I would love to hear advice on this, too! 7yo DS is homeschooled, and then we have a 16mo DD and a new DS due any day now (our #3 was a total surprise). I'm mainly thinking I'm going to have to be pretty flexible about how things go.

I'm not looking for healthy meals when I get fast food. I was annoyed when McDonald's changed their fry recipe; I eat McDonald's fries probably once a month at most, and when I do, I am fully aware that they are not the healthiest option. I'm eating them because they taste good, and if they don't taste as good--and I don't think the new ones do--then I'm disappointed. Same with the kids. We get them Happy Meals about once a month. We do not get them because they are healthy; they're a treat. I don't really care if they put in apples and smaller fries, because both of my kids like apples and don't eat all their fries anyway, but I don't think it's really necessary, either.

I don't know how true this is, but I know my DH has said something along the lines of reading something indicating that, if people lived long enough, everybody would get Alzheimer's. The brain would just start breaking down that way, inevitably, after a certain point.

I'd love to be able to shop for fresh items daily.

Rates of Alzheimer's go up dramatically as one ages. I think the thing we're "doing wrong" is living longer. My husband is a neuroscientist and I know he mentioned to me one time that a huge, huge percentage of people over 90 have some form of dementia.

I'm not really sure how to answer. I'm not a super-visual person. I'll certainly notice if a man is very attractive, and appreciate his beauty, but it's pretty unusual for me to feel anything more than an aesthetic appreciation based on physical appearance; it doesn't usually arouse sexual/lustful thoughts in me.

I have an Oster Beehive and I love it. It's very, very simple but does the job.

I'd also go with "not ready." Handwriting has been by far my biggest struggle with my DS. I wish I hadn't pushed it so much. From about 5 on, he'd willingly write certain things for fun (notes, lists, stories), but doing handwriting practice always resulted in tears, frustration, anger, etc. Or, he'd just rush through it sloppily. His handwriting was horrible. He'd use a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters depending on which form was easiest for him, letters were different sizes and irregularly spaced, etc. He turned 7 in May, and it's just been in the last maybe two months that we've seen really significant improvements in his handwriting. And, the funny thing is that I've really eased up on formal handwriting instruction. But he was making a list the other day, and DH and I looked at it and were shocked. His letters were all in the right case, they were similar sizes, and they were very legible. I think he was just lacking the fine motor skills for a while. And, he's actually started to show an interest in handwriting, which is especially surprising. He's really eager to learn cursive. Now that it's not so difficult for him, he's not as averse to it. One thing DS really liked doing, that got him writing, was writing in a journal at night, and then my responding. He was allowed to spend 10-15 minutes before bed writing, he could bring the journal to me, and then I'd write a reply for him to read the next morning. He really loved doing that, and he still sometimes writes in a journal and then asks me to write back. So something like that might be a good way to encourage some handwriting without putting too much formal emphasis on it before he's ready.

Maybe they had a rough day with the kids, or the kids were really mad about being left with a sitter or something. I told DH the other day that DD (who is 16 months old) hates me after a really tough day with her. Now, if they said "We hate their guts," that would get me concerned. ;)

I don't get it, either. It's not like public schools are raking in profits. They're struggling to educate the kids they have with the money they have. If you bring in more kids, you're only going to bring in a proportional amount of money, you know? Let's say the school received $10 for each student (I know that's wildly inaccurate, but this is a hypothetical). They have 20 students, so $200. And they're struggling to educate 20 students on $200. How would having 22 students to educate on $220 make the situation any better? It just doesn't make sense to me.

The same, I'm sure, could be said of most Islamic extremists who commit acts of terror: they aren't motivated by a deep or thoughtful understanding of Muslim theology and practice, but rather are attracted to Islam because they see it as an outlet for their anti-Western sentiments. They are more anti-West than pro-Islam, just like this man seems to have been more anti-Islam than pro-Christian. If we're going to argue that this man wasn't really a Christian, then I think we have to say that Muslim terrorists aren't really Muslims.

I've never heard of that happening. It seems silly. There are so many overcrowded schools with very poor facilities. More kids enrolled does not equal better schools due to more funding. I'm pretty sure, though, that a lot of the reason why DS's charter school was so reluctant to have me pull him was because he was scoring really, really high on the standardized tests they gave. He was in the advanced kindy class, and his scores were like 40 points higher than the next highest-scoring student. They were willing to make all kinds of concessions they wouldn't have normally made--like letting me enroll him only half time--to get him to stay, and I'm cynical enough to be pretty sure that it was simply because he was bringing up the test scores. I have a friend who had a cousin who the same thing happened to in high school. He was going to leave school to be homeschooled, but he performed very, very well on standardized tests, and the school resorted to everything short of bribery to try to get him to stay.

Roman 8.38-39: For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The church I attend is a joint Episcopal/ELCA congregation. The pastor is ordained in both denominations. I'm having the same issue with our church not being very kid-friendly, though. Well, it's not that it's not kid-friendly--everybody loves the kids. But there is nothing for them: no Sunday school, very few other kids, not even a place to take them if they get restless during the service. It's frustrating. I've been attending an Evangelical Covenant Church nearby (where a few of our friends go) with the kids, simply because it's got a lot more kids' programs and, while it's significantly more conservative than I am, it's at least still liturgical and their children's ministry doesn't present anything I find totally wrong. But I'm really looking forward to being able to get back to the Episcopal Church when the kids are old enough to sit through and get something out of a service (or to moving and find a more family-friendly Episcopal congregation).

I took my 7yo. He was fine. He doesn't like movies with real violence, and gets upset about it, but "magic" violence doesn't bother him.

My mind wanders when I'm doing math with my DS.

I'm just going to go with my standard recommendation: get her a copy of Health at Every Size. It is life-changing. If you want to encourage truly health habits, without putting the emphasis on body size, it's the way to go. We don't know much about how to change people's natural body size, except that one almost-surefire way to make people fatter than they'd naturally be is to put them on a diet. Nearly everybody (over 98%) who diets gains back what they lost within 5 years, and more than half of those people gain back everything plus at least 10% more with every diet. Weight loss dieting is, in most cases, going to push people's natural weight set point up past where it would have been otherwise, and the younger you start, the more diets you'll be on that will mess up your metabolism. So if somebody is interested in "watching their weight," then not dieting is probably the smartest thing you can do.

My DS7 did the same thing this winter! He had a bad cold, and then for about a month afterwards, he kept making this snort sound. It was driving us insane. After reminding him he was doing it about a million times, he finally stopped.

:iagree: Especially if they know you are searching. If they want to hide stuff, they'll find places to hide it.

I think we've got around 900 sq. ft. We have two adults and two kids with one more coming soon.

Our main library has a DVD room that is very well-stocked. It's the main library of a major city's library system, though, so I think that's to be expected.

And, in general, the results are not good. I know that a large study was just done in Detroit showing that students in charter schools (not exactly the same as a voucher system, but something promoted by "school choice" proponents) perform the same or worse than students in the public school system here. There is simply no evidence to back the contention that a voucher system or more "school choice" would improve education.

This is definitely true at my branch library. But, the branch library really only has children's books, resources for the blind and visually impaired, and a single shelf of adult fiction, so that's not too surprising. It's really only kids and teens who check out books there, and most people do use it for the computers. At the main branch, though, there's always lots of people checking out books.

I'd probably go with khakis or black pants and button-down shirts.

No running. In our branch library, which doesn't have a separate room for the children's section, it's quiet voices only. In the main library, which does have a children's room, it's okay to use a normal indoor voice.