DS1 is only in Singapore 3A right now, but we skip the Practice A/B/C parts for now; he just doesn't need them (yet, if he will at all). But if we did do them, I'd have him do them on separate paper as practice for later math that doesn't have a workbook format, or we'd use a whiteboard (or more likely, Notability on the iPad).

We didn't live in NoVA, but we did live in MD, southeast of DC, for four years. 15 miles from DC, and it took him an hour and a half each way in commute. (It would have been slightly better, I think, if he'd been able to take the Metro, but he had to bring his truck with his tools.) It was expensive and crowded and busy. We rarely went into DC on the weekends because DH was so sick of the traffic and commotion. For my second pregnancy, I saw midwives in Alexandria (NoVA), and it took two hours to get home from them. We didn't really like the area very much, although there is plenty to do there. It really just depends on your family's personality. We were offered a chance to move over the line to PA when DH got a different job. He now commutes 45 miles each way (which does get expensive, but housing is cheaper here than it would be closer to his office), but it's a pleasant, low-traffic, "get on the road and just go" commute that takes him only 45 minutes. He doesn't mind it at all. That's how much he disliked the DC stop-start traffic. (And this area, we love.)

Generally, if one of mine gets sick, the others will as well, although recently, my two little guys got a cold, and I super-dosed the big two and myself with vitamin D, and we avoided it, which was pretty cool. So if they're all under the weather, we might just have a movie day or two, but generally, I don't do extra screen time for the usual illnesses (colds, stomach bugs). At least one of my kids pretty much just sleeps for 24 hours straight anyway whenever he gets a cold; if I try to drag him out, he gets nauseated and is completely miserable, but if I just let him sleep, he does so and doesn't complain much. As for foods, I encourage water if they'll take it, and I might do apple juice or maybe Sprite/ginger ale (for the older ones) -- I figure low blood sugar makes them feel even worse (the same child who sleeps is particularly prone to that when he doesn't feel well), so I'm okay with a bit of extra sugar. If they're up for eating, I usually encourage bread, bananas, yogurt, crackers, applesauce, other mild stuff. Nothing that would be particularly icky if they throw up! And Culturelle capsules dumped into yogurt or applesauce or drink, to help replenish the beneficial gut bacteria.

Someone makes a high-speed digital thermometer that's under $10 and can be used under the arm or orally. That's what I use for taking my own temperatures (for cycle charting purposes), and it's been accurate to a tenth of a degree. I very rarely use it on kids; I don't treat for fevers, unless they get over a certain point (which they never have). When I have used it on kids, I've used it under their arms, and even on a squirmy infant, it's been just fine. It's really fast, and it flashes green, yellow, or red, depending on how hot the person is. I believe Vick's makes it, and it was available at the local grocery store. (I know this because when one of our babies had a cold, I could tell that he had at least a slight fever, so I had DH pick up a thermometer; I'm not great at telling how hot is hot enough to be dangerous for a baby.)

The only way to find out if a midwife can take you for a homebirth is to call and ask. Different states and different types of midwives can handle different things. Some insurances will cover homebirths, especially if the midwife is a Certified Nurse Midwife (my first homebirth was covered in full by my insurance), but even if the insurance doesn't cover a homebirth, if you have a high deductible anyway, a midwife actually may not be very different in cost (although if you transfer to the hospital, you may end up needing to pay for the midwife AND the deductible). My CPMs have not been covered by insurance, but they also have not been anywhere near as expensive as my CNMs, and they can take moms on a case-by-case basis, rather than by a strict definition like CNMs. (For instance, my CNMs couldn't accept VBAC moms, per their legal requirements, but my CPMs could if they felt that a mom was otherwise low-risk.) I'm sorry this is becoming a headache for you! I do understand that, since my midwife for #3 and #4 stopped doing any prenatal/birth stuff a year or so ago, which left me with few options for the #5 due any day. But I am happy with the midwife I did choose, and I feel peaceful about it all. I hope you are able to find the right option and enjoy the last few weeks of your pregnancy! Also, "too far" might depend on how fast your labors typically are and all. Midwives in this area don't consider an hour away to be too far. Every mom ought, in my opinion, be prepared for an unexpected unassisted birth, even without her husband/partner, just in case (and generally if babies come *that* fast, they do just fine anyway). But call and ask!

Congrats!!!

I simmer it for 24 hours or so, with some vegetables added -- carrots, celery, onions, if I have them; otherwise, just the bones and water and maybe some salt. Oh, and a splash of vinegar to help calcium leech out of the bones. I like to freeze mine in silicon muffin cups, in at least half-cup portions. Then when it's frozen, I pop the portions out and put them in a ziplock bag, and then I can grab however many cups I need. Sometimes a recipe calls for a cup or two, and sometimes I need several cups.

It seems like an awfully big expense and hassle for the few answers it might provide in a few cases. Okay, rule out close blood relative of the mother, fine. But is that really going to help in most cases, where the father might be one of hundreds of men/boys who could have had contact with the mother? One question that could arise from this is: if the mother was violently raped (and I'm talking completely non-consensual; I realize that a 14yo who consents to s*x with her 16yo boyfriend is only quasi-consenting, because she's so young, but having been a 14yo with a 16yo boyfriend, I do think two teens deciding to do something with the limited foresight that teens have is very different from someone forcibly raping someone else), and the cord blood forces the ID of her rapist, and the courts go after the rapist for child support, then does that mean the mother will be forced to relive traumatic experiences over and over again for the rest of her child's life, if she has to negotiate with the courts about support? While I do think a man should be responsible for the children he fathers, I can definitely see why, in some cases, it might be kinder just to allow a mother to collect welfare benefits, while attempting to put a traumatic event behind her. Does that make any sense? There is, of course, the issue of whether the blood *should* be collected, or whether it should be allowed to go back to the baby anyway; some people feel that clamping and cutting the cord early enough to allow blood collecting is not the best for the baby, healthwise, and should be avoided (unless there's an obvious need for the cord blood, such as an older sibling who needs a transplant). I also take offense to the idea that a mother might opt to skip a hospital birth simply because she doesn't want to be forced to out her rapist. Yes, I absolutely think that would be a terrible reason for a mother to skip any necessary care, but many women can have happy, healthy births outside of the hospital! Harumph. ;) This seems like it has a lot of issues surrounding it -- good intentions, but maybe not the most practical in execution.

I bought a SkipHop bag from Target, very similar to this one http://www.target.com/p/skip-hop-duo-essential-diaper-bag-black/-/A-11406618#prodSlot=large_1_9&term=skip+hop, except that mine has another mesh pocket on the end instead of the cell phone pocket, about five years ago, and I really like it. It's holding quite strong still, despite heavy use! It could very easily be a "mom" tote bag, instead of a diaper bag. I can put four water bottles in its outside pockets (and I'm talking the 27-ounce Klean Kanteen bottles, so not small ones) and still have an outside pocket available for my phone, keys, etc. I have no problem fitting a few toys, an outfit or two, some cloth diapers and a wool cover or two, a wet bag, wipes, changing pad, maybe a snack, and my small knitting bag in the interior part, and a notebook or binder or tablet fits easily into the very back pocket. I couldn't ask for more in practicality and durability, especially since it was on sale for only about $30. ETA: I don't like carrying a purse. I do have a very small one that I use occasionally, but most of the time, I need at least room for a tablet or binder, so even aside from babies/toddlers, I think my SkipHop bag will just continue to be my bag for a long time.

The Kindle version still has those references. IDK what year its copyright is, but it's whatever Kindle version was available just a couple of months ago. :( I was bummed because otherwise, I really liked it.

I voted 3 students, plus at least one infant/toddler. This year, I have (or will have in the next 21 days) a 6th grader, a 3rd grader, a preK/kindergartener (he'll be 5 in late October and is somewhere in between the two), a 2yo (who wants to do everything the big kids do), and an infant.

We're not quite as rural as you, but we're at least 20 minutes from everything. If you have space, encourage gardening! Or outdoor activities -- swingset, playhouse, bike, climbing trees, digging in the dirt. My kids spend a lot of time just being outside, playing pretend games. And they have plenty of interesting things to do inside as well. We do one long day of errands every week, and occasionally we go out twice a week. We listen to audio books or music in the car, and I do point out how one long day means fewer days of having to go out. Kids get tired from errands. There's usually some sort of treat involved in grocery shopping, which helps. The kids will adjust to being home more, and school will help with that. I am quite an introvert, so I don't need a lot of adult contact, and once or twice a week is plenty for me. Being so far from things has made me selective, which is nice -- we only choose to do those things which are truly worth the drive and effort.

Ahahahahaha, the idea of limits here cracks me up! I think one library (for which we have three cards) has a limit of 100 per card, no household limit. If the other libraries (we have five cards at each of them) have limits, we've never hit them. We could easily have well over 1000 library books at a time. We usually have around 50, although it's not uncommon for it to hit 100 or so total.

We started July 2. It's going pretty well, although we have not accomplished nearly what I thought we would. I underestimated two things: one, the stuff that *I* need/want to get done around the house before the baby arrives, and two, the lack of energy that *I* would have after we got home from a three-mornings-per-week tennis program. It was a great program, and the kids had a blast, plus it all counted as PE, so it wasn't a waste, but I was just too tired (and the kids were hot and tired as well, especially during the recent heat wave) to get much actual bookwork done with them. But that's okay. We've accomplished a lot of math and reading, and a few other things too. We'll continue to do what we can until we take a few weeks off to enjoy our new baby.

Finances have prevented us from doing many outside activities at all for the past few years, and honestly, it's not been so bad! Your year will be just fine if you limit the outside activities. Maybe cut back to the minimum that you feel is okay, and then over time, add more things once your yearly flow is going well.

I agree with PPs -- just keep nursing, and stand your ground. Three of my four have had mild jaundice, although their levels were never tested. It certainly sounds like you have plenty of milk, and like she's getting lots of it, if she's making so many wet diapers. The only thing I would consider doing is to call LLL or a board-certified lactation consultant (not necessarily a hospital "LC" -- they don't always have significant training, but an IBCLC will have plenty) or even a WIC peer breastfeeding counselor if you happen to be a WIC participant, in order to have her evaluated for milk transfer issues, such as tongue or lip tie. It doesn't sound like those are concerns, but it might be worth a call.

The idea of you changing your name to avoid confusion with the new DIL is so absurd that I'm almost laughing! I *would* laugh, but I'm appalled. My FIL has a son (my DH), and my FIL's brother has two sons (DH's first cousins). DH has the same first and last name as his uncle, and one of his cousins has the same first and last name as my FIL. At one point, all four of them worked at the same (not huge) company. Guess what? They all figured it out just fine! They used a middle initial/name along with the first name, or a full name vs. a shortened form, or whatever. I agree with the PP who said the only distinction needed is "Bill's Mango or Bob's Mango."

This my be the most true thing I've ever read. I totally agree. I'm hugely pregnant as well (baby is expected anywhere from the end of this week to three weeks from now, depending on which big kid this one follows), and I had one of those rockstar mornings yesterday. It was amazing how much I accomplished in the whole day, despite being hugely pregnant! Routines that work for me: -Setting my alarm 30 minutes before I actually need to be up, so that I can sit in bed and drink water. It only took me until my 45th month of pregnancy to realize that I really do function better with a lot more water than I thought. But by the time my feet hit the ground, I'm fully awake, and the water has hit my system. (It's cool today, and I didn't drink enough water, so between that and waking up too early, I've been dragging all day.) -Kids do chores (which do not rotate; they know exactly what they need to do every morning without asking me) and get dressed before breakfast. By the time we eat breakfast, the clean dishes are put away, the trash/recycling has been taken out, and the previous day's laundry is in the laundry room (and usually already washing). -After breakfast, everyone clears their dishes, brushes their teeth, and starts schoolwork (well, the little guys find something to do/play). The big kids know they are to start their reading, so there are, again, no questions. I take an hour to do the breakfast dishes, switch laundry, wipe a bathroom, vacuum, and do some other small cleaning chores. (Theoretically, on odd days I vacuum the downstairs and wipe the downstairs bathroom, and on even days, it's the upstairs vacuuming and bathroom, but it doesn't always happen that way.) Then when I'm ready to sit down with the kids and do the teacher-intensive subjects, again, a lot of housework has been accomplished. -I only wash whatever laundry can be washed and dried by 3:30 pm. I will leave a pile of non-important laundry for the next day. I usually do 1-2 loads a day (which will probably increase to 2-3 a day when I'm washing diapers again), and if it does pile up, I set it up at night and leave DH a note to start it in the morning. He leaves for work quite early, and if I put it on the right setting and add the detergent and put the clothes in the machine, all he has to do is pull the knob, and then when I wake up, I already have a load ready for the line/dryer. This increases the likelihood that it will get folded and put away that day, even if I don't have a rockstar morning. -I typically take some time in the afternoon to fold and put away laundry, catch any dishes I didn't do earlier, have the kids clean up the house, etc. -I am really interested in OAMC cooking or similar. I have a couple of weeks' worth of meals in the freezer for post-baby, and if that goes well, I really want to do more freezer entrees for busy days. Crockpot doesn't really work for me very well, because it means the prep has to happen in the morning, which doesn't usually happen (I am not a natural morning person at all). -Somehow when the housework flows smoothly, so does the schoolwork. I think my brain flows better, and thus, the schoolwork does too. I also overplan schoolwork so that even if I don't meet the full list every day, we do manage to accomplish important things. Will have to read the rest of this thread for more good ideas!

Congratulations! She's beautiful, and I hope she is home soon!

I haven't bought anything (yet; I might still peruse the selection), but I did pass the info along to a couple of people I know who are really struggling, financially. Of course some people will abuse the deal; there will always be people who do wrong. But what a blessing for people in need, and for people who want to try something without investing a lot. I know I have bought a few things on CurrClick that were listed as free or on a very deep sale, and that's encouraged me to buy other things from the same publishers. I totally agree with the above poster who said that selling more at a lower price is the same profit as fewer at a higher price if the majority simply wouldn't buy at the higher price at all.

I have Mr. Q on my iPad, my Kindle (the basic one), and my computer. It's much harder to read on the Kindle than on the other two. The screen is so small on the Kindle, and with it being a PDF, it's not the easiest for navigating pages -- Kindle books are much nicer on the Kindle, though. If the Kindle were my only option for Mr. Q, I may not have opted for Mr. Q at all. I also think it would be harder to show everyone the pictures, both because they're black and white, and because the Kindle screen is small. However, the Kindle is great for Kindle books, and DD really prefers reading from it to reading from print books.

Bigger blocks seem to work better for me. Kids do chores before breakfast, while I'm doing all the little stuff for the day (changing babies, putting out any last-minute stuff for school, checking the weather, making breakfast, etc.), and then I take a while after breakfast to do dishes, switch laundry, wipe the bathroom, vacuum, etc. while the kids start their reading. Sometimes. Sometimes we're having a slow morning, and I skip those things and do them later. But once I sit down with the kids to do schoolwork, the only household thing I really do is switch laundry (because it would never get done otherwise). Sometimes we do a bit of a tidy around lunchtime, just kind of depending on what's out and how much it's bothering me. Then there's another block in the late afternoon when the kids pick up the house, and I do more little stuff. But I have never been a "pick it up as you go" sort of person; that's just never really worked for me, especially with small kids, because these days, for instance, the 2 and 4yo's play with the Duplo pieces and the train pieces continually, most of the day, so picking them up once a day is sufficient for me (occasionally twice if I want to vacuum a particular room). In fact, if we pick up the toys at 4 pm, it's entirely likely that the schoolroom will be scattered in Duplo pieces by the time the 2yo goes to bed anyway. (But he's happy! He LOVES the interchangeable truck and car pieces and is SO proud when me brings me a creation and says, "Mama, more truck!" And that is worth far more to me than a perfectly clean house.) But school hours for school. They're not the hours for vacuuming, or Legos, or non-emergent phone calls. ETA: I don't generally do housework in the evenings. Evenings are filled with doing the dinner dishes, supervising baths, nursing babies, putting jammies on toddlers, reading books, tucking into bed, laying out schoolwork for the next day, and recharging my batteries, not to mention actually seeing my husband. Vacuuming, bills, folding laundry, mopping, etc. are for the afternoons if I don't get to them right after breakfast. (Although sometimes the clean laundry piles up -- rarely the dirty -- and I take a few hours and a TV show or two on the weekend and fold a bunch of it.)

So this week, I suggested that he look at the book himself and then do the exercises. He didn't really like that either. (This isn't a particularly resistant kid; he's generally pretty compliant, but these days, he just wants to do whatever he needs to do quickly so he can go ride his bike. We've also been doing a tennis program several mornings a week, and we're expecting a baby any day, so we're not exactly at a real school routine yet, and a bit of the "just do it" is lacking right now; I'm not terribly worried and will whip the routine into shape once the baby arrives. For now, I'm just figuring that anything that gets done is a bonus in that it's less we'll have to worry about finishing later. So I don't really feel that a character issue is brewing, and I'm not worried on that end of things, just wanting to find the balance between making sure he's solid and allowing him to accelerate so that he's not bored.) I explained that sometimes he may need to know a different way to do something, particularly the way Singapore is showing it, and he said that he'd rather me go over it with him. We just started the subtraction part, so we went over that very briefly, with me just checking that he understood how they were swapping hundreds for tens and such. Yep, he said that made sense, no problem. So I have been having him do half of the problems in each exercise; he loses the self-checking ability that way, but it meets both his "get it done quickly" desire and my "make sure he knows how to do it" desire, and we're both happy. I asked when we first started Singapore, about whether he *needed* to do things the Singapore way, or if his own way was okay, and people here told me that if he had his own way, that always worked, to let him use his way -- until or unless it was too much mental math, and at that time, I could show him different ways. I think I am going to continue to run with that approach, but I will also continue to expose him to the textbook, either with me or by himself, so that if/when he needs it, it's not completely unfamiliar to him. Thanks!

That's what I would do as well. Plot it all out so it's not "do this on Monday, this on Tuesday," but rather "do the next thing, whether that happens to be Monday or Thursday." Aim for 180 days, and if it's a little less or a little more, that's okay -- you'll still be covering a lot of material. If he's only home for 1-2 days at a time, with a week or so in between, I wouldn't plan on any work, not even "just a little math," on those days. Take the stress off of yourself, and let your children enjoy as much Daddy as they can in that time. If he happens to hit upon a schedule where he's routinely home for 4 or 5 days, then I would prioritize the subjects in whatever order you want, so that you get *something* done each of those days, whether it's the same subject every day, or a rotating list, or whatever. But if you have it all written out with "do the next thing," it should be relatively simple to say, "hmm, we haven't hit science this week; let's do a bit of that today," or "okay, today's math lesson."

I would try vinegar consistently in the rinse, but also, they may need to be stripped -- wash them several times on hot with nothing added (maybe a bit of vinegar; you could try some lemon juice if you have hard water), until the water is clear (no bubbles). Sometimes build-up can cause stinky diapers.