They were concerned about meningitis because he had a headache and fever. At the appointment, they looked for other symptoms for that and determined he was fine. He wasn't even that sick...just the headache and fever (that responded to OTC medication) and being a little tired. He was well in just two days.

My 6 year old got the flu last week. He was complaining of a bad headache and had a high fever. Because I was going to their office with a different kid, I called to see if they wanted to see him. They did; they were worried about meningitis with those symptoms. In the office, they swabbed him. It was positive for influenza a. The doctor (not our regular doctor) told me, "We treat this now" and gave me a prescription for Tamiflu. Having a vague memory of Tamiflu being something you don't want to take, I directly asked about adverse effects. She told me there was nothing to worry about....acted like it was Tylenol. In the appointment with my other kid, the allergist asked about my sick one. During that conversation, I asked him about Tamiflu. He also said it wasn't a problem and that he'd definitely give it to his kid. I asked the pharmacist when I picked it up and got the same reaction. Stupid me trusted them. My son took one dose...ONE. After putting him to bed for the night, he woke up hallucinating. We were trying to calm him after what we thought was a bad dream, and he was terrified of us. He later told us that it looked like my husband had a big hole in his mouth. It took a good 20 minutes to get him to stop trembling. Then he fell asleep and woke up two hours later hallucinating again. I could see his eyes darting around seeing things. He woke up two more times hallucinating, each time was less severe in that he calmed down quicker. This is a known side-effect, but supposedly happens almost exclusively to Japanese kids (we aren't even close to Japanese). We had called the on-call nurse line after the first one. She didn't have the information we needed and tried calling on call doctors with no success. Eventually, morning came. I talked to the prescribing doctor in the morning, and she wasn't concerned except that if it continued she wanted to see him again. She was worried about encephalitis. She said with Tamiflu hallucinations, they start and stop abruptly but didn't say how long they last. That was Wednesday the 15th. He's completely recovered from the flu. But he now wakes up every night about an hour and half after going to bed with bad dreams that leave him drenched in sweat and terrified and trembling upon waking. It seems to be getting less severe...ie. he wasn't drenched with sweat tonight and calmed in just a couple of minutes. I'm positive the doctor who prescribed this would tell me that this is not caused by the Tamiflu, but that's bull. I What would you do? Any ideas to help him recover from this? Prayers also appreciated.

My all purpose cleaner is a normal-size spray bottle filled with water, about a teaspoon of Dawn dish soap, and 30 drops of tea tree oil. I use it in the kitchen, in the bathroom, on windows and mirrors, to clean messes on the carpet/couches, etc.

We give them half of their age each week. The older two kids occasionally have opportunities to earn money in more substantial amounts. We have no expectations for how it is to be spent beyond tithing 10%. We provide all of their needs, but we don't have money for much beyond the basics. DD13 often buys clothing with hers. DS12 buys a variety of miscellaneous expensive things he wants by saving up. The littles buy little things here and there when they get enough money saved up to do so. All four kids spent much of their savings on Christmas gifts. The kids are also aware that allowance is extra and paying the bills/food comes before paying for allowance. We will pay them back allowance when/if we can.

Cool! I'm excited to see this thread. I was planning on tracking expenses for my part of the budget again this year. I haven't spent anything today and don't expect to. Dh is another story, but his spending doesn't count because it isn't from my budget and I'm not privy to all of his spending. (He doesn't overspend so this isn't a big deal.)

I'm trying to make some sense of the disaster in my school room. I'd like to get it ready for school to start back up next week.

Oh wow...that sounds horrible. I have no answers, but I just wanted to say that I'm sorry you are feeling so poorly.

We just moved on December 14th. I got the essentials put away and then put unpacking on hold while we scrambled to get ready for Christmas. It's time to start unpacking and organizing those spaces where I just shoved things to get them in their general location.

Navy beans and ham soup...we buy ham for Christmas just so we can freeze leftovers for soup.

I've folded and put away two loads of laundry, washed DS11's new bedding, and have another load in both the washer and dryer. I managed to empty and put away one large box in the master bedroom. I cleaned the dining room table; it has sugar cookie icing cemented to it. I rearranged the dining room to make things fit better. I created my weekly menu and shopping list. DH and I went grocery shopping and had lunch together. When we got home, I put all of the food away and organized the fridge so I can find stuff in there. I had just shoved things in there haphazardly when we moved in. DH put DS11's bed together. He decided to put it in the most awkward placement possible for the room. Fortunately, I was able to convince him to rearrange the room to place the furniture in a much better configuration. After the furniture was moved, I made the bed with the new bedding. I washed some dishes and started dinner.

Do you soak and rinse your beans before making them? We don't have problems with beans at all. Speaking of beans and rice...I bought 25 pounds each of beans and calrose rice today. My buckets are full again! Guess what we are having for dinner. This is my favorite tortilla recipe. I don't like the flour tortillas that have baking powder in them; I prefer my tortillas flat and not poofy. http://lainesletters.com/recipe/flourtortilla.html

I'm hoping to get a lot done tomorrow. I spent today getting my living room, dining room, and kitchen cleaned up. I got my pantry organized so that it is functional. This weekend, I'm hoping to: Do some laundry Organize the closet in the laundry room Do some unpacking in my bedroom Figure out furniture placement in the family/school room Start unpacking the family/school room Do some grocery shopping Dh is assembling the bed we were given for DS11. I'll be finding and screwing the legs onto the table for DS11's bedroom and making his bed with his new bedding (he's away for the weekend). I'll probably have DD13 vacuum the stairs as they are nasty.

I make about 3 pounds of pinto beans most weeks and use them in a few meals. I cook pinto beans with an onion , 3 strips of uncured bacon, and salt. Day 1: We put the whole, cooked beans over rice and top it with a little bit of seasoned chicken (two chicken breasts for 6 of us), homemade guacamole, and salsa. We like to serve this with tortilla chips. Dh and I will often put this over salad greens. This meal gets cheers and many thank yous every time I make it. Day 2: I reheat the beans and mash them with a potato masher. Then I brown and season some ground beef, and we make burritos. Any remaining beans get used in burritos for lunch or dinner, added to breakfast burritos, or added to scrambled eggs. We also like navy beans and ham. A new tradition we started last year is the buy a large ham for Christmas dinner so we can have leftover ham in the freezer for navy beans and ham. I can get enough leftover ham to make several large pots of soup. We also like black-eyed pea soup. They are my kids' favorite soups.

Others have covered the reasons you would need to be seen. I miscarried at home at 14 weeks. The only thing I would add that I didn't see mentioned is that you should rest just like you would had you carried the baby full term. I found it harder to recover from a late miscarriage than it was to recover from giving birth full term. It took me a few weeks to feel strong enough to handle my normal day to day activities after my late miscarriage.

Dh and I plan on finishing Christmas shopping. Then we'll take kids out to do some shopping. With our move last weekend, we're a bit behind on getting stuff done for Christmas. When I'm home, I plan on doing some more unpacking and organizing. The laundry especially needs help because I have stuff piled everywhere making it difficult to use the room at the moment. I might try to work in my bedroom, as well, because my closet is mostly blocked.

My story is the same as the OP's. In fact, I recently took my kids over to an old boyfriend's house so they could see one of my drawings. They all think I should start drawing again because I'm a "real artist."

White lights that don't blink. Each year I buy a special ornament for each child and myself. I try to have the ornament reflect something that happened that year or something the person liked that year. I have a gold bead garland that I put on the tree. I used to love it, but I'm not fond of it much anymore.

It is ridiculous to hold a student to unspecified expectations.

BLAT...only make the avocado my homemade guacamole instead

A telephoto lens, a macro lens, and a flash with diffuser for my camera And new furniture and decor for the entire house.

I don't understand the point of owning tons of books when I can borrow them for free from the library. It saves me money and space.

Gee, thanks for making to cry. :001_smile: It's a great lesson to show kids. I'm trying to figure out something I can do with my kids...

I spend more money on books since I rarely bought books before we had a Kindle. But that wasn't why I bought our Kindles. I got my older two kids and I Kindles because I was having trouble securing three identical copies of the same books I wanted us to read and analyze together for our literature studies. Sharing caused problems too. Now, I buy one Kindle copy and we can all read it at the same time (all of the Kindles are on my account).

I don't fully understand how it works (DH does that), but he has a program called Untangle. Untangle Lite is free to download and use, but it has to run on a dedicated system. We have that computer in the garage. It takes over the system because all web traffic goes through it. It provides us with virus protection, web filtering, traffic reports, and I don't know what else. I do know that it doesn't filter Google images. The only way to filter Google images with a filtering program is to block ALL images, not just the explicit ones. Fortunately, Google's built-in safe search does a good job of that once you enable it. Youtube has the same safe search feature that filters out both explicit videos and comments. To utilize Google's safe search, log into your Google account. Enable it and lock it; then log out of your account. Do this on each computer. Make sure you log back out and guard your password. No one will be able to unlock safe search on that computer but you (or someone who has your log in and password). Here's a link to the webpage for Safe Search. YouTube's safe search works the same way; scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to find the button that says "Safety" to set it up. On an ipod, you need to use the parental controls to block things by rating. I'm not sure how well it works since we haven't tested it. We have Safari completely blocked on the ipod so that there is no internet access at all. However, I do know that Untangle will tell you what websites and web searches are being used through the ipod. That's how we found out; the traffic report showed some search terms we didn't like. From there, all we had to do is figure out which device was using that particular IP address. So, while it didn't block everything perfectly, it did alert us to a problem.

DD13 won an ipod touch from her youth group. DS11 bought one with his own money. We wish they didn't have them. DD13 is not allowed to use her ipod between the hours of 9am and 3pm and must turn it in at bedtime. We have to specifically tell her to put down the ipod when we are doing something as a family like watching a movie together. It's like it is the only thing that exists. We also closely monitor every site that she spends time with because she has gotten involved with "friends" whom we don't think are a positive influence. DS11 has had everything disabled on his except music because he discovered pornography with his. Fortunately, we have filters on our firewall that provide DH with reports of websites that were blocked and searches that were done. It was one of those reports that alerted us to his pornography access. A friend attributes the ipod to her daughter's downward spiral...from getting involved with pedofiles to a suicide attempt to becoming the kind of kid that lies, sneaks out of the house, and generally makes their family's life hell. An internet-enabled ipod makes it so much easier for kids to have access to things and people you might not want them to have access to. Definitely set and keep clearly defined limits and utilize the parental controls if choose to allow your child to have an ipod.