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AdventureMoms

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  1. We have 5 in 1100 sqft right now and it's fine, and pretty comfortable. Perfect world I'd like one more bedroom, a main floor bathroom, and a pantry, which would put us at around 1500 sqft. I think that would be ideal for us. I grew up with more, and for me more is not better.
  2. Yes, a 5yo with a november birthday would be a 1st grader in NY. You can red-shirt them (put them in K) or put them in 1st, but you have to report that year, so if you don't want to report a 1st grader yet, you have to report a Ker. In good news the requirements for K are almost NOTHING, so you don't really have to do much.
  3. I don't think NY has that. The cutoff is unusually late, but consistent (Dec 1). Kids who are 5 by Dec 1 can enter K, kids who are 6 by Dec 1 and have done K can do 1st. Whether kids can skip right to first without enrolling in K (for kids attending PS) varies by district. My district will not allow it - if you homeschool K or just skip it, then start when they "should" be old enough for 1st, they will just be put in K again. My daughter (who is 2nd grade level in math and reading fairly well now) would be put in K even though she will be well over 6 when the school year starts. If I homeschooled her for 1st, she could go into 2nd though. It's weird. Homeschoolers can skip K. Some districts may allow it for enrolled students too, but not mine.
  4. Kids have to be in school by the year they are 6 on Dec 1. So my sons with Nov birthdays are required to be in school (and thus file an IHIP) the year they are 5-turning-6 at the beginning of the school year. My friend with a daughter born in December isn't required to file until her daughter is 6-turning-7. YOu can choose any grade level for that first year - my friend is considering reporting her 6yo as a 2nd grader (not a good idea, IMO), and I will likely report my sons as K when they are 5-turning-6. My daughter will be 6 at the start of next year (May birthday) and she will be registered as K-er, but could as easily be registered as a 1st (and is, realistically, a 1st grader). Doing it this way reduces the amount of standardized testing required later on.
  5. We don't sort. Except DW's work clothes, which are all white shirts which I have no control over. The only truly white clothing we own are the twins' socks. I do not care if these get dingy. I've maybe once or twice had an issue doing it this way in 10 years. Those cases were well worth 10 years of no-sort laundry! Each night I run around and grab all the dirty laundry from the house and throw it in the washing machine. If the machine is full, I run it. If not, I let it sit until the next night. Most nights it is full. In the morning I throw the clothes in the dryer, and later in the day I pull them out and put them away. Each kid has a drawer for pants/shorts, one for tops/dresses, one for socks/underwear, and one for pajamas. Minimal folding. Kids will do their own in a few more years, that's not a battle I'm ready to fight yet. I keep a few outfits hanging in the closet for when I want them to look decent, but for school/playground/running around outside/playdates with friends they all wear basic cotton knit stuff that doesn't need to look perfect. The work shirts get washed seperately. They have their own laundry basket and DW makes sure they go in there. Every couple of weeks she'll mention it's getting full and I'll do those on their own on hot. Everything else gets washed on cold. Sometimes if I have a lot of gross things like rags I'll do a hot load of just that.
  6. I notice improvement immediately when I reduce carbs/sugars. I agree that increasing days helps, too. Five days is usually what it takes for the cravings to fade, but I have to eliminate grains as well as sugar to get rid of those.
  7. My daughter's room was 8x11 (she has since moved into her brothers' 10x11 room). We had the bed taking up pretty much the whole floor. The closet is TEENY, but we could hang a lot of clothes on two rods. Socks and underwear and pjs go either under the bed in drawers or baskets in the closet. At 6 the loft would be great though. DD was 3 and too young for a raised bed.
  8. I had mine out 5.5 years ago when my oldest was a newborn. Life withou a gallbladder is just fine for me. My wife had hers out that same year, and we've had zero long term issues. We eat a high fat diet (low carb/high fat), and feel great. No pain.
  9. We have 5 people in 1100 sqft and it is plenty for us. I feel like we have a little "luxury" space even. We recently turned one tiny bedroom (we have 3) into a "library". It is 8x11, but still has a bed and serves as a guest room. I plan to use it for read-alouds a lot especially next year as my boys start getting into more of the school stuff and my daughter starts 1st grade. But it does mean that my three children share the other small (10x11) bedroom. My bedroom is small (also 10x11), and we all share a bath. The kitchen/dining/living rooms are all decent sized though, so it doesn't feel too crowded. We prefered this arrangement (bigger living spaces and tiny bedrooms) to other similar sized homes with big fancy master suites and bedrooms but small living spaces.
  10. I think it's fine to skip it. We're doing it for similar reasons to Alte Veste, though - just to kind of get in the habit. But we do K twice a week and for a total of maybe 1.5 hours per week. And at least half of that is games. I just moved her up to Singapore Math 1st grade, and it pretty much assumes that they can count to 10 and not much else. We're skipping stuff because she can add and subtract a bit. It would be totally fine for most 6yos who have never had any formal education. It doesn't assume the child can read. (DD does not read yet) I haven't decided what I'm doing with the twins (now 3) but I don't plan to do anything formal until the year they turn 6 (in November), unless I think it will help keep them occupied while I teach big sister. Then I will just work with wherever they're at, whether that's kindy or 1st or what not. They're exceptionally wiggly, even for 3yos, so I really don't want to try to pin two of them to a chair at not-quite-5. They're in a preschool this year (to give me one-on-one time with sister) and it's pretty silly to see them with the other kids who "should" be in their grade (my state has a late cutoff - they can go to Pre-K next year and Kindy at 4. Most parents do this.)
  11. My selfish list? Someone who wants kids Someone who wants his/her kids to have a good relationship with their grandmas. Yes, I am motivated by grandbabies. Other, more serious stuff: - Someone who knows how to argue/disagree in a positive and productive manner. Any marriage will have disagreements, and people who refuse to discuss or take everything personally, etc make those disagreements hard to get past. - Someone with good communication skills. Related to the above. So much of life is easier if you can communicate! - Someone who respects her - by this I mean someone who sees her as an equal, values her opinions and interests, etc - An adult. Someone who can take responsibility, do what needs doing, make hard decisions... - Someone who is decent with money. I don't mean wealthy or high-earning, but someone who can handle finances responsibly. - I hope my daughter would take the time to make her own list of things that are important to her, and to look for those things in a future spouse. I hope she will think about what life will be like, long term and in reality, with this person, not just marry because she's madly in love. Of course, I hope she's madly in love too. My list for my sons would be pretty much the same as for my daughter. Also, I hope that both my sons and daughter would be all those things to their future spouses.
  12. Eggs for breakfast. Or snacks. 70 calories, about 1g carb, lots of filling protein. Cook it with some fat for staying power. Salads with a protein and a high-fat dressing for lunch I try to make sure I have a good amount of fat at each meal, then I don't need snacks, because the meals last until the next one. I'm low carb, though, I know that's controversial. My usual: Breakfast: salad (yes, I'm weird like that) with cheese and nuts Lunch: leftover meat & veggie from dinner (beef & broccoli, sausage and onions, chicken and spinach, etc). Either cooked in fat or with a fat on the side (nuts are good for this) Dinner: Meat, veggie, side salad I rarely snack, but if I do, I keep it very very low carb. Because if I'm hungry between meals its probably because the last meal didn't have enough protein or fat. Leftover meat, cheese, etc are filling snacks.
  13. Do they? Perhaps. But not by as much as you might think. They use disposable diapers, disposable plates, cups, etc for all those meals, drive gigantic vehicles, and live in a house 6 or 7x the size of mine (for a family only 4x bigger). They use swifter-type products. They don't garden and eat a lot of food from cans that have likely been shipped thousands of miles. I don't think their per-capita footprint is all that low!
  14. Oh I forgot baked potatoes. You could do crockpot pulled pork, and put it on microwaved baked potatoes. Or a crockpot roast chicken, steam-in-bag veggies, and the potatoes.
  15. Can you get a crockpot? They're pretty cheap and would expand your options considerably. You can make almost anything in a crockpot. In college I fed myself (fairly well) for a year with a crockpot, a toaster oven, and a mini fridge. Granted it was only one person, but a family would probably reduce storage issues....
  16. Well I attended similar mixed group outings as an older teen. With my particular group there was not a lot of drinking or any drug use. There was some sex I'm sure, but behind closed doors and between established already sexually active couples. Removing the boys would not have kept any of the girls virgins, kwim? Wouldn't really even stopped all the sex. I don't see why a young man in a group of young women is a huge problem if the women are comfortable with him. Is he the only male invited?
  17. I love paperwork. I think I'd enjoy taxes. So all you paperwork haters, please come pick up my living room and wash my dishes and I'll happily do all your paperwork!
  18. My wife has worked several oddball shifts. Nights (12 hours, 6-6) are pretty common. But because it's always 12 hour nights, we don't usually modify the schedule - she really does not have time to hang with us at any time. Sometimes she'll join us for breakfast after work.
  19. I do this though I do not pair and fold. Dd (5) has various colored socks - she can dig through the sock drawer or wear them mismatched, I don't care. Twins (2.5) have all one brand, all one style. I throw them all in a drawer and just grab 2 (or 4) when needed. Once they know how to turn socks right side out (DD can, twins can't yet) I will leave them inside out too. They can turn them before washing or before wearing. The sock drawers aren't pretty inside, but it works.
  20. Washing dishes/kitchen cleanup. I like to cook, I don't mind laundry, but dishes....ugh.
  21. I'm realizing what an advantage it can be to have a spouse is the same sex when dealing with this kind of stuff on the phone. No one has any idea which of us they're dealing with. I know her SS#, phone, mothers maiden name, passwords, etc....
  22. Why, if you don't mind my asking? We're hoping to use Singapore for 1a/b and I hadn't heard anything wrong with it! Right start feels like too many different manipulatives and "stuff" so I was hoping to keep it simpler.
  23. Well I can't speak from experience, but my eldest is in a very similar place - poised to finish Essentials (which she loves) by Christmas. We have been doing Miquon alongside so far and will probably continue to do Singapore 1/Miquon. We do school in a library twice a week and they have linking cubes there, so I could probably use both if needed!
  24. My DD (age 5 and in K) is working on multiletter phonograms. She loves coloring sheets but I'm having trouble finding any sheets past the basic letters. Anyone have a good resource?
  25. My 5yo eats 3 meals and 1 snack - usually in the afternoon. She skips the snack about 50% of the time, and sometimes a meal too. My 2.5yos often eat 2 meals and 2 snacks because they are too tired to eat lunch. So they have a light snack and a nap, then a snack after nap. As they outgrow naps they are eating better meals and I hope to move to a more consistent everyone eats 3-4x a day deal. Mine are all a healthy weight - none are rail thin - and I find they eat more healthy food with time between meals.
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