UPDATE: I ended up removing the book. A shipment of books that I had ordered came in, so I told him I was going to trade him for an extra book. I said that the person who gave it to him made a mistake and didn't know that he doesn't ride the bus anymore. AND, the specialness of riding a bus will soon wear off, because we just bought a minibus for our family vehicle. :) So that takes care of that. This wasn't a family member we see regularly in person, but in the past she has sent occasional packages. I won't tell my husband what members of his family he is or isn't allowed to talk to. I don't think that's an appropriate thing for one spouse to decide for the other. I have told him that he doesn't deserve to be treated like that and that she won't be interacting with our children anymore. She reinforced that again while talking to my husband a couple weeks ago when she referred to one of our children, due to his severe special needs, as an unnecessary burden. He corrected her on that and they haven't spoken lately.

I would plan things, but the kids would eat them fresh, plain before I could do anything with them. And I would be lucky to snag a few before they were gone. I have some avocado-eating children.

Our kids have never had too much candy to worry about it. We go around our church and less than an hour after that. Little kids tend to move slowly so they never end up with too much. Most of my kids finished theirs on Halloween night. A couple had candy left yesterday, and one is finishing hers up right now. I'd rather it be over and done with so I don't have to guard anyone's candy from everyone else.

I don't have any reasoning behind it, but I personally would include coop classes or tutoring but not homeschooling my own kids. I'm not sure why. I'd definitely explain it in an interview. Maybe I would include an extra note about the years without employment to explain what you were doing. I've known a couple people who took long periods off work to care for dying relatives and they made a note of that on their resume. I don't know if that's common or unusual.

I used to be able to read in the car but I can't anymore. I guess I untrained myself!

Are most need-based scholarships for extracurricular activities and university costs put in place to eliminate financial barriers to participation or to increase diversity? I know certain specific scholarships are clear in their goals being one or the other, but what is your opinion for things that aren't? Having so many kids, I'm finding that we qualify for a lot of things that I wouldn't have expected. For some activities it is clear that they want kids who are talented and interested to be able to take part regardless of income, so they offer scholarships. For others I get the impression that they want diversity that would otherwise be lacking due to the high cost of the activity. So here is the second part. Are we the kind of diversity they are looking for? I think this is something that occurs in some homeschooling families because we give up a second income or take a pay cut in exchange for more flexible hours to have someone at home teaching. Our family does not reflect what some people would expect based on our income. Our kids often have a lot of advantages compared to kids in other families in our tax bracket. We are interesting and unusual, but I'm not sure we are what they want in the name of diversity. I don't want to take a scholarship in place of a kid who needs it more just because our family has a lot of people for our income. I'm not needing advice for a particular scenario. It just came up in conversation the other day and I've been mulling over how I feel about it philosophically.

Were the brothers adopted?

By tempered I mean you want the person to be okay, but there are complicated emotions and history to process as well. How personally hurt is someone by the actions of a celebrity compared to a family member? You're praying for them, but you are frustrated or disappointed at the same time. Why does he need prayers more than anyone else in his position? Celebrities need prayers more than the common addict because....? Why are people praying for him when they would usually heap judgment? He needs more prayers why?

Right, but a news story has two hundred comments saying people are praying? If it was someone we knew in real life, our prayers would be tempered a bit with disappointment or frustration or other emotions. This is some weird sense of investment without personally having to deal with any of the repercussions of the person's behavior. It is a one way relationship. The question wasn't whether we should pray, but why we pray for him but condemn others. I think there is more to it than simple celebrity, but maybe not.

I'm guilty of finding it amusing too. All these people are praying for him? What is the typical response of the public when someone is hospitalized after doing drugs at a brothel? It probably makes me a horrible person. But exactly what statement is our culture making about itself? I don't mean that in a conservative vs liberal sense. I mean why do people throw away their typical moral judgment because of celebrity status? Whether professing that judgment is right or wrong, why do we abandon it for this guy or teen moms on a tv show or whatever other entertainment sideshow? Our actions as a whole are saying something. What are they saying? (Read that as curiosity, not a pining for a bygone era of wholesomeness.)

What do you consider healthy eating? There are a lot of different healthy eating frameworks right now so I want to give advice that fits what you are looking for. Can you add extra inexpensive carbs just for your teen? Potatoes are cheap and filling this time of year. I have a bunch of hungry teens and they need a lot to fill them up. Adding fat and protein helps fill them but my kids really need carbs too. Potatoes work and I feel that they are healthy. Baked potatoes are a good snack for a teenager and you can cut out the extra toppings to fit your budget.

Our cats figured out where we keep the bag of food, so they take matters into their own hands if the food bowl is empty. Self-serve for them is a good fit for our lifestyle. One of them is a complete jerk though, so I always make sure to let him out of the house first thing in the morning before he nips me. I also make sure the child who claimed him brings him food immediately upon entering the house so that he doesn't bite me then either. Maybe he has me trained, but it's more like he is walking a thin line toward not being welcome in our family. And I'm a big animal person. I've never turned away a stray. I've also never before had a cat walk straight up to me calmly and nip me with zero interaction or provocation.

One of mine is done and one is still going. One high point today was playing against a child from Ukraine, where their brothers were adopted from. The older is currently on a couple of the leaderboards but I don't expect it to last. She and my husband are pretty tickled by it though. :)

One thing I will say about participating in a forum where the majority view is of the same political bent is that it can throw your own sense of center out of kilter. There is a tendency in that environment to start pushing further toward the fringes, whichever direction that may be. It might not be a problem for everyone.

Bring booze, but no boxed wine!

The answers on the science rounds are cracking me up. You need to spell thermometer for science but the spelling challenge is simple short vowel words. My kids have had a lot more computer time than usual lately, but their typing speed is still abysmal.

One of my kids always asks for "hot dog butts." He is still learning English so I've emphasized bun vs butt more than once. It doesn't stick.

We have been trying to find a therapy option for one of our teenagers. Because of his limited English, special needs, and likely mental illness in addition to a history of severe trauma, it has been extremely difficult to find an appropriate option. We aren't even discussing cost. There are just so few places that are able to say "yes" to more than one of the angles complicating treating him.

At 3 one of my girls swallowed a wing nut! She took it off her reading lamp and put it in her mouth and accidentally swallowed it. She and her sister came out to see me and said they couldn't find it in the room, and maybe she had it in her mouth, and maybe she swallowed it. A few days before they couldn't find a small toy and I heard the same story but I found the toy in their blanket, so I thought it was a weird phase where they blamed things disappearing on being eaten. This time I couldn't find it. Confirmation two days later that she had indeed swallowed it. The lamp was never reassembled.

https://xkcd.com/977/ :)

I wonder if the child is really trying to say the full name but it comes out sounding like the nickname? Does that make sense? There are a lot of words that my kids with speech disorders say that I can distinguish but other people (even SLPs and special ed teachers who are used to kids with different speech) have trouble making out. Did it sound like she meant that her daughter was trying to say the full name but it was hard for her to make those sounds? Or that her daughter had latched onto the nickname but her mother calls her by her real name? I could see myself trying to explain in a hurry that even though my kid sounded like he said one thing, he was really trying to say another because we are working on his speech. It would be less undermining for *my kids* for me to say, "Hey, this is what he is really saying," than for another adult to continue on with something they couldn't understand him saying. Actually, in the case of one of my boys, an adult not understanding him and thinking he is saying one thing when he is saying another would lead to a full out meltdown because that is what happens when he feels like he can't communicate his needs. Another of my kids would act helpless and shut down if he thought he wasn't being understood. And the third with speech delays would try to take advantage of you not understanding him to find a way to do something he is not allowed to do. Haha I could definitely see myself trying to nip any of that in the bud for the benefit of someone new to my child.

My MIL calls herself Nana for all of her grandchildren. It isn't maternal/paternal for their family.

My daughter's anxiety is much worse when she is anemic. Perhaps with the dietary restrictions that could be an extra issue?

Speaking of cultural constructs influencing what we eat, they look very similar to cats! There was a long running stereotype about a neighborhood in my hometown...

We fundraised for our adoptions. It killed me to do it, but the alternative to me feeling sleazy was for our kids to never have a family. We sold everything we could, made things to sell, worked extra, everything. We were the very last people who could have adopted one of our sons because of his age. He is so sweet and gentle. The location he would have been transferred to literally keeps adult men locked in a cage under a roof. The abuse my vulnerable son would have suffered is unthinkable. Two of our sons were in a place that was okay, but their orphanage has changed since then. The kids there can't be adopted anymore and at 18 they are sent back to the adult male mental institution on the grounds. Half naked men sitting on benches rocking and moaning. One of my sons would have still been able to be adopted if we hadn't adopted him, but at 11 he wore the same size diapers as a 1 year old. I hated to fundraise. But my kids are home and safe. They ate big stacks of pancakes for breakfast and played outside and watched cartoons this morning. They are being educated after years of being spoken to so rarely that they weren't competent in their first language. We pay for their medical bills and everything else. But I swallowed my pride to get them here. So I couldn't fault someone for doing the same. I also don't fault anyone who deleted me on Facebook.