Maybe you can give her something else to do while you are discussing it with her. Sometimes and easily embarrassed child feels uncomfortable when having a "serious" discussion with a parent and having to keep looking at them the whole time. Maybe she could draw or color a picture while you speak with her about the subject. Let her know that you expect her to answer your questions and communicate with you, but that she will also be allowed to draw, color, build with legos, design paper dolls, or whatever motor activity she chooses while you speak with her. That could take some of the pressure away.

Thank you LOL! It drives my husband crazy that I unplug our toaster when I'm finished with it. He never does. I always come along behind him and unplug it when he's finished with it. He just thinks I'm paranoid!

We used to have an electric can opener. I despised that thing. It was difficult to clean, always splattered the contents of the can everywhere, and occasionally even DROPPED the can! That was a mess. I threw out the electric and love my manual.

You NEED an otterbox LOL. You can drop it a million times and it will still work just fine. Don't buy it from the otterbox website though....on Amazon you can get them for like $20 or $25.

I have no idea....but I'm going to be watching this thread. When we go on vacation, I do what you do with the ziplock bags. I put a shirt, shorts, socks, and undies in each bag for each kid so that we can just grab a bag out of the suitcase and put it on. Even DH can do it with this system LOL. :D At home, clothes are the one thing I have trouble organizing. I like to hang shirts and dresses. Pants, shorts, and skirts I fold (when I find the time). Socks go into the "sock basket." I don't do socks....it takes WAAAY too long to find matches. I just toss all clean socks into a basket and if you want socks, you hunt for them. I keep the kids undies in a basket in their dresser drawer. Undies are not folded, I just toss them into the small wicker basket to keep them all together. I have trouble with things like PJ's, play clothes, and swim clothes.....I need to be more organized and find a better place for those.

Probably not. I don't believe that a child that age can make the best decision about their education. Also, it would depend on exactly WHY you are homeschooling. For the reasons we are homeschooling, I would not let my child attend public school. As for his reasons, I would disregard #1 and #2. School is not all about friends, he can see them at other times. I don't put high priority on friendships for children....it's great if they do have friends, but I would much rather focus on the bonding of sibling relationships instead. For lunches, that sounds just like something a kid would say LOL! #3 and #4 sound pretty easily fixable. Maybe you could try to give him a private area and time to do his school work without as many distractions. However, there WILL be lots of distractions at school as well. And maybe you could take a different approach to explaining things.....try different ways and see if it helps.

Definitely have the pass where you can get to the front of the line and stuff due to your child's condition. I'm not sure what it is called, but you should be able to get one. We never bring water bottles as they are a pain to lug around. Any refreshment booth or counter service restaurant that offers fountain drinks will give you HUGE cups of ice cold water for free, as many times as you want. So we do that. That way we can drink what we want, toss it, and then get more later. MGM (now called Hollywood Studios) is a Disney park. Like someone else mentioned, maybe you were thinking of Universal Studios? You guys are going to be worn out after all those parks LOL! You'll have tons of fun and so many memories though. I'll tell you a few of my fave attractions in case you want to hit them: Animal Kingdom: Festival of the Lion King - this is a show. It's the caliber of a Broadway performance....really awesome. All three of your kids should enjoy it. Kilimanjaro safaris - really neat....you get to see the animals up close from your safari jeep. We've had a giraffe cross our path before! Magic Kingdom: Pirates of the Caribbean, Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin (you play a game while you ride to compete for the most points by shooting lazers at targets), the Haunted Mansion. Make sure you see the parade at 3 PM, the Main Street Electrical Parade at night, as well as the Wishes fireworks show. Those are three must sees. Hollywood Studios: Lights, Motors, Action stunt show - your guys should really love this but it's very entertaining for us girls as well....lots of cool car stunts, etc. If you watch American Idol, definitely hit the American Idol Experience. Epcot - we love The Land ride. Also Maelstrom back in Norway. Plus, meander through Innoventions to see all the neat interactive things. We're not big thrill ride people either, so we skip most of those. The biggest thrills we do are Thunder Mountain and Splash Mountain. No rollercoasters. As for lunch, if you want anything besides counter service, you will need to make reservations. It could be too late, but you might want to try if you are able to.

Technically I guess it could be anything over 50%. But when I hear the word "predominantly", I tend to think more along the lines of 75% and above.

I kept a few things (we're not done with kids, but we needed the space, plus by the time we had another the stuff would be like 7 or more years old). I parted with the exersaucer, the bouncy seat, the booster chair, the high chair.....but for some reason I couldn't seem to part with the little swing. It rocked my babies to sleep sometimes. So I kept it. It's in the attic. I kept a couple of my favorite outfits. I still some of the toys packed away. I sold the crib, the floor mat, etc.

Both of my DD's crawled around 6 or 7 months and both began walking at 10 months.

Definitely did the right thing!

I love reading books on mine LOL....I have both the Kindle and the Nook apps and just love having everything that I could possibly need in one small package.

Thanks for the link! I just read it and thankfully, we do not have many of those in our home. My only concern is two things.... The paint on our walls. We painted our entire house about a year ago. The house smelled horrid for months. It gave me headaches and such. We didn't know about low VOC paints then...I guess we are out of luck on that right now. We have one cleaning product called Kaboom that I'm sure is bad. It's a mildew remover. I let DH do that, he shuts the bathroom door (so the odor doesnt really get to the rest of our house) and he opens the bathroom window. When he's finished with it, we let the bathroom air out by keeping the window open for hours afterwards. Maybe we should find something else to use.

See...I just wish I could justify getting one LOL! I would like one...but I have an iPhone and it does all the same things, just with a smaller screen. And I have internet anywhere on my iPhone (for the iPad I would not pay the monthly 3G fee). I just can't justify the expense for something I basically already own LOL!

I would most definitely want to see an allergist and carry an epi pen as well.

We have a pop up that we love. We tow it with our mini van. It has a small fridge, and we use a small port-a-potty type thing that stores in a ready made cabinet in the camper. It has chemicals in it so there's no smell. We just don't do #2 in it. We go to the bath house for that. We also have A/C since we live in Florida. We have two king beds (one on each end that pulls out). Our couch folds down into a bed, as well as our dinette table/benches. When buying used, just make sure you check, check, check, and re-check for leaks. This goes for any type of camper, not just a pop up. And yes, like someone else mentioned, don't rely on the dealership to know whether or not your vehicle can tow something.....research that yourself. I grew up camping and we bought our very own pop up a few years ago....I wanted for our kids to grow up camping too. We love it!

I'm going to buy the Defender one for mine. Right now I have a knock off Defender case and it's been great. So I'm going to purchase the real thing. I'm getting it from Amazon....they are a lot cheaper there.

That is really creepy!

I agree. I wouldn't be waiting two weeks. I'd call back and if they wouldn't see her then I'd go elsewhere.

When I was a teen and young adult, this would happen to me. If I stood quickly, my vision would "blackout" and I'd feel really warm and tingly. The vision would fade back in within a few seconds but it felt really strange. That hasn't happened to me in a very long time though. Now I just feel tired when I stand stationary.

I would probably call and say something like "Hi So-and-So! Johnny just told me that Timmy went ahead and left our house last night and rode home in the dark. I'm sorry! I told him that you guys would pick him up but I didn't realize that he left after I went back inside. I'm just glad that he got home okay. I wasn't quite sure what I should do if the situation comes up again."

Maybe it wasn't a prank....maybe one of the girls have a crush on one of your DS's and they were giggling and seeing if he would be the one to pick up the phone. Okay, I'll stop freaking you out now LOL. :D

::GAG:::

Strange....I never considered it, but I can't stand to stand up in church during the singing time. If I'm walking, moving, exercising, I'm fine. But I do not like the standing still. I get tired....strange.

I think that would be perfectly acceptable to say to him. Gets your point across but you can say it with a smile on your face.