Probably some genetic predisposition, but *for me,* it's because I have a huge sweet tooth, and sugar is cheap and easy and addicting.

Unrelated to any specific post, just *how* easy is it for someone to sit back and do nothing, but still collect? I mean those who are not volunteering, not working, not enrolled in an educational program, not applying for jobs, not caring for young children/homeschooling older kids. In my state, that's not easy; if your kids are over the age of 5, you have to be showing that you're doing *something* (school, applying for jobs, etc.). How many people really are out there doing absolutely nothing? There are always going to be some people who take and don't ever give/intend to give, but I really have a hard time imagining that it is so widespread. We also need to make it possible to give yourself a hand up if you can get one. People right on the edge get food stamps and healthcare -- but if they get even the smallest raise, they actually lose, because those benefits disappear, and the after-tax raise isn't enough to cover the loss of benefits. If you manage to save a small amount, or sell something, you can't save for a better living situation or for an emergency medical expense that isn't covered (because not all states have low-income medical care for non-pregnant, non-disabled adults) or for a vehicle repair so that you can get to your job, because they'll assume you can buy food and take away your food stamps. Where's the incentive to try harder (if that's even possible -- I believe that a lot of people right now ARE trying as hard as they can)?

The P foods may help with the constipation -- peaches, pears, plums, prunes. That's what we used to give the little girl I took care of for a few years. Oh, and mandarin oranges helped her too.

Those are very cute -- thanks for sharing them! I don't think my DD10 will go for them; she probably wants something more jewelry-like (and she'd need two of those ones, since she's allergic to penicillin and bee stings). But those look like a great option for camp or somewhere where jewelry might not be a good idea, so I might get one for her anyway.

Totally normal for largely-breastfed babies to have infrequent poops! As long as he's not in pain with them, and they're nice and soft, that's what matters. Looking at his pic again, really, he does not look underweight to me. His face is nice and full, cheeks look nicely kissable, looks like he has a bit of a chub roll under his chin. He looks like he has a nice fat layer around his ankles, elbows, wrists. He looks very healthy to me, and actually, he looks very similar to my 12-month-old (down to the same shoes, LOL). You and your doctor know your baby the best, of course, and I'm not giving medical advice, but he looks normal to me, just starting to show the normal transition from baby to toddler body type. And goodness, he is cute!

"Ascent" is a noun; "ascend" is a verb. You "ascend" the stairs; your "ascent" went smoothly when you didn't fall.

I would think something about the formula did not agree with him, and I'd be inclined to try a different formula. If it happened while breastfeeding as well, I'd think dairy allergy, probably. Might also try a different nipple style and see if maybe there is something funny about his mouth shape, like a high palate, which could be causing an insufficient seal around the nipple, thus causing him to take in more air, which can cause gas. Massaging his tummy and bicycling his legs may help with the gas.

I know nothing about cows, but I can tell from your posts that your family loves your animal friends; this part made me cry. I'm sure it's all part of the deal with animals, I'm sorry for the loss, especially for your daughter. She sounds tough, out there digging a hole in rainy weather. :grouphug:

All of mine are obsessed with Star Wars, even the girl. Even the baby thinks it's great when they hand him a light saber. They have many duels, spend hours creating Jedi outfits (whole personas, even), researching very esoteric SW characters, you name it. I'm a tad tired of it. :)

No, it's not. That wasn't directed specifically toward your comment about community service, but it was a general comment, as this thread is starting to head down the road of "who's entitled to help and how poor do they have to be," so my reminder is just that we need to be understanding toward other people and realize that we don't know all of their circumstances. :)

Okay, I suppose that is true, depending on what "community service" it is. Soup kitchen sort of thing -- yes, probably. I always think of "community service" as something a bit, um, less pleasant, like picking up trash from a road. I would not want to do that while watching four young children. But I know I inquired a while ago about helping at our local library (they had a sign, requesting volunteers to help reshelve books and such), and they wouldn't take children at all.

Not to mention, who is going to watch the young children of the people who are doing community service? Pretty sure that if you're needy enough to get food stamps/etc., you can't pay for daycare for hours you're not actually working. There are so many families out there who aren't trying to abuse the system; they're just struggling to pay for the basics that they were able to afford a few years ago, before their jobs/hours/salaries got cut, before prices on everything went up, before their homes' equities disappeared, etc. Please, people, be gentle to your fellow parents.

I think they only grow so big, but I'm not sure about that. I think 10-gallon might be pushing it for reasonable size, but 15 might be big enough. Really not sure though. Food costs about $6 or $7 a month. If you buy food every 4 weeks, that might be pushing it a bit; I think it depends on whether the crickets will last that long or not. You might want to look into whether you could feed frozen food in a pinch (not sure). 2 weeks should be no problem, or at least it hasn't been for ours; she's fine for several days if she runs out of food. (However, she's also full-grown and has a sizeable fat store in her tail. I'd probably want to be more cautious with a baby, to make sure we didn't run out of food. We were in a completely different locale when ours was a baby, so I don't remember what our food-buying routine was back then.)

Oh, so good! (Except that I find it tricky to get it just right -- done and crispy but not burned, and not limp. Any tips?)

We cut it into small pieces, spread olive oil and salt on it, and roast it for a few minutes until it's crispy, like chips.

I write a note to each school-aged child, welcoming him/her to the new year and grade, expressing my joy at teaching them, etc., and these are waiting at their places at breakfast. They love these and save them to refer back to them. This year, our 3yo had a note too, and he was so, so thrilled to be able to be a School-aged Child along with his older siblings. :) We also do a "first day of school photo" with all of the children.

It was a light bookwork day today. My chlldren (thank you SWB and SOTW1) spent a bunch of time (between trips back inside because of the heat) outside, building a hut and pretending to be ancient people, gathering berries from our bushes and putting on very simple clothing. DD spent a while working on a cardboard stable she's building for her collection of Schleich horses, complete with blankets and bridles. DS1 spent a long time making some sort of book, with paper, staples, glue, and scissors. There was a start of a game of War, some playing with trucks, some independent book-reading, and the daily light saber duels. Long live imagination!

We've had a leopard gecko for six years. She is super low maintenance. It took a little bit of time to get to know her patterns at first, but she's really easy. We get her 30 large crickets every couple of weeks and dole them out a few at a time. We have also given her mealworms and waxworms at times, but they're trickier, as they don't keep as well as the crickets. (You do have to feed the crickets too.) She can easily go for several days without food, though, and she'll be just fine. (In the winter, particularly, she tends to hide, almost hibernate.) DH cleans her aquarium occasionally, but not all that often (hmm, I should remind him that it's probably time to do it again). The aquarium is lined with paper towels. Ours has a large aquarium (there used to be two, but one died a few years ago) with a mesh screen lid that slides off for feeding. It has one or two heating pads, so that part of the space is warm, and there is also a light that is above it, to act as the sun, with a branch under it so she can climb out and bask. She does! She has a water dish (they don't drink a ton but need some), and a couple of things where she can hide; one is a rock with holes, and one is a homemade contraption (out of a clean plastic container) with something called Bed-a-beast, I think. I think she also has a coconut shell where she can hide. (Some of them are in warmer spaces in the aquarium, some in cooler.) I'm being a little vague, I know, but DH handles all of the care for her, and he's tweaked things a bit over the years, so I'm a little fuzzy. I believe there are gauges to monitor the heat and humidity, too, so he's spent some time adjusting heating pads, lights, etc. to get them optimal. (Okay, I just asked him; he has the light set to come on for about 12 hours and then go off for 12, so it mimics a day-night cycle.) The gecko seems perfectly happy, and she's fairly social. She comes out when she hears DH open the top, and it's fun to watch her bask, chase food, even shed. We picked a leo because DD was really into lizards for a while, and the leos are low maintenance, but social. I detest snakes with an absolute passion, but I think the gecko is cute. She looks like she's smiling a lot. :) Also, they are not climbing geckos, so they're a little easier for kids to hold (which we've helped DD do occasionally). The setup is a little expensive at first, but probably not any worse than a lot of pets, and the upkeep is inexpensive. We asked a lot of questions from an independent pet store and bought a couple of basic "how to care for your gecko books," which you can probably find a lot of places. We did buy our first leo from the independent pet store, but it died after about six weeks. So we ended up going to PetCo and buying two; one lasted a couple of years, and the other is six and doing very well. ETA: DH says our aquarium is a 20-gallon, which is big, but with all the toys she has, it's about right (and it was okay for two). :) He also says it's not a coconut shell (that was for when she was younger), but it's a coconut fiber tube that she has for hiding. We just keep ours in a regular room, neither particularly dark nor particularly light; the "sun" lamp takes care of making sure it's warm enough for her. IIRC, bearded dragons were the other good recommendation. I think we opted for the leo because it was a little less expensive, plus it's pretty cool to watch them grow from babies to adults, to see their patterns emerge.

If it makes you feel better, my babies all start out on the larger side and drop off by the end of the first year. They grow a lot in the first six months, but slower from months 6-12, and most of them have been pretty much fully breastfed at 12 months. DH and I were both slender children, so we expect that we won't have huge kids. (Fwiw, my 7yo is very slender, and I worry about his lack of reserves, but he's very healthy and hardly ever sick.) Your little guy looks okay to me (your boys are both adorable!), and I think milestones are the most important things to consider anyway. But if you are concerned, I would try egg yolks, avocadoes, starchier veggies like carrots and sweet potatoes, olive and coconut oil, smoothies with coconut milk if you don't want to risk dairy, olives, chickpeas and other beans (maybe), ground beef. . .

Creamy cheese. Yum. Cucumbers/peppers/carrots with dip. This is my favorite, because it's sweet but not sugary, and it has a satisfying crunch. PB with apple slices. I don't like chocolate that is dark enough to be acceptable on a low-carb diet. :P I reallllllly like ice cream, so if it's something that I can eat with a spoon, that sometimes helps. Hence the creamy cheese. But I should try sweetening plain yogurt with stevia and maybe adding some berries to see if that satisfies the same craving. Or make my own frozen yogurt/ice cream with stevia as the sweetener.

I "only" have four children, but I understand your perspective. I don't leave my children either, and certainly not a one-year-old frequently nursing baby. I also am not a mani/pedi/facial sort of person, nor do I like shopping. However, if my husband had that kind of perk available, I could see leaving the older children and taking just the baby. I'd probably try to budget for one nice meal (not so fancy that I couldn't bring the baby with me, but nice enough to be special), and I'd look for free/cheap things that DH and I could do (and I'd be packing my Ergo or a wrap or both for taking the baby with us). If nothing else, it would be a vacation to have just one child to care for, put to bed, etc., not to worry about dishes or tidying up or anything like that for a couple of days.

:iagree: Oh, yes. In fact, any time people disparage your family's choice to homeschool, step in and back up your wife. But especially with your side of the family.

Cod liver oil -- 1/2 tsp. for each child over the age of 2, 1 tsp. for myself, but I haven't given it this summer. We'll start it again toward the end of the summer. We use the Nordic Naturals strawberry and orange flavors. Vitamin D3 -- 1000 IU for the 3yo, 2000 IU for the 7yo, 3000 IU for the 10yo, and 4000-5000 IU for me, but again, not in the summer. Vitamin C and olive leaf -- don't do those.

I don't entertain them all day long. They play and amuse themselves. I facilitate schoolwork and will play with them some, but mostly, they play on their own. We don't do a billion programs or outings. We did ballet until finances prevented that, and if I can ever find a reasonable sports sort of program that works, we'll try that. We do co-op during the school year, and we generally try to keep outings to one day a week, occasionally two. My children have a yard, plenty of toys (educational and otherwise), books, art supplies, a keyboard, and siblings. They're not lacking for stuff to do.

Lots of good advice here. I would add "be the principal." Be your wife's backup. If she says something needs to be done, enforce that. Especially as your kids get older, sometimes they complain at having to do work that stretches their brains; it's really helpful to me that DH backs me up. If you're interested in researching curricula, that's great! But no matter how great a program is, or how interesting it is for you, it has to match the teaching style of the teacher and the learning style of the children, so if it doesn't work for your wife, be amenable to her using something else. Or make it a subject you take over in the evenings/weekends. Accept that your wife has the same 24 hours a day that you do, and she's trying to fit a lot into that time, especially with young children around. Sometimes she can't fit everything in, so be patient and flexible. :)