I never thought about sensory issues but that does make sense, especially since he had mild sensory issues secondary to being premature. Thank you all for the advice. I will continue to keep an eye on it and try some of the advice I got here. He did used to have some constipation issues, but I have made it a point to up his water and fiber intake so thankfully we haven't had that issue for a while. I appreciate continued feedback.

I understand why you asked, but no, we are very laid back potty trainers. He did have quite a fear of public toilets for a while (even with our trusty potty seat in hand) and I did have to tell him then that he either had to go on the public potty or I would have to put a diaper on him. He got into the habit for a while of holding it to the point of tears and I would have to force him to sit on the potty so that he could go. He was fine once he went but getting the courage to go was quite an ordeal. I don't get the idea that he is afraid to go, but more afraid to tell me he needs to go.

He is 4 and is only just recently TOTALLY potty trained. My girls were never like this so I am wondering if it is a boy thing or if he is just a bit of a weirdling (in an endearing way of course!), but instead of telling me he needs to go #2 he will suddenly drop everything and start a weird jumping around thing and will tell me over and over again that he loves me:confused:. Obviously now I recognize the signs but I before I did I would say I love you back numerous times and then after a few moments I would ask if he needed to potty. He would tell me no and continue to jump around before finally saying yes and going. While he is going I get the most detailed running commentary and it doesn't matter if it is a public or private bathroom :glare::blush:. I am just not quite sure why he won't just tell me he needs to go?

If your typing is a reflection of how much English you know I would say you are doing pretty well! The truth is that your child will learn the language he has the most exposure to and in the US that will be English. I like all of the suggestions that the previous posters mentioned. You can do it!

I am considering what I want to do after Botany because of the burn out. I just can't fathom 3 semesters of nothing but animal biology. Even if we rotated the books I still think it is going to be too much, but I do like the content so we will see. I think I could have gone through 2 lessons a week with Astronomy but since we are notebooking as well I decided to do one chapter a week. Not sure if that is possible with Botany.

of FINALLY reaching the end of a level of a curriculum. Especially when that curriculum is mastery. I am so sick of Astronomy and Ancient History. I have no idea how one could stretch the Astronomy over an entire year without being bored to tears by the end of the year. By the end of the year we will finally be done with Ancient History, Astronomy, Easy Grammar level 2 and LifePac Bible Level 2 (we school year around so our starts and stops are kind of off from the normal year). What are you excited about finishing? PS. My siggy has next years curriculum in it so that I didn't have to come back and edit it later. I am lazy like that.

The fact that she has taken so much scripture and bent it around her beliefs should truly worry readers. Anyone can take scripture out of context and make it fit what they want it to say. The fact is that mythology is part of history, as are other religions. Not teaching about them leaves our children unprepared to face future challenges. I feel the same way about mythology as I do about evolution. I believe both to be untrue, but I will still teach them both to my children so that they can see why we do not believe them. Besides that, as someone else posted, there are a lot of aspects of various cultures, including our own, that would be very hard to understand without at least a basic knowledge of mythology.

I am not sure there is any sport that doesn't produce some risk. The key to preventing injury (other than random stuff) is to make sure you are properly conditioning for it. Soccer is one of the roughest sports I have seen next to football. I played 7 years of basketball and volley ball and fractured my hip in one and while I never had any serious injury in volleyball, I was constantly jamming fingers and it requires a lot of high impact moments with the floor/ground. Softball ran the risk of being hit with the ball, cheerleading requires a lot of risk, the list just goes on. I guess the least injury inducing sport would be tennis. I just can't be fearful of what "might" happen, but then again sports were a large part of my teen years and I treasure those memories :) I think I put my kids in more danger packing them into a car than putting them in sports.

:iagree: I made it all of 3 days before I just couldn't stand it any more. If I am going to detox we do a juice fast for a few weeks. This time around we are doing 30 days of paleo/primal to detox. I also enjoy Epsom salt baths.

I can't say 100% that I would do this if I was actually in your position, but if the cancer is slow moving and you could try some other natural things first, I think I would do that. I think you have to carefully weigh the risk of the side effects of chemo, with the reward of what it could do for you and make a very personal decision. We will keep you in our prayers as you have to make such a tough decision.

High fat dairy is one of the best things you can do for your developing child's brain. Well, really that is true of all animal fats. Obviously this more applies to raw, pastured raised, grass fed and so on animals. Animal fats also help curb sugar cravings and help promote heart health. Look at the labels on your low fat yogurt and you will likely see that the fat has been replaced with sugar.

We use olive oil to relieve the itch and colloidal silver to help clear the infection. Ear aches are the pits, I hope you feel better soon.

The biggest thing for us was having someone to watch our younger children that could not go into NICU. Also, some hospitals make you pay for parking, but will sell discounted passes if you purchase in bulk. I remember we could buy 10 passes for like $5 or something like that. We had several people do that for us and it was very helpful. Other things like meal gift cards to restaurants that are in the hospital food court, help with house work, gas cards, breast feeding support, and just letting her know that if she needs to talk, cry, complain, or whatever that you are there.

We stayed in a condo last time and took in snacks and lunch. I had one of those backpack coolers and it saved us a TON of money. I will say though, that my back was KILLING me by the time we left the parks at night. The water I was carrying for 6 people was heavy and I spent most of the day praying my kids would just drink so my load would be lighter! The trip before that we did a full on upgraded meal plan and I thought the choices for QD and sit down were fantastic. You could get anything from a house salad to a hot dog for QD and of course there is every type of food you can think of for sit down.

I am from Texas so yes, they are a part of our football tradition. Some can be completely over the top but most of us made our own and it was a fun girly bonding time that resulted in harmless school spirit. Our school had sort of unspoken rules about the mum. You were allowed one flower for each year level in high school. Jr High wore one flower and were only supposed to wear blue and white while high school wore blue and gold (our colors were all three). It was harmless and a lot of fun :)

We have Kirstin and my DD loves her :) I agree with the other posters. I would get the one your daughter wants. That is a lot of money to spend on a doll that your DD doesn't like/want.

I also had an easy time calling and getting some one. They were excellent.

My oldest are close enough that it was easy to start our history and science cycles with both of them in the same book doing the same thing. I am wondering how you handle the cycle when it comes time to add in another child who is several years younger? Does he just pick up where your others are or do you do two different cycles? I hope that question makes sense!

Everyone has given great advice but since I am sort of in the same boat I wanted to chime in. My 8 year old was not retaining information long term at all. She could do everything while the lesson was going on but couldn't repeat it 5 minutes later (for the record we were using TT3). What worked for us was to get away from media based math and move to a very scripted teacher led math (BJU). Sitting with her and actually talking and going over everything with her has helped more than I can say. We also drill, something I would have never advised before I had a child who needed it. We go through flash cards every day, we review it orally, written down, on the computer, in the car, every where and every way we can. Spelling is another issue all together. We just switched to BJU's spelling and haven't officially started so I have no idea how that is going to go but we are again going to take a drill approach to it while we also learn phonics. I hope you figure out what works for you!

:iagree: I do not miss classroom politics at all. That said, I would stand my ground simply on the basis of that is what you used as a consequence for bad behavior. I also would not personally have let my child go without knowing the parents first, but I would make an effort to get to know the parents so that next time I was comfortable with it. Maybe you can host something around Christmas for the girls to do? Or let your DD earn the privilege of having a sleep over with some of her classmates. I would definitely make the effort to let her get to know her classmates outside of school after her punishment has been served.

Nothing really to do with the OP but,I agree with the DM being a tabloid and not to be taken seriously anyways, but it is conservative? It has always come across as being highly liberal IMO. Unless you are talking about the British definition of conservative?

My brother just transferred out of Langley AFB about 2 months ago. I went and visited him and it is a very pretty area. Lots of trees and the beach is crazy clean. He lived off base in Newport News but was very close to everything. He doesn't have kids so won't know much about the schools but if you need any information on the base (which is a pretty nice one!), or the area I can ask him and I know he would be happy to help!

I am sometimes not sure how we do it. Over the last 10 weeks we have been going from 3 gymnastics classes, 2 soccer practices (with two different teams), an average of 2 soccer games (per child so really a total of 4 games a week), and our weekly meet up every week. It is all a bit of a blur, but I decided when we started that we WOULD get school done. PERIOD. Sometimes it was squeezed into the cracks and crevices of our free time, but we did it and I am glad we did. Now that soccer season is coming to a close we will have more room in our schedule and I am ready for that. In fact today and tomorrow are the first two consecutive days that we have had no activities in quite a while and I am almost unsure what to do with it! Anyways, my point is, it is doable you just have to put your foot down and determine to do it. It may take some tweeking, but you will find your stride.

We are up between 8 and 9 generally and start our school day around 10.

I have a Luke and people constantly call him Lucas. It drives me insane but I just smile and correct it. My youngest daughters name is Keira (Keer-uh). She has just learned to go ahead and answer to any variation of Kara, Kira, Key-er-a, or whatever and then politely help them pronounce it correctly LOL