That's awesome.

I was an unpunctual person. In my family of origin, punctuality really wasn't a big deal, to the point that I didn't think being 5-10 minutes late for a doctor or dentist appointment was any type of issue. For social events, I was usually a half hour or so late. I managed to arrive at school and work on time but everything else I thought had at least a 15 minute window. I can remember the first time I arrived at a movie theater early enough to watch previews on my second date with my now husband when I was 22. Then I met my husband. He is a majorly punctual person. He shoots to be everywhere around 15 minutes early and will stress if he isn't at LEAST 5 minutes early. I realized how it felt disrespectful to him if people were late and changed how I looked at time. Now I am a very punctual person. I completely understand being late occasionally due to diaper blow outs, tantrums, traffic, what not. If someone is late EVERY single time, even if it is a doctor's office, I would take my business elsewhere if it was a professional. I guess if the person was the actual best in their business and the next level down was really subpar I would try to figure out other arrangements with the professional but otherwise I wouldn't bother. I have a new friend who operates this way and I have to figure out a way to talk to her about it. It isn't because I'm so "overscheduled" that I plan things too closely together. It is because I don't want to sit and wait for someone every single time I get together with them. This friend was recently a half an hour late to her daughter's birthday party. It was a destination party so we had to sit around and wait for her family with the other guests until she got there. And her being late made the party run over which made the next party late and so on!

If I remember correctly, not all babies crawl and crawling isn't considered a "developmental milestone" like sitting up or walking is. If they do, I think around 8 months is an average age (meaning some babies start much later). My youngest did an army one armed scoot thing starting at 10 months and walked at 15 months. He is now our most athletically gifted child! My daughter started crawling at just over 5 months and was walking by 9 months. She takes after me in our lack of gracefulness!

My 15 year old son easily got a free account at our local credit union. I had to sign as the guardian but it is in his name and they even offered him a checking account with a debit card. Something fishy is in the air. It might just be that Wells Fargo stinks (because they do!) but if it were me, I would check credit reports and Chex Systems.

We do both a and b in our family. We call them on it and acknowledge that it comes from a parent. Then we give them permission to call us on it when we are doing whatever bad habit it is. I bite my nails and my children have started to do the same thing. I call them on it, they call me on it. My husband tends to bark commands. My daughter has started to do the same thing. He calls her on it and she calls him on it. We all do use respectful words and tone when calling someone out on a bad habit though. That seems to be key.

Congratulations! My husband has just over a year in recovery this time. 20 gives us newbies hope.

Since you asked, get ready for a very long reply. I would say in our marriage we have been through h*ll and back. We have been together for 10 years, married for 9, and I would honestly say that there were more bad times than good times through a majority of it. I really love him and he really loves me but we are both from super dysfunctional families. We've separated for over 6 months shortly after my 7 year old was born, we've done counseling, I've given up on our marriage more times than I could count and just decided to stay with him for the children, he's given up on me, and so on. We've tried a lot of different things. The main thing we struggle with is the fact that he is an alcoholic and the behaviors that come along with that were often pretty darn horrible. I've gotten pretty sick mentally right along side him with the whole alcoholism stuff. I am not a saint either and have my own issues but that alcoholism has been a really doozy. When he drinks, he turns into a really nasty person who is not someone I allow into my home. He's been verbally and physically abusive when drunk towards me. The last straw was just about a year ago when I found out about him getting drunk and committing adultery. He doesn't remember anything but the girl sure did. Since then I'm not sure how we've stayed married. I did a lot of crying and soul searching. I've realized I have to be the stronger person and call him on EVERYTHING. I can't keep quiet to keep the peace anymore. He was horrible to me for the majority of last year, mainly because he felt so badly about his behavior, and then at the beginning of this year, he really started changing. Right this second, I have hope. Tomorrow at this time I might not. It is a roller coaster that I would love to get off of but my beliefs about divorce's impact on children are so strong that I feel it is my responsibilty to do everything in my power. Honestly, I think I would be an overall happier person without being married to him. I live a lot of my life without him right now. However, my children would suffer greatly and I would do anything, including stay in a really hard marriage, to keep their suffering to a minimum. No it is not ideal for them to see our marriage this way but I believe it is better than the alternative. There are days when he does little things that remind me of who he really is and why I love him. Those days are starting to be closer together. So I have hope.

We've been members of GS for two years now and have been nothing but unimpressed by their organization. Luckily we found an awesome troop and all of us have decided to stay true to the original principles of GS and steer clear of as much of the organization as possible. We've heard rumble after rumble about how they are going bankrupt? Strange stuff. I'm so sorry to hear that your daughter was shorted. Not cool at all!:grouphug:

I've gotten rid of the majority of my teenage ramblings. I keep a few notebooks as reminders of just how idiotic I was. Angst was my middle name and my slogan in life was "Death to Suburbia". My 15 yo ds has a fb page that I keep an eye on. I recently found a post that he had hidden from me about how much he hated one of his teachers (he is in ps). He immediately had his fb account deleted and we had another sit down about what constituted as an appropriate thing to be posted. Unfortunately, my 35 year old sister still has not figured out that posting certain things on FB is not advisable.

No. My oldest son goes to public high school and I really wish he was home. He plays football and baseball and I see what goes on with the sports programs. I have friends who have daughters on the cheer and dance squads and their values do not mesh with ours. It would definitely be a case by case basis.

My oldest, who is in public high school in the IB program, did not enjoy the way Shakespeare was being taught. I went out and rented (don't pelt me with tomatoes) the Baz Luhrmann version of Romeo and Juliet and it seemed to open it up for him. Seeing it in a new, more relevant way, was very helpful. Reading chapters on his own was not. After watching that movie, he went on to read a Midsummer Night's Dream and MacBeth. Unfortunately, even our local school's IB program, "thinking" is not required very often. My son recently had a 6 week project that covered multiple subjects regarding the Victorian Age. It could have been a really neat project. Instead, the way it had to be done made it into a project where the kids just regurgitated facts. I was ashamed of the effort he put into it and the end product and was sure he was going to fail. He received a "B" for it and the comments made by the teachers were asinine. :banghead:

My oldest son does this all the time. I love hearing him talk to his friends. He cracks me up!

I could understand why conditioner would be banned. We also cover her head with a swimmer's cap to try to keep the majority of the conditioner in her hair and not in the water.

One tip that I received last summer for my daughter's very long hair was to get her hair wet and saturate it in conditioner prior to her swimming. It seemed to work wonders.

:bigear:

I have a 40 something year old friend who emails me regarding personal matters with that kind of text speak. And they are usually long emails. :cursing:

We're always here for you!

I'm putting on my flame proof suit here. I found for myself that there were certain truths I could not bend on and certain truths I could. There was no way I was going to find a religion that fit me totally, that I could agree to 100%. Not a chance, except for UU and the local one didn't provide the type of community I needed for my family. I went looking for a community for my family and going through my knowledge of the main ideas for certain religions, I picked the few that seemed to be most in tune with my truths and attended various churches. When I found the church that seemed to be the best fit, I sat down with the pastor and explained where I was at. He strongly supported me questioning and seeking truth, which was how I knew I was where I needed to be. The religion I picked has a belief in participation in the community, the deep search for divine guidance, and the attempt to live faithfully in harmony with that guidance are of utmost importance and that outward statements of belief are an insufficient basis for a life of faith. We aim at an inward knowledge of the Spirit - both individually and together. The core of our faith is our living relationship with and obedience to God, not merely the rote recitation of creeds or performance of rituals. I'm taking off the suit now....

We've been with Progressive since 2003. They are much less expensive than every other company for us and I check every 6 months. We've had two accidents in the time that we've been with them (one was my husband's fault and one was a drunk driver who rear ended him) and both have been handled efficiently. Of course, you don't have the relationship with a local agent that you get with the other companies.

:grouphug: Support is very much needed when dealing with unemployment. My husband has been unemployed since shortly before Thanksgiving last year. We signed papers on our first house purchase the DAY before he was laid off. He had been assured by his employer that he would be one of the last ones to be working (his company regularly goes from 70+ employees to 3-5 in the winter as it is construction). A year ago he was laid off for 3 days but that is it. He brought in over a half million on his jobs alone last summer and was really good friends with the boss. This winter, his boss won't return his calls. Luckily, before we bought the house, we saved up a nice chunk for an emergency fund and we had some money saved for new furniture and a vacation this year. We've been living on next to nothing for the last 7 years so frugality is nothing new to us. I'm hoping that it will be a good thing for us in the long run. We ended up starting our own business. We had always planned on him owning his own business but we wanted to wait until the economy was in a better place. Having waited 4 years for that, we finally had to take the plunge. There are no jobs in his industry. None. I've been out of my industry for 7 years and there would be no way for me to go back to it at this point. So we're pretty well stuck. He has applied at all sorts of companies but things are grim around here. He is working his first job this week for his own company! And he will make enough working a three day job to pay our bills for the next two weeks. The real trick will be to make enough over summer to survive the winter.

This is where I stand. I would not send money to anyone that I did not know IRL. I've sent a lot of prayers, good thoughts and once or twice, clothes. However, I also have had a life that I choose not to tell anyone about online as it sounds like a really bad soap opera, and its ongoing. Once I become close friends IRL, I slowly let things slip. I think that colors my view that sometimes, things happen in life that you have little to no control over. And they happen in weird ways.

I grew up in a household where it was unacceptable to call attention to bodily functions such as pooting or burping. Of course, it was inevitable that it happened occasionally but if someone had one accidently slip out, everyone ignored it. In our little world, it was the same thing as saying "please" and "thank you", just good manners. And it never even crossed my mind for the longest time that people did such things ON PURPOSE! When I had my oldest son, we instituted the bathroom rule as described above (which works wonderfully). No problems there. Then I married my husband 7 years later. He grew up where his family try to out burp and out poot him, even the females. I have such a hard time when we go visit the in-laws. My children all know that potty talk belongs in the potty room. Period. And children who come over and visit follow our rules. We don't spit, we don't jump on our couches, we use inside voices, we eat at the table, and we don't potty talk unless it is in the bathroom.

Ours is opening mid June. WAHOO! It is a five minute drive from me, across the street from my normal grocery. I do feel badly for the one other natural foods store as I'm afraid that it will go out of business pretty quickly. There is no way for it to compete pricewise. ETA: I've never even been inside a TJ's. I'm going to be like those women on that old commerical, tapping on the glass and chanting "open, open, open"

Lead can be very scary. I've had friends with children who had lead poisoning and it was pretty awful. Their kids did not go around "licking walls" either. Having said that, we rented a house that was built in 1942 for 6 years before we bought our new house. The windowsills were peeling, as was the outside paint. I wiped everything down with wet rags quite often and we did paint over all spots that had peeling paint inside. We had our children tested quite often and didn't let them play in the dirt around the exterior of the house. My husband is a painter by trade and there is NO WAY he would mess with sanding (very bad idea) lead paint without the proper tools and training. Just misting it won't work. We originally put in an offer on a house built in the 60's. My husband tested the paint and there was lead paint peeling all over the exterior and interior. We made it part of our counter offer that the owner do lead abatement. He went in and tried to do it all himself, meaning there was lead paint dust and debris all over everything inside and out. Not acceptable to us. We went on to buy a much better house with no lead paint. Also know that your bank may not finance the house. I am so glad to not have to worry about it!

That is inspiring. I am continuing to lift them all up in prayer. The southern part of my family was in the path and miraculously survived, thank goodness. I just wish there was something I could do to help.