All 7 of us were sick within 5 days of the first person. It was like every day someone new was sick until all of us got it. Thankfully, the 8 month old had the most mild case of it - most likely from me being sick before she was and bfing her. I was so scared she would get a bad case of it ... the rest of us felt pretty miserable - especially me - went straight to my lungs for 2 weeks.

We did not get the shot this year and every single one of us got the flu (Influenza A if that matters). We have never had the flu as a family ... must be very very contagious! I think I've only had the flu one other time in my life ... never felt so sick ever.

My sister (who happens to live near VA, which I saw in your sig line) and her whole family had the flu recently and had similar symptoms to what you described ... it seemed more mild than what my family went through. She also said she felt like she had a cold while her kids had the fever, cough, etc. and she recovered very quickly. I don't know if there are multiple strains or if some people get it more mildly ... only one of mine (other than my baby who was bfing) did seem to have a more mild case (he is 8yrs old) and I wondered if somehow he had been exposed to it years ago. I'm not sure.

I will say that our entire family got it ... but 2 of my kids had it much more mildly than the rest of us. My 8 yr old was barely sick other than a mild fever, stomach ache and a cough that lasted 10 days-2 weeks ... but he seemed ok compared to the rest of us who looked and felt terrible for a long time. DH and I had it very bad ... my 5 yr old got it pretty bad with bronchitis ... my other 2 kids were vomiting a lot with it and coughing and had fevers. The baby got it very mildly which I believe was due to me breastfeeding her while I was sick with it. Our very first symptoms were dry cough, stiff joints, back ache followed hours later by a high fever (with chills for me and DH but not for kids ... just high fever) ... and the fever lasted several days along with nausea and then my lungs got infected and I had to go on tons of medicine to counteract the wheezing. My husband didn't have that so just had the dry cough, nausea, body aches, chills and fever.

I know someone who was exposed to flu in the last month of pg and did take Tamiflu and avoided a severe case of it...

I was sick for 2 weeks ... the fever lasted about 3-4 days (I think) but the nausea lasted at least a week ... the cough for a full 2 weeks. I'm on week 3 right now and I'm still getting tired earlier at night than I usually do.

I'm not sure ... we are using HOD now for my 2nd grader and it takes 3 hours total for us to get through everything (History, Bible, Music, Art, Science, Grammar, Handwriting, Spelling, Math, Reading ...) sometimes a little bit longer than that depending on the day it might take 4 hours.

I felt like that last week ... we started our new year after taking off all of December. We were all sick for several weeks with the flu and lung infections, though ... so I was hesitant to start back again. I decided to do it anyway, because I need to get back on a schedule.

My 1st sounded much like yours and my 2nd was 9 hours start to finish with manageable contractions until I hit "5cm" but apparently I was really hitting transition because as soon as that epidural was in I started pushing and out came baby. I went from 5 cm to baby in probably 15 min. 4th was almost identical to my 2nd ... it took me a long time to get to 4 cm and very manageable contractions the whole time and then once I got to 4cm I suddenly hit transition quickly. It took me 9 hours start to finish with both my 2nd and 4th births. I went completely natural, though, and it took me a little longer to push baby out because no one was directing my pushing. I actually had contractions stop for a while (15 min or more) and then suddenly ... I was either holding back because of being scared to push unmedicated or my body was doing that rest thing that apparently is normal in some people ... the next contraction that hit I pushed out baby in one push, though.

I have the Fire and love it for homeschooling ... I have downloaded a lot of books to it, our Bible, a bunch of music ... I can carry that with me and do most of our homeschooling. I love how compact it is and how it lets me not have to search for a bunch of different books. My kids don't use it currently to read but they may in the future.

Thanks for both of your feedback. I was not going to combine in Bigger ... I was thinking of taking DS down to Beyond and DD up to Beyond and meeting them in the middle. I will just probably continue on with what I'm doing, though, because even though academically my 5 yr old can read/write/do math well she would not understand the history and Bible lessons in Bigger...

My DD is 5 yr old and finished our "K" curriculum in November and we are starting our new year now ... we started with LHFHG yesterday and I'm very pleased with the layout and love how it tells what to do, etc. It is perfect for us. The left side of the page is perfect for my 5 yr old ... absolutely perfect. The right side is way way too easy. She begs to do more work. I pulled out Beyond and started using the right side of Beyond mixed with the left side of Little Hearts for her. She does the spelling list 1, the emerging reading, the Singapore Math 1 ... and it all seems sort of easy for her. I know that would not have been the case with my son had he used the same thing at that age. He just turned 8 and is using Bigger and it is perfect for him. He is doing emergent reader, spelling list 1, R&S 2 ... everything. We are doing the whole thing as written. I'm wondering if I really should have just combined them. Has anyone been in this same spot? Has anyone every used both Beyond and Little with the same child ... and Bigger with another child? Should I have just combined both in Beyond? I'm just getting over being really sick for the last 2 weeks and thought I had everything figured out ... and now I'm confused. I love HOD and I really love Bigger for DS. If I didn't have such a quick little 5 yr old I wouldn't be questioning any of this! Guess this is a good thing to have to worry about ... just don't want to sell anyone short. As of right now I'm able to get both done in 3 hours or so because when I'm directly teaching one, the other is finishing up some work (like math, etc). aadxxbtnqv likes this

My DD is 5 yr old and finished our "K" curriculum in November and we are starting our new year now ... we started with LHFHG yesterday and I'm very pleased with the layout and love how it tells what to do, etc. It is perfect for us. The left side of the page is perfect for my 5 yr old ... absolutely perfect. The right side is way way too easy. She begs to do more work. I pulled out Beyond and started using the right side of Beyond mixed with the left side of Little Hearts for her. She does the spelling list 1, the emerging reading, the Singapore Math 1 ... and it all seems sort of easy for her. I know that would not have been the case with my son had he used the same thing at that age. He just turned 8 and is using Bigger and it is perfect for him. He is doing emergent reader, spelling list 1, R&S 2 ... everything. We are doing the whole thing as written. I'm wondering if I really should have just combined them. Has anyone been in this same spot? Has anyone every used both Beyond and Little with the same child ... and Bigger with another child? Should I have just combined both in Beyond? I'm just getting over being really sick for the last 2 weeks and thought I had everything figured out ... and now I'm confused. I love HOD and I really love Bigger for DS. If I didn't have such a quick little 5 yr old I wouldn't be questioning any of this! Guess this is a good thing to have to worry about ... just don't want to sell anyone short. As of right now I'm able to get both done in 3 hours or so because when I'm directly teaching one, the other is finishing up some work (like math, etc).

We used MUS Primer for Kinder and it didn't work for us ... we are now using CLE for 2nd and DS suddenly knows all of his addition/subtraction and is doing wonderfully. He no longer cries about doing math. We did Singapore last year and it was ok (a huge improvement over MUS) but nothing like CLE. He never cries about math any more and is really excelling.

There are so many things wrong with the article ... I probably should just walk away from this one. Let me just say that I completely disagree with this writer.

Strange ... is it possible your spouse or another family member sent it to you for a Christmas present?

I'm an INFJ but not as organized as I would like. I forced myself last year to become very organized with my school work (and it truly paid off!) ... I had binders with 9 weeks tabs and every quarter put all the paper work for the quarter in that by week (1-9). I also had a file box that stored all of extra books for the year. This year I'm using a boxed curriculum (HOD). My problem is - I think I have too much stuff (old curriculum and books we've already used ... supplies that we haven't used in a while) and I'm not sure if I should hang onto it or pass it along to someone else.

I think it is normal for a kid that age ... My oldest 3 got sick a lot when they were that age ... my current 5 year old used to get sick all the time and not as much anymore but I think our family had been exposed to a lot while in the public schools for a few years. In Jan 2011 we had RSV, pneumonia and a few other nasty bugs go through with my younger 2.

Do you prefer to school 4 days on and one day off? Does that help you keep organized and get more things done on the days you are schooling? Do you prefer longer breaks off or do you like the consistency of one day off each week. I was thinking of doing 4 day work weeks ... 6 weeks on and 1 week off through the school year and then taking a longer break around Christmas. I'm just not sure what would work the best. I NEED scheduled breaks or I would never take a break and get worn out and burnt out ... I have a toddler that gets into mischief and a baby who is starting to become mobile ... trying to figure out which option makes more sense for a mom in this position. (The other option for me was 6 weeks on (5 day week) and 2 weeks off until December when I would take the month off).

Interested in seeing the responses ... we will be starting Bigger in about a month with my 2nd grader...

We are done ... start back first of Jan. I love schooling this way!

I'm right there with you! I never thought of it that way, before, but that is exactly my problem. I *feel* perfectionistic but reality is never what it "should" be (in my mind). I can't believe that there are so many INFJs on this board, too ... for being the most rare temperament there are a lot of them on TWTM!

With one of my kids I attempted 100Ez Lessons, ETC, and Phonics Pathways ... we ended up getting IEW's PAL-Reading & PAL-Writing and that has been wonderful. I've used it with my 7 yr old and my 5 yr old (started it at 4.5) and both kids are reading very well with this program (a good mixture of sight words and phonics as well and stories and poetry). We went from tears everyday (with ETC and 100EZ) to loving reading and writing.

Still showing up as $11.99 for me but I do have Prime so I'm not sure if it could be that or not...

When I only had 1 and we were doing K I did feel weird and always second guessed everything. I'm much more comfortable now with our schedule now that we are "reading" and doing very well at math, too. I think I always wondered if we were doing "enough". We try to do 4 hours a day most days (which is still less than ps) but some days we have less lined up. I make sure they get plenty of outdoor time to play and even on light days I do read alouds and individual reading time.