I can't keep up with all the name changes either! I think I must not be very observant; I know who PP is, but I'm clueless about Tibbie, Juniper, and probably several others. :)

:iagree: Sounds great!

Good luck! So wonderful to have more CPMs! I've been naked for all but my third birth, so immediate pictures are not ones to share with anyone but DH and me without serious cropping. I keep a nice nightgown that is nursing-friendly (either with slits or with a wrap style front) handy so that it's clean and ready. With my third birth, I just put on a clean top (the one I was wearing was a bit dirty) and some knit pants. For our waterbirth, it was a bit of a spontaneous thing. We'd talked about it, but the logistics of it weren't great, so I was undecided. (Tiny bathroom with no A/C in July, bathroom downstairs but our bedroom was upstairs, I have crazy long hair that I don't want wet, didn't want to get the tub all icky, didn't want to sit in icky water, no money or good location for a birth tub.) But I kept my options open and made sure the tub was clean. I was having transition-type labor but thought I had several more hours ahead of me, and I was at my limit, even with DH right there with me helping me focus, so he said, "Well, we've talked about water, and it's helped you before [albeit in early labor with my first], so do you want to try it?" I figured I might as well; maybe it would help take the edge off a bit so I could relax, because I was starting to fight the contractions, which were on top of each other and hard. I should have realized it was transition, but I really didn't think it could be. So he got the tub ready; it was pretty hot, not scalding of course, but probably a little more than typical bath temp. And the baby was born about three minutes later. We ended up draining the tub (which did get a bit icky) after a bit and refilling it, as I thought relaxing in the tub sounded nice. Then I ended up getting out fairly soon because it was hot and sticky in there. I ended up waiting until the placenta game out, and then I handed the baby+placenta (in some bags) to DH, while I showered off a bit, and then I put something on (a gown, I guess) and stuck a big towel between my legs and walked upstairs slowly. Upstairs was all ready, because I'd made up the bed with a shower curtain and extra sheet.

Application, eh!? :lol: :lol: :lol:

Could you base your budget on 25 hours a week and then if you get 35, the extra goes into an emergency fund (or pays medical bills sooner)? That way you're not relying on 35 for your monthly bills. Can you save your grocery receipts for a month to see what you're spending on what? Maybe it's possible to plan your menus differently to take advantage of sales more, or maybe there are too many non-essentials. Maybe you can switch to more reusable items if you're not currently. Also, when you plan your grocery budget, I would have a target amount in mind -- X dollars for breakfast each day, Y for lunch/snacks, and Z for dinners. Then you can see if what you're preparing is lining up with that and opt for cheaper meals if need be.

Thank you -- it is so nice to hear from people who are gentle to the Penn State family. No, we're not the true victims, but we're dealing with the fallout as best as we can, and gentleness helps. I am so sorry you have had personal experience in this area. Thank you for reaching out. :) :grouphug: :grouphug: :grouphug:

:iagree: I believe it counts as a full day for them if they serve the child lunch. Around here, in snowy weather, they push the kids to eat lunch early if they have to send them home early so they can count it as a full day and not have to make it up later. (So much for academics; it's all about the money.) I think, in theory, this sounds like a great plan, but in reality, it sounds like it could be a hassle. You'll still need to feed the younger children, and you'll be needing to drag them out to pick her up too. It might be harder for her to switch gears and do any sort of academics when she gets home, and it might be awkward for her socially if she's leaving in the middle of the day, especially if they do fun stuff in the afternoons. I'm not saying it couldn't work, but I think there are some concerns that might not make it worth it. Now, for a middle or high schooler, I think differently; my state allows students to take a class or two or extracurriculars at the public school, and I could see doing that for high school, especially for languages or sciences (or math if I wasn't comfortable teaching math).

I don't have a Prime membership, but I have noticed that their free super saver shipping is slower now; it used to be 2-3 days, and now it's more like a week. I figure costs for everything are going up, so a week is still pretty decent. (Otoh, I think there is a Philly warehouse or something, and stuff from there arrives to me super fast. I had something show up within 12 hours of me ordering it fairly recently, which is kind of amazing, considering that a) I'm 3 hours from Philly, b) I ordered it late at night, and c) my rural post office is kind of slow but also delivers my mail before 11 am. But if it's not at Philly, it takes longer these days.)

:grouphug: Sue, what a pain in the neck! I'm so sorry your local district is being difficult. I would be putting the burden on her to show you exactly where you did not comply with the law, and it all needs to be via certified mail, IMO. UGH. So ridiculous. Our district is generally friendly to the homeschoolers (though one year they managed to lose the middle page to my paperwork and asked me, nicely, to send another one), but they do send things like their own evaluation form for my evaluator to fill out, and it has things on it that are not required by the law. (We don't use it; our evaluator uses her own form that only has the required items on it.) It's a bunch of nonsense, isn't it?

I've had all three of my boys at home. I have no complaints about my first birth, at a freestanding birth center (basically a homebirth in someone else's house), but it sure has been nice not to have to travel in labor. My pushing stages have gotten progressively faster, but I think they're at the limit now. First was an hour and a half (posterior baby), second was 20 minutes, third was about three pushes and a few minutes, and the fourth was less than a minute -- one big push in the water and "it's a boy." It's a good thing we planned a homebirth, and also good that we planned an unassisted birth (my second boy was also a planned unassisted birth), because my backup midwife lives at least 30 minutes away, and she wouldn't have made it. Much better to have a planned unassisted birth when we knew we were handling it all than to be unprepared and panicked! By the time I realized it was indeed real labor (it was a fast 4 hour labor, half the length of my previous shortest labor, and it was at 38.5 weeks, when my others had all come at around 41 weeks), transition in the car would have been miserable, and there's a good chance he'd have been born on the side of the road. Early in labor, I spread chux pads on my rocking chair and on the floor and the bed. With the two littlest boys, my water broke while pacing the floor -- good thing I had the chux ready. I also know that I generally don't feel like eating during labor (though I did manage to eat eggs for breakfast with #4), so with #3, I made myself drink a good quantity of juice first thing, and that kept me going for 8 hours.

It took me a bit, but I found the pattern, with a picture: http://waldorfjourney.typepad.com/the_gnomes_home/2009/06/june-1st-show.html It sounds like you figured it out, though -- good for you! It is adorable!

I'm an introvert married to an introvert, and we have four children. Yeah, it's loud. And sometimes that grates on my nerves. I take moments like those as opportunities to remind myself that it could be deathly quiet. There could be no children at all. That generally adjusts my attitude from "could they pleaaaase be quiet for a bit" to "I love the sound of happily playing siblings" pretty quickly. And if it doesn't, it's usually a sign that I need a nap. :)

There doesn't happen to be a link to the pattern online, does there? I'd be happy to take a look at the whole pattern to see if I can tell where it's going. Knittinghelp.com is very good though.

What are you making? That pattern sounds to me like it's missing a few steps, if what you've posted is indeed what you have. When I see a pattern that says "BO first six stitches," that means to bind off the first six stitches; it is used to shape armholes, for instance, after you've done the body of the item. Then you do the same thing on the other side (on the next row, BO first six stitches), so they match. Usually when a pattern says "knit two together," it means that you insert your needle into the first two stitches on the other needle, instead of the first stitch, and you knit them together as if they were one stitch. You wrap the yarn and pull it through both stitches together. It's a decrease.

Yeah, that's a pretty horrible day. I'm so sorry -- :grouphug: :grouphug: :grouphug: -- I hope today was better!

We are definitely reeling. It's very hard to comprehend. Didn't know much about Sandusky, so we can accept his disgusting and appaling crimes because we weren't constantly being told/shown what a great guy he was. With Paterno, it's not even that he wasn't who everyone said he was; it's that it just doesn't add up. If he'd always been known as a sort of sleazy guy, it would be easier to comprehend. Even if he'd been found doing something more minor, like drunk driving, we'd be able to say, "well, nobody's perfect," but THIS? This is just SO HUGE and HORRIBLE and overshadowing. It just makes no sense to us, or at least to me. Evidence or not, it still just really does not jive yet; I think it will take time for it all to sink in. I've had a ton of mixed emotions over the past several months, and I expect to have more. I'm very torn between being so angry that I never want to support another Penn State anything ever again and really wanting to support my alma mater in ushering in a new era in football, responsibility, everything, wanting to support the players who did nothing wrong, the students and faculty who did nothing wrong, the small businesses in the area that rely on sports traffic. And for the PP who was wondering, yeah, Penn State is kind of a family for a lot of alums. The community spirit really is touted there, and it has its very good side (THON, networking, etc.), but obviously it has its dark side too. And as I've said before, Penn Staters do tend to do things big, for better or for worse. I don't think the close-knit atmosphere is necessarily unusual for a large school with a large alumni network. I've seen my ILs with similar feelings about their school, which is another large one with a prominent sports team.

No smartphone here. I don't even do more than the occasional texting. I could get away with an emergency-only cell phone, except that my local calling area on my landline (which I'd do away with if I had any other option for high-speed internet besides DSL) is teeny-tiny. Unlimited long distance for the landline costs the same as my cell phone, and since pretty much everyone I ever talk to uses the same cell company, I rarely use actual minutes, so my cell bill is pretty cheap.

Lots of cool stuff to see if you want to drive down to Gettysburg (about 40 minutes from Hershey, but an easy drive). And in between Hershey and Philadelphia is Lancaster, with plenty to do there, but we particularly like the Landis Valley Museum.

I aim to be done sometime in May, so we can have a nice break, which worked out so well this past year. Just enough of a break to recharge, but not so much that everyone got bored. We start pretty close to July 1, and I aim to be about halfway by shortly before Christmas, so we can have a nice break then as well. If we're not halfway by Christmas, we still have plenty of time to work harder in the late winter and spring. And if some subjects get ahead of others, no big deal; we'll do other things for those subjects, or start the next book, or whatever.

My children get exams, cleaning, and x-rays (if needed) at the same appointments, every six months. The office schedules sealants for a separate appointment (and cavities too), which bugs me because it's really fast, but it means a 40-minute drive with all of the children just for the sealants. And they won't let me add a block for the sealants on to the regular appointment, because they have to verify that all of the molars are there first. Eyeroll. I do love the dentists there, though, and my children are very comfortable with them, so that's not big enough of a reason to leave.

Eh, I knew plenty of kids who didn't party. There is plenty of partying, for sure, but there are lots of kids who aren't there to party; they're there for serious academics. It's just a very big school and does things in very big ways, good or bad. (That's not to say that I think its football culture doesn't need to be taken down a notch or two.) I grew up a few hours outside of PA, and I didn't know who JoePa was until I was a freshman at Penn State, having chosen the school for the combination of large school advantages and small personalized program that it could offer me. Maybe at the very least, this will let its academic program shine out a bit more so that people see we really are more than football. Part of me is a little worried that the message will be lost to some people because of Paterno's death. I guess I'm afraid that some people would have lost interest in football anyway because Paterno died and wouldn't be coaching. I hope that is a small minority.

My kids liked The Hobbit as a readaloud at 4 and 7, but they'd seen the LotR movies shortly beforehand. Then DD read The Fellowship of the Ring to herself at 7 or 8, and she liked it, but I think part of the reason was that she had seen the movies and knew the basic plot, characters, etc. We've tried listening to it as an audio book, and the younger kids (now 3 and 7, though they've seen the movies) don't really get into it, as it's very wordy.

I think the punishments sound reasonable, given that other people had already pointed out the inability to give the Death Penalty due to the specifics of it. I'm of mixed minds about the vacating of wins. On the one hand, success without honor is nothing, and I think it's good that this will come up again, every time someone reads about Paterno, so that we don't buy into a culture that lets such horrific tragedies occur ever again. But I also think it's a little silly, though I gather it's happened before, to say, suddenly, "oh, So-and-So didn't actually win those games," when everyone knows that he actually did. By the rules of the football game, Paterno *did* win those games (no steroids, no cheating, etc.), and I'm not huge on revisionist history. I'm afraid it's now going to be huge arguments forevermore about "Bobby Bowden is the winningest coach, but not really," and "Paterno is still the winningest coach," and the real issue, the molestation of children and a cover-up, is going to be pushed aside.

OP, I haven't looked at your list, but I bought most of my stuff a few months ago, mostly in March. I start my year in July, so I wanted plenty of time to peruse everything and get ready early. I also wanted to buy before the big homeschool conference around here, which was in mid-May; if I couldn't find something used for a price I wanted to pay, I could have gotten it at the CHAP convention, because a lot of vendors seemed to have some discounted prices. Amazon also makes it really easy and cheap -- it's really hard to beat their prices sometimes, new or used. I've bought some items here, but I've also had really great success buying stuff on homeschoolclassifieds.com, so I'd recommend trying there too.

My older kids have worn small babies at age 6, though I've been the one to tie the carrier on and get the baby situated (most of the time -- DD did put DS2 in a mei tai once, and she did a decent job; he was a few months old and did have good head control, though), so I know the baby is safe. It's been enormously helpful to me, so I could shower, for instance, and the older kids LOVED being able to care for the baby. We also have some great pics outside of both big kids, then 6 and 9, holding DS3 at a few days old. They were very careful. I probably would not have them wear the baby in public unless I desperately needed them to, not because I don't trust them, but because I would be afraid of someone else getting worked up. ;)