I was talking about the WEA alerts - it's not an app but something else - it overrides any silent setting on your phone when they come in. I might have to look into the noaa weather radio app, though, because the weather.com app we have isn't all that reliable wrt timely notification.

When I grew up, it was common and accepted for kids to sit and quietly listen to adult conversation. It wasn't so much "adult-only" adult conversation, but conversation mostly *by* adults. But it was open to anyone interested, adult or otherwise - it wasn't private conversation. I do the same thing - I don't consider a conversation open to any interested adult to be *limited* to adults so much as *aimed* at adults - so if my kids want to quietly listen, they can. I only send them to go play if they are getting antsy, and it's usually more of an invitation - you are *free* to go play - than a "you *must* go play" order. It never occurred to me that open-to-all-comers adult conversation was private in any meaningful sense.

Dh just got a new phone that is capable of receiving mobile alerts, and they *don't* go off for severe thunderstorm warnings (by design, because of how frequent severe thunderstorm warnings are in some areas - like ours). Our push notifications for weather alerts just make a small "ding" - you only hear it if you are in the room - it's not waking anyone up. The weather radio is our only option for a loud, wake-people-up alert for severe thunderstorm warnings. And it wakes the kids just as effectively as the adults :doh. I just asked dh what he thought, and he'd rather be woken up for severe thunderstorm warnings. So maybe on active nights we can turn off the alarm for severe thunderstorms till *we* go to bed or something.

We're on the edges of tornado alley, and right now we do have our weather radio set to go off for severe thunderstorm warnings. But I'm rethinking that. Our county is big, and half of our severe thunderstorm warnings have nothing to do with us. The one that just went off is for a storm that we would never have known existed if it weren't for the radio going off - it's way to the east of us and is going east. And on active nights, the radio could go off a dozen times for severe thunderstorms (we tend to get three or more warnings per storm as it moves across the county), and I get tired of the constant adrenaline jolt, the kids screaming "is it a tornado!?!" and hearts racing till we can walk over to the radio and confirm it's not a tornado warning. My criteria for weather radio alerts is "things I want to be woken up for", and when we got the radio I thought I wanted to be woken up for severe thunderstorm warnings (I was beyond freaked at the thought of severe storms at the time). But I *don't* want the kids woken up for them (which invariably happens, and then they can't get back to sleep, and stay up watching the storm with us, quietly freaked). And during the day I'm tired of all the ones that don't apply to us getting everyone worked up. So I'm thinking about turning off severe thunderstorm warnings. We'd still get push notifications on our phones/tablets, so when awake we'd probably notice. And if the sky looks threatening, we could go see if the red warning light was flashing. And then we could have less weather radio alerts and know that the ones we get are more serious. Thoughts? Things I'm not thinking of?

As someone who does that (throw my hair in to a bun and call it a day), I think part of it is that my hair is very long, and it's not blunt cut, but tapers down. Fairy tale ends, I've seen it called. It can be hard to have fairy tale ends look nice when you wear your hair down (takes a lot more split end trims than I give mine), but those tapered ends wrapped several times around a bun anchor it like nothing else. I actually sometimes forget to put in my hair clip (those lovely Lilla Rose clips mentioned above) and I don't even notice for hours. It doesn't work like that for my dds, who have mid-back, blunt cut hair. Their buns can't hold themselves, and my oldest dd's hair, which is thicker than my middle dd's (and so doesn't taper as much), can have a lot of ends sticking out, which makes it hard to clip firmly. I can get middle dd's hair into a firmly-held bun with two smallish claw clips, but not oldest dd's. Oldest dd's hair holds better if I do a half-up bun, and then wrap the lower part of her hair around that bun - the skinnier, longer twists make for a more secure bun, with less ends sticking out. Sock buns also work really well with shorter hair that falls out of a regular bun. Here's a good video tutorial: though it uses a purchased bun form instead of making one from a sock (and that size bun form on a pre-teen girl's head makes for a *large* bun). This tutorial shows how to use an old sock to make the bun form: and it also shows how to use hair spray and a curling iron to get everything extra sleek (it never occurred to me to do that, and I wouldn't except when extra perfect sleekness counts, but it was interesting to see).

Wrt "is long enough to tuck behind the ears enough to keep it out of my face", based on my oldest dd's experience my answer is "not really". She cut some wispies to frame her face - too long to go into a ponytail, but long enough to go behind the ears. And she is *constantly* re-tucking them behind her ear. Doesn't bother her - she cut them that way, after all - but they do fall into her face all. the. time. Wrt controlling wispies when your hair is back, I've had good luck using a bit of aloe vera gel. My dds' hair have tons of wisps that go nuts approximately 5 seconds after I pull it back, and aloe gel was enough to hold it all day for dance recitals. I like aloe gel, because you don't need to wash it out - it's both good for hair, and the hold is rather gentle - you can just comb it out when you take your hair down. But it's enough to hold my dds' wisps back and keep their dance buns looking sharp. I wear a bun every day (my hair's longer, though - between mid thigh and knee length). I started wearing it on top of my hair instead of at the nape or crown - so it's visible from the front - and it looks 100% better on me than when all you could see was my slicked back hair. (That's not true for everyone, but it was for me. And it looks different enough it's basically an entirely different style. Also, making *different* bun styles is nice for a change. Although 99% of time I wear the same basic cinnamon bun ;).) My kids always ask what's the point of my having long hair when I wear it up all the time - well, being *able* to wear it up is a major point. I have no idea how to do short hair and I can do a bun in the time it takes to do a "quick" short hairstyle (5 min), so the only reason to go short is because I want a short style. But then I'd lose the ability to do long styles.

Only if I or a trusted adult was there to be sure that the safety rules were being enforced. And if I could trust my dc to recognize when rules were being broken and to immediately get themselves away from the rule-breaking situation. Friends of ours had a dd who ended up with a compound fracture (arm) because of an accident at a trampoline park - an accident that involved at least two violations of the safety rules. It happened because a much bigger boy jumped on the same trampoline as her, and somehow she fell and he jumped on her arm. He never should have been in the same section, and he shouldn't have been on the same trampoline. When dh took the youth group there, I was pretty nervous *without* any of our kids going, and he promised to keep an eagle eye out for rules violations. (No one was hurt on the trip.) I admit I cannot be rational about the risks - my mom (physical therapist) treated a kid who was a quadriplegic after a home trampoline accident, and the story sticks with me. What I'd want to do is say absolutely not; I maybe (or maybe not) could compromise on watching them with an eagle eye to ensure no rules violations - because after our friends' dd's accident, I don't trust the trampoline place to enforce their own rules. But honestly I'd be a wreck the whole time, because right or wrong, trampolines trigger my anxiety big time. And honestly I don't think jumping on trampolines is important enough, although other aspects surrounding a proposed trampoline trip might be.

I budget $600/yr, with three kids (but this is the first year I'm actually buying for three). So far it's been fine for elementary. I've been reusing curricula with the younger kids, which helps a lot. And also I've been putting money into the homeschool budget since dd1 was a baby, and built up quite a stash of things before we even started :blush:. And I buy used online, usually older editions when I can find them at a steep discount, and hit library sales, and such. The $600 covers curricula, books, manipulatives, and most school supplies; music lessons and museum trips and such don't come out of the hs budget. Also I have an amazon credit card, and I put most everything on it, so that gives me an extra $10/mo or so in amazon points. Most years I spend half in the summer before the school year starts, and the other half as things come up during the year. This year I finished with nearly $100 left over (most years the budget is used up by Feb/Mar). One thing I've noticed is that curricula gets pricey, but "real" books are relatively cheap used. I've gotten 20-odd books on a topic for $100-$120; do that every year for 10 years in different areas, and you build up a nice reading library :). Eta: generally, I feel like me and my budget fall in the middling range. I can afford most book-centered curricula, and my habit of buying used means I can stretch my budget to cover a lot, including the occasional pricey new curriculum. But otoh, right now outsourcing is pretty much way out of my budget, so idk how that's going to go in the future.

Lutheran here - I've always understood "Reformed" to refer particularly to the Calvinistic branch of the Reformation, not to both the Calvinistic branch and the Lutheran branch. Also, I thought a sizable chunk of the Reformed practiced infant baptism - at the very least, I thought most all Presbyterians did? But I have no idea the ratio of Presbyterians to other Reformed churches. At least for Lutherans (and Catholic and Orthodox), we do believe that God gives salvation through baptism, and we do consider baptized infants to be fellow believers. For us baptism is first and foremost *God's* commitment to the child. What you wrote matches how I've seen (Calvinistic) Reformed beliefs about infant baptism described, though.

Two from Winnie the Pooh: Pooh: "You never can tell with bees." Eeyore: "You're a good friend, Pooh - not like some." (I don't know why, but the P/A horribleness of that line makes me laugh every time.)

If it's a traditional IRA, the taxable amount is figured on an 8606 (according to my mom).

When we were at that stage - dd's phonics skills could decode hundreds of words yet she couldn't read most readers because of all. the. blankety-blank. sight. words :mad: (also at the end of first) - I went ahead and went through ElizabethB's "teach sight words phonetically" page that summer. It was kind of frustrating (for me), because it was a lot more effort to learn 20 words with eight different phonics patterns than it was to learn one phonics pattern by going through 20 words. But it did wonders for dd's ability to read real-world stuff and her overall reading confidence. We then went back to working through our phonics book. So I guess that was option e combined with option a.

WRT Mother Gothel, I think my kids got that she was a "bad guy" from the start, even from age 2-3. She's introduced as being generally selfish and kidnaps baby Rapunzel, so they were primed to see her as "bad" even when she was pretending (creepily) to be "good". I don't think they ever saw her as anything *but* bad - she wasn't really a hidden bad guy like Hans, because the *audience* was always aware she was bad, even if Rapunzel didn't know that. WRT Flynn, well, imo the movie is pretty morally confused on him :-/ - he's a thief with a heart of gold, and generally the "heart of gold" part trumps the "thief" part wrt the good guy/bad guy question. I'm pretty sure my kids saw him as the lovable-flawed-hero he was meant to be - and yeah, that means that the moral wrongness of his thievery (and all the other crimes committed by the rest of the lovable-rogues) were entirely overlooked by the kids - as the movie also pretty well overlooked them. They were all just "good guys" <sigh>. WRT Hans - I think they got pretty well he was a bad guy after the reveal, even my then-3yo, and they seemed to retain it upon further watching - no one, even the little one, seemed to forget that. My younger kids have had problems with spy-type shows, where there are multiple apparent shifts in loyalty (good, then double-crosses the good guys, then turns out to be a triple-cross, betraying the bad guys; or the reverse where a bad guy then seems good, but then is bad again). They can handle *one* switch in loyalty - from apparent bad to really good, or apparent good to really bad - but that's it. Any further shifts back and forth just confused and upset them. (We stopped watching those shows with them around after we realized that.) But even at a young age, they had no problems understanding and retaining *one* switch.

A bit different, but I also turned down a chance for my girls to try out for the competition team at our studio (though we continued with the studio at recreation level). At the time it was because the competition schedule for the upcoming year included both weekends of Holy Week (the weekend of Palm Sunday, and the following Good Friday/Holy Saturday/Easter Sunday weekend); I'm not going to *plan* to miss the highest Holy Days of the year for anything. I felt really uneasy about it, though - didn't want to be holding them back or anything. But in the past few years, I've grown more comfortable with being a family that just isn't going to be a competition dance family. It might close off dance-related doors, but it's not going to ruin their future as *good adults*. I came to terms with the reality that we *can't* do all the good things that are out there to do, and that doesn't have to be a tragedy. We can appreciate living in a world where those good things exist, and appreciate the impressive results of talent and effort, without pursuing that level of performance ourselves; aka, I can appreciate good things without needing to *have* those good things. We're putting the most important things first, and if that means we have to turn down some good opportunities, because they would conflict with the most important things - then it's a trade-off, it comes with costs - but they are costs that are ultimately worth it. It's given me some peace about deliberately not pursuing dance-related excellence at a competition level - because we are instead deliberately pursuing a more fundamental excellence. ETA: I agree with pp that I wouldn't think taking a year off at this age would matter wrt closing off serious dance study, but I don't have first-hand knowledge. My second-hand understanding is that starting at age 7 or 8 is generally fine. Also, I agree with a pp that serious ballet and competition dance are two different (and mostly non-overlapping) paths.

To me it sounds like he wants contradictory things (as do many of us): he wants to be successful but he doesn't want to do some of un enjoyable bits that go into being successful. He wants you to help him get those difficult/unpleasant bits done, excepting for the times when he doesn't want to do those things (and so gets annoyed with you for pushing). But he doesn't want you to stop helping, because he *does* want to succeed and wants your help in making succeeding easier. Except that "easier" isn't the same thing as "easy", and while he wants to succeed in theory, in practice his desire to avoid the unpleasantness is stronger than his determination to succeed. Or at least that was me in college. I wanted to succeed while also prioritizing doing things that gave me pleasure over things that didn't. Prioritizing "play" (that which gives pleasure) over "work" (that which doesn't) doesn't have to mean defaulting to easy, low-effort forms of play like video games; it can involve doing quite a lot of good, productive, effort-ful things. But ime it still erodes self-discipline and really hurts long-term success. In my case I was well aware of the problem and welcomed help in solving it - until it came down to actually making the hard choice to tackle the unpleasant task, in which case I found some reason or other to put it off. And did my best to avoid the people who were providing help in the form of accountability. Until I either did it at the last minute or failed to do it - so in either case it was over - and recommitted to doing what it took to succeed. Until it came down to doing the hard task, and I started the whole procrastination cycle again. I refused to give up either side - I was determined to both succeed and yet continued to refuse to do the hard bits that went into succeeding - and eventually drove myself into a depression over it. I later realized that I wanted help to make it easier to do the unpleasant things, only no amount of help could make it *pleasant* - and I was very much in the habit of only doing things that were pleasant. (It took the looming threat of deadlines and failure to meet deadlines to spur me to doing unpleasant things - that usually were pleasant enough once I got going (except for the immense time crunch stress).) And so I welcomed help-that-makes-things-pleasant-or-easier, and help-that-removes-obstacles - but not help-with-working-through-obstacles. Because I didn't *want* to work through obstacles, it wasn't *pleasant* to work through obstacles - so I'd put it off till later, and later again, until I magically felt up to dealing with obstacles or they went away. And most school deadlines, when you fail to deal with them, they *do* go away. There's consequences, of course, but in the short term they felt easier to deal with than the obstacle itself. Idk, I just see myself in your description of your son: both wanting to succeed while not wanting to deal with the more unpleasant obstacles on the path to success, and the contradictory desires fighting with each other - and with you. :grouphug:

I don't record *all* my reading, but I do try to keep a reading log of what I read for my amateur research project (which is basically all the non-fiction I've read - it all ties in one way or another). Most of the worthwhile books I read I end up writing about in my reading journal, so that's the main way I record them. I try to jot down titles of journal articles in my reading journal, to keep track of them, but that's been hit or miss, unfortunately.

Yes, that's the one.

Does she do well with computations in real life? I was assuming her test scores were accurately reflecting her computational skills, but this sounds like it might be just a test thing, or at least partly a test thing?

What kind of computation mistakes is she making? Are her answers reasonable: in the general ballpark of the right answer? Or are her answers sometimes wildly wrong, off by a magnitude or more? And, very importantly, can she *tell* whether her answer is reasonable or is way off? Aka, how's her number sense and estimation skills? Since she's going into medicine, I think it's important to have enough number sense and estimation ability that she can recognize whether the calculator's answer makes sense. Being able to calculate medicine doses accurately - and being able to *recognize* a nonsensical answer when you see it - are really, really important. My engineering professors got extremely upset when kids couldn't recognize that they'd forgotten to change their calculators from degrees to radians, and just blindly wrote the totally-wrong answer down without even thinking about it. The ability to judge whether an answer makes sense is important for everyone, and in your shoes, I'd work hard to help your dd develop the ability to reliably estimate and judge the reasonableness of answers, and also that she gets in the habit of *always* double-checking her work for reasonableness. (If she's always been bad at computation, she might just assume she's getting most of them wrong no matter what, and not really try to check her work, figuring it doesn't matter anyway. That's how my oldest was with spelling: she knew she was going to get it wrong, so she just slapped down any old thing to get it over with and moved on, not bothering to double-check it, because it was going to be wrong no matter how much effort she put in, so she might as well give minimal effort and end the frustration faster, since the end result was the same either way.) My surface understanding is that if her issues with computation are due to v/s or something not-math LD related, then developing good number sense and estimation skills so she can accurately judge the reasonableness of an answer is probably an achievable goal. You connected v/s and not being good at pesky memory things to her issues with computation: is that because she misremembers math facts and that's why she gets things wrong, or because she can't remember the steps of the procedures? Does she do any better if she has math fact tables? Or if she has the steps of all the procedures written down and can reference them as she does the problems? From my limited experience with my dyslexic v/s oldest (who is weaker computationally than conceptually, but not to the extent of your dd), once she's grasped the overall conceptual point, if I walk her through each step of the procedure and explicitly connect it to the overall point, she usually has little trouble remembering the order of the procedure. Procedures with a lot of steps, a lot of "moving parts", can cause trouble, especially because she can get nine bits right out of ten and still get the overall answer wrong. (Her mistakes are usually getting math facts wrong (and memorizing them is coming slowly).). So her issues are usually how one small error makes the whole thing wrong, and that her computation number sense is limited by her iffy memory of facts: she just doesn't see the right answer at a glance, and sometimes over complicates the problem (adding more moving parts and so more chances to make a computation error) because of it. Anyway, this sounds to me like an analogous situation to "learning to spell well enough to use a spellchecker effectively": get your number sense and estimation skills strong enough that you can recognize wrong answers, esp. very wrong answers, when you see them, and be able to effectively do something about it - that you can factcheck not just *your* computations, but factcheck the calculator's, too.

My oldest dd is similarish, in that physically writing was a challenge for several years (and maybe still is, but overall she's vastly improved, so that it's not an obvious issue anymore), which caused problems with writing math down. *And* she had problems putting her thinking into words even orally - she could intuitively get the answer, but it was the work of several years to teach how to *explain* her thinking to me (whether orally or written). So telling me her thinking orally was also hard. Aka writing down her math work was hard for both handwriting reasons and thinking reasons. But the handwriting difficulty definitely motivated her to not want to write anything more than necessary. I think half of our getting-math-done difficulties deal with focus issues stemming from her avoiding the *writing* part of math. (Turned out a major factor in her difficulties with SM's intensive practice was the *lack of sufficient room to write her answers* (part of her difficulties meant that she couldn't write small). I got her a graph paper notebook to use to show her work whenever she needed more room, and things got a lot easier.) Anyway, if your ds can dictate a thorough explanation of his work (in our house, "showing your work" wrt word problems means all relevant equations, a diagram when needed, and an answer in a complete sentence; her computations can be done in her head or on paper), where you're pretty sure you aren't giving unintentional hints or clues via body language that he wouldn't have if he wrote them on his own - then it does seem like more of a physical writing issue. He *can* fully communicate his thinking in words/equations in understandable-to-others ways - he just can't do it via *writing*. (Does he have just as much difficulty writing his math on the whiteboard as he does on paper? I know for my dd, writing on the whiteboard went much better, because there was a lot more room and she could write bigger.) A book I have on dyslexia, dysgraphia, and oral and written learning disorder defines dysgraphia as impairment in letter writing skills. It can include impairments in legibility (how well others can read their writing), automaticity (how many legible letters they can form in 15sec), and speed (how long it takes to complete a writing task). It's fairly common for dysgraphic children to have difficulties in learning to spell written words. So, yeah, researching dysgraphia sounds like a reasonable starting point. HTH

I agree. When I first opened this thread, I was thinking that dh and I don't keep secrets from each other. I mean, there's things I don't tell him, but I *would*, if he asked or if they became relevant - we don't deliberately keep things back from each other. However, my dh is a pastor, and he is privy to *lots* of things that are none of my business. And he takes his promises of confidentiality seriously - he doesn't tell me anything that is explicitly or implicitly expected to remain between him and the person who told him. It never really occurred to me that "have no secrets between each other" would/should mean "tell other people's secrets that I am privy to". As pp said, if he needs to unload a little of *his* feelings and troubles wrt carrying the burden of others' problems, then he might tell me a bit with no names or specifics, but that's it. Just because I'm the pastor's wife doesn't mean I'm entitled to know what people have confided to their pastor, kwim? Maybe it helps that the *fact* that dh is keeping other people's secrets is itself *not* a secret - I know that secrets exist and their general topic (stuff unnamed people confided to their pastor). I'd do the same wrt stuff my sister or someone wanted me to keep confidential: mention to dh that she told me stuff, but that she wanted it kept confidential (if needed, I'd keep the identity of the person secret as well - leave it as an unnamed person). Kind of a middle ground between "no secrets between spouses" and "keeping others' secrets safely" - and my dh would be sworn to secrecy wrt the fact that the secret even existed (just as I am wrt anything that he alludes to).

I'm mad on your behalf for all the unnecessary trouble your bil stirred up, and your mil's understandable upsetness at having the opportunity to go dangled in front of her with no consideration for what was best for her or anyone, and that you and your dh have to deal with the fallout of that :grouphug:. In your shoes, I'd just plan that she's not going to go, because there's next to no chance that someone is going to volunteer to take her, especially with the extremely short notice involved. And honestly, I'd be strongly in favor of you and your dh just calling it now, and emailing tonight that given the original plans of the cousins and how hard getting up and going would be on your MIL, you are reverting back to the original plan of her only attending the memorial with everyone. Because, let's face it, it's what's clearly going to happen by default anyway, so might as well make life easier on everyone and be the ones to just make the decision, instead of everyone punting it back on someone else. The main difficulty that I see is your mil's upsetness over not going, but since not going is pretty much a foregone conclusion, that's going to be an issue anyway. Since you strongly feel that it's best for both you/dh *and* your mil for her to not go - and no one is going to make it happen if you don't (and you aren't) - just call it and let your dh's email be that she's not going for all the very good reasons you've outlined here.

Per the Nordstrom link for the Barracuda jeans, they are "wearable abstract art" ;). By art standards, $425 might be a steal :lol:.

My youngest had a favorite youtube music group when he was six months. He'd go to sleep on dh's lap, while dh was watching youtube videos. Dh got into this one group (Piano Guys) and watched mostly that while rocking ds for a few months. And then, around six months, ds started crying if dh tried to watch anything else but Piano Guys at bedtime. Even other music videos wouldn't do.

The way I do SM (with my older girl, doing 4B) is having two math sessions a day, one with IP or CWP (done 1 semester behind the tb/wb) and one with the tb/wb. With my younger girl, doing 2A, I do one math session a day, which can be either tb/wb only or IP only (done 1 semester behind the tb/wb) or a combo of both (and I randomly include assorted problems from CWP). If there's a lot of tb/wb work (or it's a bad math day), I just do the tb/wb; if the tb/wb is easy/fast, I throw in a few IP pages; if we haven't gotten to IP recently (or we're working through a hard IP section), I have an IP-only day. At some point we'll move to two math sessions and the same schedule as my older girl. (Also, in the past, I have assigned a page of CWP each day as an independent warmup sort of work, done roughly a semester behind.) It *is* a lot of math, though, esp for my older girl - IP for her is the time equivalent of a whole second program. So far I think it's worthwhile, and it keeps the wb easy, but it is a significant time investment for us, and my older dd complains about doing too much math on a semi-regular basis. I run all the books mostly independently of each other, and so far they haven't felt like doing IP is holding them back from progressing to the next level, because we start a new tb/wb when the old one is done, and start a new IP when the old one is done (plus IP is done as a review/extension, not as part of the main math progression). I sort of try to keep the IP at a semester behind, and I fiddle a bit to keep things on track-ish - if we get too behind I'll have a few IP-only days; if we get too ahead, I'll do CWP-only days or even tb/wb only days (or more recently, Life of Fred days - took the opportunity of being "ahead" with IP to do an actual second program) - but I don't fuss much about it. In your shoes, I think I'd choose *either* IP or EP. The Extra practice books are the same level as the workbook, and are for when you dc need, well, extra practice to master the work (or as a review, to keep things sharp). The Intensive Practice books, otoh, go further and deeper, so you are practicing your skills on more difficult problems that you've not seen before. Since your dd is bored, it sounds like she might not need the extra practice books, especially if she doesn't find the IP books too challenging. Also, you don't have to do all of everything. I generally do all the wb and IP (but I might start to rethink that wrt IP, because, as I said, it takes up a lot of our time). But I only do the practices/reviews in the tb if my dc need the practice, and I pick and choose CWP problems - for example, if a given chapter is easy for my dc, I only have them do the extra challenging ones. When things are harder for my dc, I usually take the time to provide extra teaching and practice and handholding, sufficient for them to master it, but sometimes on the harder IP problems, I count me working through the problem with my dc following along as sufficient and call it a day.