Kozycarrier.com had, last I knew, directions for using a mei tai on the hip; the Ergo should also have a hip carry mode.

Singapore Math has been non-teacher intensive with my mathy son; he often can figure out the concepts on his own or with the book. Level 3 is a lot of multiplication practice, so once he understood the concept, it was very easy for him to just do the next 2-4 pages in the workbook. HWOT cursive has been non-teacher intensive, open and go, as well, for that same son. Just do the next two pages. He didn't require a lot of help from me and could easily do it on his own 99% of the time. If nothing else, he knew he could do cursive every day before I had a chance to go over anything else with him. DD is generally finding Writing With Skill to be open and go and not requiring a lot from me, unless she gets stuck. Actually, I find that WWE is open and go as well, but it is teacher intensive. We are using Mr. Q for science, and it's also open and go, except that you do need to look ahead a bit to make sure you have the materials listed for the experiments. But otherwise, it required very little planning on my part. Both of my older kids are using Pandia Press's History Odyssey this year, and as I keep saying, I am in love with it. I spent a few minutes with each program, breaking the lessons down into what I felt were reasonable chunks of work for a day -- like, DS1 might have 2 pages in Usborne to read, a definition to look up, and a map to fill in, all for one day's work, and the next day, he might have a chapter of SOTW to read and two things he learned to write down. Since I drew lines to divvy up the work, he knows exactly what to do each day, and he can do it on his own. Same with DD and Level 2.

Our libraries are surprisingly flexible; they'll generally let me use whichever card is handy at the time, including sometimes no card at all. It does help that they know us by name at at least one of the branches.

If you have him lying down in the Moby, I would try putting him more upright. Also, he may want to curl his legs together more, so if you can keep them tucked up, he might like that better (if you're currently trying to get his legs apart); I kept DS4's legs tucked up inside the wrap for a long time, like 11 weeks or so, before he was ready to have them out and apart. Do you do the "bounce and sway and pat and sssssh" thing when you put him in the Moby? All of that seems to get my tiny guy to go to sleep pretty easily. You might also try a different style of carrier; a mei tai, for instance, such as a Kozy Carrier, might not be as snug around the head, so maybe he would like that better.

I got the site to work a couple of hours ago, no problem. I got WWS2, teacher and student editions, both in PDF form, for DD to use next year. I was already planning to get those, and the sale made it so that I was also able to get the first of the Creative Writer series to use with DD also (I had been considering those, but $8 for the PDF made it worth taking a shot!). Thank you, PHP!

Babywearing! Do you have a sling or wrap or something, and if not, can you get one? Many, if not all, of my babies have been far better sleepers in a wrap than in a bed. My current infant doesn't usually sleep well in my arms, even; he really wants to be all wrapped up against me. He'll sleep several hours straight in a wrap; I have to take him out to get him to eat! Otherwise, we have the "lay him on the bed, and he sleeps for ten minutes" thing too. I try never to waste sleep times. If there is something I can do one-handed while nursing, I don't do that something while the baby is sleeping (leaving me two free hands) or while someone else is holding him. Can you get some meals into the freezer on the weekends to use during the busy days? This has been very helpful to me.

Awesome, congrats! Did you plan to do it unassisted? (Just curious, because we've had three unassisted births ourselves -- planned, but with the last so, the MW wouldn't have made it anyway.) Also, I really love the current of lifelong learning that is running through this thread -- how wonderful that so many people are willing to tackle new skills and subjects! I can't help but think how blessed our children are to see us learning too.

I'm teaching myself Spanish via DuoLingo, and I am proud of myself for doing it. I also finished knitting a sweater for my baby this week. It is cute and snuggly and turned out well, and it is very satisfying. Also, since the baby is only three months and exclusively breastfeeding, watching him grow is satisfying. :)

I saw something recently that said PHP will have a sale like Dec. 2, so I am watching. And last year, it wasn't Black Friday, but Mr. Q science's 50% off sale started in early January.

Stainless steel, if cast iron were not a choice. But I adore my cast iron and use it pretty much exclusively, even for omelets.

My 5yo is in a 5-PT. harness, and if it is cold enough that he needs a thick coat, he takes it off before buckling his seat. I will keep him in the harness as long as he fits in it. In our state (PA), a child has to be 4 and 40 pounds to be out of the harness, but I keep them in the harness as long as they fit into it. In all fairness, though, my 5yo is partly still in the harness because his spot is the one with only a lap belt, so the older two kids can't go there, and it is in the middle of the third row, so the two rear-facing babies can't go there either. 5yo's seat is the only one that can fit there. But I would probably keep him in it anyway, because it is safer. He does ride with a booster occasionally in DH's little car.

I wouldn't leave my little ones for that long, but I know I am in the minority. Only my 11yo has stayed away from us overnight, and that was last year when she stayed with her grandparents for a week. I just can't see DH and me leaving the kids for that long, and not even overnight for a few more years.

Yes. So I voted "other," because it really does depend on so many factors. It was easier to live comfortably in Boston 15 years ago on one income (that of a nanny) when it was just the two of us than it is now in south central PA because we have five children, a bigger place to live, and a hefty commuting cost. (And our commuting cost is still less than the additional cost of housing to live closer to DH's office. We can't downsize our housing, as we are already paying less for our mortgage than rent for a family of our size would be.)

I do the best I can. I love getting grassfed beef in bulk from a local farmer, but it rarely happens. Sometimes I can get a couple of pounds of grassfed ground beef. Otherwise, I get what is on sale -- food always trumps no food, especially since we don't do well with a lot of grains. I buy whatever fruit is on sale, and in season, it is usually cheaper and better at the farmer's markets. We eat a lot of apples, but we only eat peaches during the couple of months that they are local and amazing. When frozen vegetables (the basic bags, vegetables only, no sauces or seasonings) go on sale, I stock up, because i can add another pound of vegetables to a meal for way cheaper than I can add another pound of meat. do try to buy organic butter, though, and we get hormone-free milk, raw when we can swing it. I did find that a BJ's membership worked out well for us. I like their natural pork, and it is a good price, comparable to the grocery store. Butter and cheese are way cheaper there too. I saved most of the cost of a year's membership in just a couple of months, between butter, cheese, and the toothpaste that DH likes. When things like chicken breast go on sale at my grocery store, I buy enough for about five meals, and I take them home, turn them into meals, and freeze them. Much less tempting to get food out on busy days or weekends when nobody feels like cooking, if we have meals in the freezer already. I use cloth everything, except for toilet paper (and that I get from amazon in bulk). I use vinegar, baking soda, and Murphy's all-purpose cleaner for cleaning. I don't make my own detergents, because we have insanely hard water, and also, our local store's generic brand is good and cheap for those things. I watch amazon for sales on other stuff, like pet flea treatment and bar soap. But really, there is also only so low I can go, without feeling that I am really compromising my family's health. As our kids get older, we are hoping to garden a lot and possibly add egg chickens.

My DH has a 45 minute commute each way, and he listens to a ton of audio books. We borrow them from the Free Library of Philadelphia, and you might be able to buy a card for it for a small fee, not sure about that. He did have a CD player in the car, but it died, hence the downloads. He puts them on an MP3 player and uses a transmitter to play them through the radio. An audible.com subscription or a Sirius FM subscription might be nice for his commute too. How does he watch TV? Would a streaming BluRay player or AppleTV box work?

I am a home birthing mama, so I would do whatever I could to avoid an unnecessary c-section. However. If your gut is telling you to go for a c-section, I would give your gut serious consideration. Our instincts are there for a reason. I absolutely feel that my son's birth was safe and okay because I listened to my gut feeling (which, as a Christian, I attributed to God' Spirit speaking to me, and when He prompts, I listen!). So it may well be that you need another c-section.

Do you have a particular hobby? Could you put together some of your favorite things for that hobby, so as to share the hobby love with someone else? I knit, so I could put in needles, yarn, pattern book, and other small accessories. (Men can knit too!).

No, but we have at least 20 years to go. I like to think that we'll stay in the area where we are now, because we love it. I could see selling/giving the house to one of the kids (good way to ensure that my boys and my DILs and grandchildren are nearby!), in return for DH and me being able to stay on the property. The people next door built a second small house so that the grown son could be near enough to care for his parents; I could see that working for us. The land is pretty nice, almost three acres, and it would be a lot of house and land for a young family to afford (we couldn't have done it if we hadn't worked our way up from two other houses), but it will be too much for older people to maintain. So I could see it remaining as the family homestead, but with one of the kids taking over the main role.

I have a couple of the 6-foot black charging cords from amazon, about $7 each. One worked for 8 months or so? before quitting. The other is only a couple of months old and works fine -- but it doesn't charge the iPad as quickly as the white cord that came with the iPad. The black one is fine if I leave it overnight or keep it charging, but if it gets really low, the white Apple cord will generally let me use the iPad while charging it, whereas the black one will not. (In all fairness, my iPad gets heavy use -- it typically gets run almost all the way down most days -- and I think its battery no longer holds a charge quite as well as it used to. It's about 18 months old.)

Yeah, my kids do that sort of thing too -- characters from books get recreated in Lego form.

DD finished GSWL in 4th grade and went on to the Latin's Not So Tough series, which she likes and is doing well with. We started with Level 3. Level 3 didn't have any new grammar, compared to GSWL, but it did have some new vocabulary that wasn't in GSWL, and I wanted her to be solid on the vocabulary, plus IMO when switching to a different format, sometimes being a little easier is a good thing.

That's okay! That way, he won't outgrow them too quickly. :) (I settled on the Batman phonics set and a Billy and Blaze book; I think he will like both, and there should be a good balance of "something he can figure out on his own" and "good challenge to keep him interested and motivated." Also, I needed something for 2yo brother and got the Danny and the Dinosaur set for him; obviously, 2yo can't read it yet, but he'll love the name and the dinosaurs, and 5yo can read to 2yo, so 5yo will benefit from that too. :) ) My 5 and 2yo boys ADORE that book! It is really great for that age group!

I like the look of the knitted one better, personally, although both are cute!

I didn't send our boys' therapist a gift last year. However, when my boys graduated from her sessions, we wrote her a nice letter of thanks (and the boys' drew pictures for her) and tucked in a small Amazon gift card as well. We also specifically said that we were very pleased and that if she ever needed a recommendation or anything, she should feel free to contact us. (I think she works for herself, but if she'd had a supervisor, I would have sent an official letter of thanks to her supervisor as well, because I believe that superiors should know when their employees are doing a good job.) Had I thought of it, I probably would have given her a small gift card last Christmas too, but my kids don't really have teachers (other than co-op parents, who are friends of mine), and it just didn't cross my mind. This year, we'll send her a card with photos of the kids, because it's been a few months since they graduated, and I figure she'll enjoy seeing them. :)

I voted that I am very confident and drive one regularly. That's semi-true. I *do* drive one confidently and easily. I *don't* really LIKE stick driving. I far, far prefer my van, which is an automatic. But our little car and our truck are both stick shifts, and I drive them both whenever needed. Our van has been in the shop a lot this year, so I've driven the truck a lot. It's proven to be a very valuable skill, to be able to drive any of the vehicles confidently and easily, and this year, I would say I have driven the sticks more than just "not very often," but I do prefer my automatic. (The truck, in particular, is uncomfortable for me because I have very short legs, and it requires some stretching to push the clutch in. But I can do it easily; I just don't like to.)