I put dinner on the table at six every day. I am a creature of habit. A few weeks ago we were 15 minutes late for some reason. The four-year-old walked up at six and said, I'M HUNGEEE! I do bedtime between 7:30 and eight because I'm done. I don't really care if the older one stays up reading, but it so happens she needs the most sleep so she usually doesn't.

Drop AAS and use Apples and Pears instead. AAS did not work for my truly terrible speller. I don't think it does for kids who just have no natural ability at all in that area. ETA: Spalding would have presented the same issues for dd as AAS does -- high investment for me (read book, learn system, manage cards and a separate notebook) and she could not internalise and apply the rules. She knew them but didn't use them. A&P does take at least ten minutes a day, but I can almost entirely check out of the process; I just read it to her and she gets nearly 100% of the words right. No @#(%*% cards or tiles or any of that stuff.

Early reading is a very limited set of skills. Mature reading is a much wider set. So it's not uncommon for a bright kid to be a terrible early reader. Once he gets over that phonics hump and reads fluently, I'd bet you'll see his reading come more into line with his general intelligence.

Each level shouldn't take a year. If you are not doing phonics practice every day, now is the time to start. DB takes 10-15 minutes, so you can manage to do it over the weekends. There are three levels. Each level has about 120 work pages. If you did one page a day (which would be a kid going struggling) you should be able to do that in just over a year. That assumes that he never gets any traction and never speeds up. ETA: When I said my second child is going to be doing DB A until the polar ice caps melt, he's actually doing a page a day. And he's barely six (he's been six for two weeks) and has much less phonics than your son has had. I probably should have started him on Bear Necessities, but I underestimated the difficulty and I didn't want him doing the same book at the four-year-old.

Moon, I don't particularly trust teachers, but I think that's probably a minority position when it comes to top-five reasons to home school. Lots of people home school and are less educated than the teachers. The CC leader is really not a tutor. She's a facilitator, kind of guiding the kids through the material. It's not something I'm interested in doing or paying for, but as long as parents don't think they're getting a subject-matter expert, it's kosher. They do CC for other reasons, but the parent is still in charge of making sure the kid learns the material.

Try demonstrating it to him and saying, "don't fall down between the letters -- hold each letter until you get to the next one!"

I think you are right to be a bit concerned. He's been doing phonics for quite awhile and I do like to see kids getting traction at that age, kwim? AAR/AAS are for typical kids. Your son sounds not quite typical in his ability to retain phonics. That's cool. My first two would have been able to handle AAR. Dancing Bears are supposedly consumable but there is very little writing and it would be easy to re-use the book. You can't do them both at the same time so it makes no difference whether they're at the same level or not. If he can't read that sentence easily, Fast Track is definitely out. You are looking at either A, or Bear Necessities. It looks easier than it is because it expects a very high level of accuracy. The time it takes to go through a level is going to vary wildly by child. My 8-yo can take a level of Apples and Pears in six weeks, whereas my son will be doing DB A until the earth freezes over and/or the polar ice caps melt and drown us all.

Assuming no acceleration, two will be barely 18, one almost 18, and two six months shy of 18 (b. nov and oct)

That stuff didnt work for us. Apple cidae vinegar did. Cheaper too.

It's not deciding not to be active anymore. It's deciding that what you previously believed - higher minimum wage, vote democrat, marriage equality -- is wrong. And while that might not bother you personally, it would bother an awful lot of people, because they don't think those issues are neutral but rather matters of right and wrong.

You know, I know a lot of active liberal families. You know the type, the US version capital-D-democrat, would vote socialist if they could, always blowing up my facebook with Obama or anti-Harper or marriage equality or raise the minimum wage or whatever. Nice people. Big liberals. If one of these people married a liberal (which they would) and raised their kids as liberal and marched in Pride and voted NDP and forwarded every pro-union meme they got, and then one day they came home, and their spouse told them, "Dear, I've realised something. Really, I am a conservative. In fact, I am very conservative. I want to send money to Rick Santorum. And all of these liberal things we've been doing -- marching in Pride, canvassing for the NDP -- I can't do those things anymore, because I think those things are wrong" I think many of my nice liberal friends would be upset. In fact, I think they would freak the heck out. Now I'm conservative and my friends are friends with me, so I assume they don't think conservatives breathe fire. They may even think that I'm generally an okay person. But these liberal things they believe, they believe them deeply. They believe they are matters of morality and right and wrong and their self-conception as liberals in liberal families is very important to them. In general, I think religion is more important to religious people than politics is to people who are politically active.

The various statistics that may establish home birth as safe in certain situations, those are all about low-risk birth. There is not much good research of which I am aware that involves VBACs at home (there aren't all that many births at home to begin with and many people won't do these, and, and, and . . . ). The recent MANA stats about VBACs are deeply concerning. http://whatifsandfears.blogspot.ca/2014/04/mana-study-part-4-vaginal-birth-after.html I really feel you on this because I've had two uncomplicated VBACs and I don't _feel_ high risk. But I have an additional risk of uterine rupture that your standard at-home birther does not have.

http://www.amazon.ca/gp/aw/d/0199873747 I hear this is a good book

I couldn't find a frumpy enough cardigan, so I knit one.

I take out the vent (with a Torx screwdriver) and the arms and clean them.

My response was to people who were saying "I'm not going to get the HPV vaccine because instead I'm going to teach my kid about using condoms and safe sex." I don't know anything about HPV and circumcision, to be honest. We're in the religious camp so I didn't have to weigh that particular decision.

Interesting. I found him online. I hadn't heard of this guy. My two were done in the standard way by a mohel (drunken baby, cut penis, drink schnapps).

Vancouver BC, or Vancouver WA?

You know what never, ever goes anywhere positive? Circumcision arguments.

Full length chevron maxi skirt and gap long-sleeved basic t-shirt, white sandals. But I have five identical maxi skirts (three chevron, one black, one blue) and eight identical basic t-shirts (two white, two grey, four black). This comprises my entire casual wardrobe for this pregnancy. I do not like to worry about clothes.

One link given here suggested colloidal silver. Please do not try this without speaking to your doctor. It's a heavy metal and probably not safe.

It's weird to me that you follow this person and don't notice that her _hair changes colour_, let alone that she's quite tall and thin and shapes and fills in her eyebrows, wears powder, and lines her lips.

Yes, I know, but since that would be my number one nun-reason obviously I'd have to go for one that did.

Is this the show where all of the friends and family get together and make clips for TV about how awful the subject looks and how embarrassing it is? And then the hosts throw away all of the person's old clothes? Yeah, I'll bet that after the show, the person sticks close to the free make up and clothes the TV show gives them.

Nuns always look awesome. One outfit, suitable for all purposes. If it were socially acceptable to wear one of those spiffy modern habits, I'd be 100% down with that. Too bad I'm not Catholic and not a nun. Also pretty sure the church wants a better reason for becoming a nun than "I don't want to pick my clothes anymore."