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Hillary in KS

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Posts posted by Hillary in KS

  1. Oh! I hadn't thought of mason jars! That will work for sauces, etc.

     

    I'm trying to freeze a bunch of healthy snack things to feed my competitive swimmers between meals. I'm thinking of doing a bunch of baking and cooking, then freezing it in small portions.

     

    So, I need ideas for freezing things like muffins, fench toast, etc.

     

    I do not want to use plastic freezer bags or plastic containers. Would freezer paper work for flat things like french toast, homemade burritos, etc? Or would too much air get in and dry it out?

  2. Oh, I think the Brazilians understand the Spanish that the contestants are using. It's not like any of them are saying much beyond "Faster!" or "Please" and "Thank you." Anyone who's ever seen a Speedy Gonzales cartoon could understand those Spanish terms.

     

    Remember the team who were cousins... one was a "little person?" (Smirna? Shrmeerna? I can't remember their names.) Anyway, they drove me nuts because they spoke to everyone in a LOUD accent. They were speaking English, but because they were loud and sounded like Balki from "Perfect Strangers" they assumed they were understood.

     

    Rgh.:glare:

  3. I would be seriously embarrassed if my 7yo, much less a 10 year old were so immature as to require childcare at the gym while I worked out- or anywhere else I needed to be doing something for an hour. They make these things called books and these other things called chairs. :001_rolleyes:

     

    LOL! I agree. When I was at the gym, my littles (6 and under) were in the child care, and boys old enough to read sat at the tables and chairs and read or did schoolwork for 45 minutes.

     

    It's not other people's job to cater to my schedule.

  4. OK, I'm standing by my "just wear a wig until the end of the year opinion from my earlier post. I still think that's a simple option.

     

    BUT!!! I reread the OP and realized I'd missed where they asked him to flatten it down or cut it back.

     

    This changes it for me. They're not asking him to get rid of it, or quit the co-op. If not making it spiky one morning a week is all it will take to make them happy, then why not do it?

     

    It's just a little thing. "Ds, I 'love you, and I think the mohawk is a good look for you. But it bothers some of these people in the group. They'd rather you not spike it when you're in math. So please just leave it down, and then you can spike it when we get home."

     

    It's not a big deal. No need to encourage ds to be all up in arms about judgementalism and narrow-mindedness, and "Poor me. I'm being discriminated against." Sometimes we have to teach our dc to be thoughtful of other people and just say, "Oh well!"

     

    Being judgemental of them for not liking spiky hair (and labelling them as narrow-minded, prideful, etc.) is just as bad as being judgemental of a boy who has spiky hair (and labelling him rebellious, moronic, etc.).

     

    Were it my son, I'd encourage him to not buy into the victim game, and not purposefully prick other people just for the sake of his "rights" and wear his hair down for a couple of hours. (Or wear a wig. I still like the wig idea.)

  5. I tell anyone who comes to our door selling things that, "I only buy things to support my children's school." No one seems to have a problem with that.

     

    At least - not yet.

     

    Once, the ds' baseball teams had a fundraiser. I just made a small donation to the organization, rather than sell junky, expensive food products. Thus way, the group gets 100% of the donation, rather than a percentage of the sales.

  6. Just a thought....

     

    Because I'm semi-snarky by nature, this is probably what ds and I would decide to do:

     

    Show up to class every week in church clothes, and wearing a men's wig. (Find one that's inexpensive, and conservative. Costume shops, etc.) Nothing awful or attention-getting, but simply something he could place on his head during classes and then take off when he gets in the car. Distraction is gone and ds gets to take the class and keep the mohawk.

     

    When the semester, or the school year, is over we would then decide whether or not to re-enroll next year.

  7. The thread by Mama Lynx reminds me of the comments I get frequently. I have heard, remarks about knowlege and how they couldn't teach physics, but I usually get, "I wouldn't have the patience to homeschool."

    QUOTE]

     

    I hear this a lot, and most of the time I say something like, "I'm not a terribly patient person either, but now I have ample opportunity to learn."

     

    Once, though, at a party, a woman was going on and on and finally said she wouldn't have patience to homeschool. She couldn't stand being around her kids all day.

     

    I responded with,"Well then, I guess it's best that you don't."

     

    I feel badly about that now, but it did the trick, and she changed the subject very quickly.

  8. For my boys, there was that stage in 2nd grade (ish) where they *could* read, but it was just so darn much work that they wouldn't do it in their free time.

     

    SO! I upped the payoff. I bought several Calvin and Hobbes books, and a few Garfields, and let the boys read tose. They LOVED those and spent many hours curled up on the couch reading them. Their fluency increased, and eventually they moved on to short, funny books. (Marvin Redpost, etc.) The Wayside Stories series followed after as well.

     

    We would read mysteries together, and I'd stop reading maybe a page or two before the end of the chapter (I'd try for the most exciting part I could) and say, "I've got to start getting dinner ready. You can keep reading to the end of the chapter, though, if you can't wait for tomorrow to see what happens." etc.

     

    I had to find high-interest, simple things for them to read until their reading fluency caught up to their interest level.

     

    Seriously - Calvin and Hobbes. Those books are gold!

  9. If you go to http://www.usaswimming.og you can click the "Find A Club Near You" icon on the right-hand side of the screen. There are TONS of clubs near Texas, and you'll likely find one near you.

     

    Swim team is a bit more expensive, but when you compare what you *get* for what you pay, it's an easy decision.

     

    For example, my littles are in "swim school" at the local club. (The swim school feeds into the swim team.) I pay $45/month, and get 2 - 45 minute lessons per week. Classes have no more than 4 kids in them.

     

    When I had kids in lessons at the YMCA, we paid #5 per session, for 8 TOTAL lessons, 30 minutes each. Classes had anywhere from 5 to 15 children in them.

     

    Ds #1 swims 5 days a week, 90 minutes per practice. We pay only $70 a month.

     

    Yes, it's more expensive than lessons, but we get a lot more swim time for that money.

  10. Stacy in NJ is right on. I thought my ds (then 8) had a form of Tourette's, until I read up on how exactly a diagnosis was made. I then realized that wasn't it.

     

    Ds had many tics, some verbal, was showing signs of OCD and axniety issues. DH and I were VERY concerned.

     

    In the end, do you know what it was?

     

    Allergies.

     

    We suspected that ds might have some seasonal allergies (he was sniffling a lot for a LONG time), so we had him tested. BOY! Did he have allergies! It turned out the poor boy was allergic to everything they tested him for: dust, cats, dogs, molds, weeds, ragweeds, grasses, trees, pollens, everything. The allergist proclaimed him "Allergic to the world."

     

    At the time, we lived in an old house (dust) in which the previous owners had housed both cats and dogs. We lived in the middle of the woods (grassess, weeds, trees, ragweeds, pollens) on the banks of the Mississippi River (molds). We loved living there, but it was hurting our child.

     

    The allergist put him on a dose of allegra, twice a day. I took steps to combat the dust and pet issues in ds' bedroom. Within 2 weeks he was dramatically improved. Within a month I felt like we had our child back.

     

    We moved out of our old house into another old house. But this one had no carpet (hard floors do WONDERS for the dust allergies), and no previous cats or dogs. We really worked hard to keep ds' bedroom a haven from the allergens.

     

    Ds is 13 now, and both verbal and physical tics are gone. The anxiety and OCD issues are gone, and only reappear to a low degree during ragweed season (by far his worst trigger). But they are so mild that I think dh and I are the only ones who notice them.

     

    I would urge you to have your child see an allergist (esp. a board-certified pediatric allergist), because your description sounds *so much* like what we had been seeing in our son. Allergies can do such *odd* things to kids, way beyond simple itchy eyes and sneezing.

     

    Keep us posted!

  11. Awww... 1900 House was great, but Colonial House was disappointing.

     

    Some of the people wanted to live the way colonists did, others refused and couldn't let go of 20th century mindsets. Many were lazy and they didn't make their production goals, but most of the troublemakers thought htings were fine and historians didn't understand- they would have survived despite their lack of work.

     

    I wanted to watch and see what life was like for colonists. I ended up watching a series with a bunch of people causing trouble and feuling conflicts. Maddening!

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