanera? Or are they older than that?

I always thought that a large part of the objection to teens having children of their own was their inability to provide for them at that stage of their life. I too see a difference between asking someone to supervise a child for a short period of time and asking them to support that child and care for it indefinitely. Of course, the nursery isn't staffed during the traditional service at the church we attend right now. We usually have the only children at the service. If I want my children in the nursery, I'll be right there with them. Random teenagers watching my children are purely hypothetical at the moment. :) I did leave my oldest in the nursery with my younger brother when she was a baby and he was 16 or so.

I can also think of a lot of teenagers or preteens that I would be more likely to trust than some of the adult volunteers in the nursery. I'd take a teen over the frail elderly woman who was probably entering the early stages of dementia, for example. And in that same case, when there were teens in the nursery with her, they were distracted by making sure that she didn't hurt herself because she was so unsteady. They also needed to be the ones making sure that children only left with their parents. If a toddler tried to run out the door with another family, she couldn't remember whether or not it was their child. If I'm not comfortable with someone, I'm not going to trust my child with them.

Most of the details are different, but the general premise sounds kind of similar to the Pretender. It was a tv series. It probably isn't the same thing that you recall watching, though.

Someone else asked about this statement too and I didn't see it answered yet. Do you mean that the majority of children today are being abused?

I'm doing K4 with my daughter next year. We will be continuing Funnix/Funnix 2 with some handwriting. For math we are playing with MEP Reception and SRA Explorations and Applications K. I'll be pacing to do Unit 1 of the SRA this year, and Unit 2 next year. We're also doing some French exposure, and lots of art and music.

I'm still trying to figure out where the z came from in the original "correct" pronunciation of poutine. I've been saying "pwouh-tchyehn" to my children all day, while they look at me oddly. From the other thread...why is it pronounced with a z? Or am I just incapable of finding a spelling for my pronunciation?

This might be a long shot, but maybe you could check software for transcribing? I do some similar stuff for work part-time from home, and I know there are lots of options for plain audio. Maybe there are some for video too? The transcribing stuff I've heard about uses keyboard keys or a foot pedal, and you can speed up or slow down audio while you type.

About the OP... I'm not a big fan of Disney Princesses. I wasn't raised on that stuff, so I just think they're kind of boring compared to the good stories like All Dogs Go To Heaven. I don't think I've ever seen Cinderella all the way through, so I'm sure my children haven't. Well, one of the wedding pictures was on the cover of the local newspaper the next morning. My 3 year old turned to me and said, "Mama, look, it's a princess."

What does it smell like? My daughter is much younger than yours, but she occasionally has a yeasty smell to her hair if she gets very sweaty when she sleeps. I want to say it's caused by natural fungal or bacterial growth. So is it a smell like that, or a mildewy smell, or a BO-onion type of smell, or something else entirely? I don't have any shampoo brand or type advice, but I find that I need to really use my fingertips and nails to scrub my own hair or my children's hair when it's bad. I'd liken the sensation to massaging your brain. My hair gets oily faster on the days where I only have time to throw shampoo on my head and rinse it off. Maybe you are (or she is) already doing this, but if not maybe it will help a little?

Because learning new things is exciting! (Why would I want to do that all by myself when I could have my children here to do it with me?)

That excuse hasn't worked for any of the offices I've used. They always have a doctor, and usually a midwife too, scheduled for the hospital to do deliveries. Other doctors and midwives are scheduled for the office to do visits. :001_smile:

The pediatrician usually gets us into the exam room, where we wait for up to half an hour. That's always an adventure with little children. I've never had him in the room with us within ten minutes of our on-time arrival, even when we have an early slot. He's nice, and his staff is very friendly, so I don't mind that wait. The OB office...oh, that's an awful one. An hour from arrival to exam room was "good." Then you have at least half an hour waiting in the exam room. I'm still displeased with the way the office was handling appointments at the end of my last pregnancy. Apparently one of the OBs left the practice abruptly. The receptionists told everyone that they were double booking slots because they were short-handed. Apparently they were double booking, but then deleting prior appointments to triple book. I was told that I wasn't scheduled for any upcoming appointments. I had the card in my hand! I was told that I was late for my appointment and I would need to reschedule. Again, I had the card in my hand! The receptionists there were beyond tacky. They would complain about the patients who had the nerve to say something about the scheduling, with the glass window to the waiting room wide open. They also openly accused patients of lying about their appointments. I truly understand being short-staffed, but you don't take that out on your patients.

Even single longer words aren't pulling up correctly in the search. Words like Sonlight or spelling will give some results, but there are threads missing. (Always the ones I'm trying to find!) It's nice to have the UserCP back though!

I think this is probably a good idea. These kinds of conversations were a far greater punishment for me than anything my parents doled out. Plus, I actually remember them as an adult. They always ended with the dreaded "You decide what action I ought to take in this situation." My own suggestions were, looking back, often far more severe than the situation warranted.

I had spelling through high school, although it was combined with SAT-level vocabulary at that point. I think that moving away from spelling and toward vocabulary is a good idea, but I couldn't say when to start making that change.

I think I have one of the books from that series floating around here somewhere. The illustrations in it look like Richard Scarry work, not like the covers on that set.

And those of us on the other side get funny looks when we say that we really do like children. :001_smile: I don't mind if other people don't enjoy children as much as I do. I feel like the odd one!

When I lived in Memphis, you couldn't swing a dead cat without someone asking you for change. The majority of the panhandlers had some serious drug issues. I know some people say that they always give something because they don't know who is lying and who actually needs the money. I think that those people have never lived in an area where you could get hit up for change by 50 different people in less than a mile's walk between your apartment and your job. I was a pretty heavy smoker at the time. I didn't give out change, but I did offer a cigarette to the guys who didn't curse me out for not giving them money. There were a few well-dressed individuals from time to time, but the guys who slept in the alleys tended to run them off pretty quickly.