Hang in there, both of you! Babies -- August is a great time for a birthday, so come on out! No need to wait for "Labor Day" to start that labor!

I use stevia, liquid or powder. I get it from amazon, but our local grocery stores (even the regular one, not just the health food stores) carry it as well, although it's more expensive there than from amazon. I don't mind the licorice-y aftertaste, especially in coffee (although I prefer the powder form for making lemonade, less licorice-y aftertaste there, IMO), but DH detests anything licorice and even after giving stevia a good long trial, he still cannot stand it. (So he uses splenda, which I don't like, but there's only so much I can make him do.)

I'm pretty comfortable with math and with teaching math, so that wasn't a big concern for me. But if it's not your strong subject, I'd look for something whose method made sense to you. For me, we went with Saxon for one child, because it works for her, and tbh, it was free. (MUS might be fantastic, but one, I watched the videos online and realized that I think in terms of the little tricks and shortcuts that he mentioned, and two, I didn't think I could justify the price for what I'd get from it.) Maybe something else would be even better for her, but Saxon works fine. Otoh, Saxon would bore my other child to tears, but people recommended Singapore, and that works beautifully for him. (Singapore would drive my older child nuts and would bore her because she likes the variety of problems that Saxon has with each lesson. She also didn't like Miquon, even though she's a very hands-on sort of kid, but the child who likes Singapore also likes Miquon because he likes finding the patterns and little tricks and such.)

Thanks for this information; I did not know about that and am glad to have the heads-up! The free sample is pretty large. We are actually planning to use the Prairie Primer for history this year, since if we don't use it this year, I think DD will be too old for it. But I also don't know if the later books in the series will appeal to my boys, so my goal is to use the first four or five of the books and see how it goes. If we end up zipping through it, we could start HO later this school year, and that would be fine too, so there's no hurry to buy it. It just looks cool. :) TaratheLiberator, I do see what you mean about a lot of work possibly sucking out the enjoyment of history. Good to keep that in mind. I like the HO emphasis on writing, though, and we're a little weaker on that. So I'm thinking I will try HO and just cut out anything that's too much. I liked a lot of the stuff in the SOTW AG (at least for ancients), but mostly we ended up doing the maps and supplemental books; my kids tend not to like coloring sheets, and they're picky about projects. I'd like to focus more on projects that let them share what they're learning, whether that's writing papers or preparing PowerPoint presentations or whatever. Not sure if HO will be right for that or not, but with the free samples, we can try and see!

Thank you, Coffeemama. That is what I needed to know. I have SOTW but not the AG, and the HO e-book isn't that much more expensive than the AG, plus it looks like it might incorporate more chapter books, which would work so well for us next year. Kinda wish I didn't already have really good plans for this year. :)

So someone mentioned History Odyssey recently, and I started looking into it. I love the looks of it for the middle grades. I also liked the way it looks for the early grades, and I see that it (at least the modern history; I didn't look at the others) uses SOTW. What's the difference between using HO and using SOTW plus the SOTW Activity Guide for the early grades? Would I want both the HO guide AND the SOTW AG, or is that overkill?

We liked the videos as well. CurrClick also has a very inexpensive bird study that we used along with the Burgess Bird Book. I think it's a bit much for a 5yo (for that age, I'd just read the books and watch some videos/listen to some bird calls), but it filled in the gaps for my slightly older children and gave them a bit more info about birds.

We love Scrambled States too, both the book and the card game! I was going to suggest the Animaniacs song as well for the capitals. Wakko is fun! I remember learning the states and capitals in fourth grade via flash cards, which work well for me, although they have never really worked for my daughter. But the song worked for her.

We've done museums, zoos, historic sites. . . Our co-op has also done a bunch of "exploring the community" trips, like to local farms, the library, fire station, police station, grocery store. Those are fun for the younger kids especially.

Good news! Glad your doctor is working with you. Come on, baby!

We order toilet paper, liquid stevia, coconut oil, soap, and toothpaste that way. I compared the prices to store sales and BJ's and found amazon to be better for certain things. I also get almond flour from amazon.

Yeah, for repeat moms, being a little dilated for a while is common. The only person who did any cervical checks on me for my last three pregnancies and labors was. . . me. I pushed when my body wanted to push. By my own check, I was 1-2 cm dilated for a long time, but I went from 1-2 cm to bulging bag of water/bloody show/several cm in half an hour to holding my baby in 45 more minutes. A check at 40 weeks would have told me nothing. (And as for water breaking, the last three times, it's been the water breaking on its own 15-20 minutes prior to birth that has dropped the baby enough to do the last little bit of dilating. Would definitely not want to do that too early and risk cord prolapse, not without a really good medical reason.) I hope Dustybug is holding her sweet baby right now!

That's what I would do.

Love! I wanted to find a Tolkien middle name for my newest little guy but couldn't think of one that fit with our other names. And we didn't end up with an Anakin, but my big kids are envious that our middle child got Luke for his middle name. :) I'm not much help to the OP, because all of my boys have common Biblical names. But two names I like a lot are Avery and Grant. Also, OP, it took us five days to name one boy and three for another. And at least one name we chose wasn't even on our short list, but it so very clearly fits him, so you might surprise yourself.

I would call the credit card companies, explain the situation, and ask for a hardship plan. They can close the account in exchange for a much lower interest rate and fixed payment, which will save you cash now and allow you to pay off the debt sooner. You can talk to them directly and avoid a counseling program. If you do need a counseling program, I'd go with one approved by Dave Ramsey or crown.org. You also need to figure out the bigger picture and what is causing the difficulties. Sometimes there's not a good answer. We're victims of the housing market crash; it seriously hampered DH's industry. More education won't help him, and he already works really long hours. With three kids under school age, daycare (plus commute, since we're rural and in a house we can't sell) would eat up anything I'd make. I feel for you.

Ugh. Stuff like that annoys me so much. You just don't know want a mom can do until she tries. My 8 lb. baby and my almost 10 lb. one were the same size, but the big one just had more chub. Chub squishes. Dustybug, I keep checking in on you. I hope your sweet baby appears soon! I was at the "this baby is never coming out" stage, because I'd been having contractions off and on for two weeks, and then when he did come, it was FAST!

I have mine stop and rephrase something. If they're joking around, there's usually a gentler way to say something. And if they're being unkind, I can get them to focus on the behavior that is bothering them ("Sibling, that noise you're making is distracting me," rather than "Sibling, you're dumb"). I like scripting things for them In the right way, so that it gets programmed into their noggins.

I usually go once a week during the day, after our weekly standing appointment. Otherwise, we go one afternoon a week and hit the library, grocery store, and other errands. I go to a warehouse club about once a month, when DH has the older kids, and I have the three littles. Sometimes I go in the evening and take one big kid with me, plus the baby, which gives me a little one-on-one time with the big kids. I actually generally enjoy shopping for groceries, as there's something very momly about it, like I feel good about providing for this very basic of needs for my family.

That is too cute! I was a 37 or so weeker, under 6.5 pounds, back before there were a lot of preemie clothes. My mom talks about putting size 00 stuff on me, but doll clothes would have worked too. I'm always amazed at how tiny newborns are. Even my big newborn (my little guy was just over 9 lbs. at birth and was not my biggest baby) is tiny!

Yes. And the Ralph S. Mouse series.

The Evenflo Maestro is a very nice harness/booster; my almost 5yo is just over 40 pounds and has plenty of room to grow in it. I think it comes at a lower price than the Nautilus, although it can't be a backless booster like the Nautilus can. (I'll need to pass it down to a younger sibling before my son needs a backless booster, so the Nautilus didn't make financial sense.)

Yes, this. I also have a keyboard case, and I use it to prop the iPad on a slant for reading, but it's too heavy to hold in one hand.

If my kids crack open a book of any decent literary quality, or if they do anything that falls under any one of the portfolio subjects, I count it as a school day. They took tennis lessons this summer -- two hours a day of solid running around and playing tennis. I counted those as full school days. If we listen to audio books or music in the car, I count those as school days. If they go on a bike ride with DH, it counts as a school day. They went to a couple of museums the other day when DH took them out so the newborn and I could sleep -- that counted as a school day. We typically log well more than the required 180 days.

When we were expecting our fourth, we didn't have a van, and my option was a truck, so I asked the people on car-seat.org about what the safest arrangement was. I had a 2.5yo who was in a harnessed seat, and I asked if he was safer in the front RF'ing (airbag turned off with a switch) or in the back, even though that would mean turning him FF'ing because the seat wouldn't fit RF'ing in the back. They said that by 2.5 or 3, the difference was fairly negligible either way. I would consider 2 to be the minimum for turning around, but after that, we're talking small risks either way, so I'd be more comfortable turning FF'ing with the constraints of budget, needing seats for younger siblings, vehicle positions, etc.

I don't know for sure, but I would suspect that red-shirting is not all that common in my area. I'm not entirely sure of the cut-off, but I have a little guy who will be 5 in late October. If I were sending him to school, I would do it this year, because while he isn't reading or writing much yet, he's ready to do so, but more importantly, he is emotionally and socially ready to be a kindergartener. He sits pretty well, follows directions well, has done extremely well in a classroom setting, and he's fairly average in size for his age. With a big leap, academically, between 5 and 6, I think he'd end up bored if I waited to send him until next year. Of my three older kids, this is the one that I can see actually thriving in a classroom. (Of course, I'm glad I can keep him here with me.) Because of the way the PA law works, I won't have to register this child until he's actually almost 9, but whether we'll call that 3rd grade or 4th grade will depend on where he is at that point. When given the choice between being called preK4 and K this year, he wanted to be both (because, as he says, he's the middle child and gets to be both a big kid and a little kid). Otoh, my first son is a Feb. birthday, but he wasn't ready at 6.5, much less 5.5, to go to school. If I hadn't planned to homeschool, I'd have changed my mind in a hurry with this child. I'd have at least red-shirted him. Not sure about my two littlest boys, who have summer birthdays. DS4 will either be the very youngest or the very oldest in his grade, and I won't know which year I have to register him until that year arrives, because PA law says I have to register him when he's 8 within two weeks of the school year beginning, and the school year's start date varies -- this year, it was two days after his birthdate, but it could easily be before his birthdate as well. I wish the whole system were more fluid all around, so that there was no stigma or anything, so that kids could start kindergarten anywhere from 4-7 without any issues, and float back and forth, taking more time when needed and skipping ahead when appropriate. I guess that's why I homeschool.