We begin with reading....DD struggles with reading so she seems to be better at it first thing. Then I finish uP the subjects that do not require DD4....which is writing and math.....sometimes map skills. By that time it's usually time for lunch. After lunch I have both kids join me for grammar and Bible. And then we will do either history, science, sign language, or health (these rotate daily). After another break I will take Dd4 alone and work with her on some preschool things for a bit.

She's seeing a vision/auditory therapist. But honestly, we haven't seen any improvement with any of the activities that she's given us and we're about to quit. She's reading slightly better than 6 months ago, but it's still VERY slow going.

Yes, we had her evaluated at one point and the therapist said she could possibly have selective mutism. Her interaction is not what I'm concerned about. She's extremely shy (possibly with selective mutism). She comes from a family of quiet people. I went through school without saying a word, for the most part, and I'm relatively normal LOL. Before it's time for group to start back, I'll have a talk with DD and ask her if she'd like to continue with the group. If she does, we'll discuss why and what she likes about it. I'll also present her with the option of Fun Fridays instead of homeschool group on Wednesdays and see what she says about it. Even if she does want to continue attending, I will probably take some time off when baby is born. It's hard going places when newborns are on that 2 hour feeding "schedule."

I thought that DD7 would NEVER go to sleep without crying. Seriously, it lasted for years. She's a night owl, the energizer bunny, and just doesn't need as much sleep at night. But I need my "me time"! She used to cry and scream. Just within the last few months has she started going to bed more easily. However, she does talk, talk, talk as I'm heading out the door and will get angry if I walk out the door in the middle of what she's saying (but if I didn't, she'd have me standing there talking forever). Her bedtime is still very frustrating to me.

Yes, that little girl sounds like she needs some help. Have the parents looked into getting help for her? Killing animals is an early sign of later issues.

I would seriously be grossed out. Not by the human body, but just by the germ factor. I'd be wondering "I really hope that person wiped well enough." And the germs spread by diarrhea can make you pretty sick. And yeah, what in the world do you do about your period? And honestly....women can have discharge at any time of the month, especially near ovulation. What do you do about that? And seeing everyone carrying around towels to sit on....I wouldn't want to touch those things!

We use this one in our family.....we get compliments every single time we bring it to a function: Ingredients: a block of Velveeta cheese (the large one) a can of cream of chicken soup a small container (I think 6 or 8 oz, whatever is the smallest) of sour cream 1 lb box of elbow noodles salt pepper Preheat oven to 350. Boil elbow noodles as directed on the package. When the noodles are finished, pour them into a baking dish. Add the cheese, half a can of cream of chicken soup, half the container of sour cream, plus salt and pepper to taste (I'm pretty generous with the salt and pepper on it). Stir until everything is mixed well. Add pepper all over the top. Put in the oven for 30 minutes at 350. Tip to make things easier.....it is quite hard to stir everything into the baking dish without making a mess. What I do is cut up the block of Velveeta cheese while I'm cooking the noodles on the stove. I heat half of the Velveeta cheese in the microwave, making it more soft and stir-able. When the noodles are finished, I only pour half of them into the baking dish. I also pour in half the Velveeta cheese block (softened/half melted), half the sour cream (so 1/4 of the container) and half the soup (so 1/4 of the container. Plus the salt and pepper of course. I mix that all up. Then I add the other half of everything. It makes it MUCH easier to stir it all up. It is DELICIOUS. I'm a mac-n-cheese addict. And once you get the hang of stirring all that stuff together, it's really easy to make.

DD7's vision/auditory therapist drives me NUTS with this. She is so adamant that DD write her letters from the top down and not rest her hand while writing but instead pivot from her shoulder. She corrects her with this all the time. Honestly.....WHY???? As long as she writes the letters the correct way instead of backwards and writes them legibly, what does it matter?? I just want to roll my eyes every time her therapist says "the eye gate, the ear gate, and the motor gate all work together." Also, when we first entered therapy, she was adamant that DD "choose a hand." At the time (she was 6), she was using both hands, with the left being a bit more dominant. The therapist told her this was a big no-no and made us choose a hand for DD to write with. We went with the left since she seemed to use it more. I didn't agree with it AT ALL. There certainly ARE people that use both hands equally. I'm frustrated with her therapist....we're thinking of quitting. I guess her therapist would have a major cow if she saw how *I* write. I use a combination of capital letters and lowercase letters in the same word. It just seems to flow more easily that way. And you know what? No one cares!

I am so frustrated with teaching DD7 to read. We're still reading (and sounding our way through) basic Dr Seuss books and I See Sam books. DD can see a word in a sentence and say it just fine....and then see the same word just a few words later and have no clue what it is. I really don't get it....it drives me nuts. And she has no comprehension of what she's reading because she has to sound everything out. I hope that some day it will just click. I'm afraid she's going to be reading this way forever. And after this experience, I dread the fact that I have to teach two more children to read after this.

Don't feel bad.....last night I found a butter knife sitting on my computer desk. I remembered that earlier in the evening I was going to butter some toast and I couldn't find the knife that I had pulled out so I had to grab another. I guess I thought the knife needed to be on my desk. :confused:

I finally got really tired of cleaning the playroom all the time. Our playroom kept looking like Toys R Us threw up in there. :tongue_smilie: Here's what I did....I did a major purge....when the kids were asleep for the night. I threw away all junky Happy Meal toys, packed away all babyish toys, listed things on Craigslist that I thought would sell, and for everything else they didn't regularly play with, I put in a box to take to Goodwill. My kids had HUNDREDS of stuffed animals. I probably got rid of 200 of them....and they still have like 200 left. :001_huh: People seem to always give kids stuffed animals. For all other things left in the playroom, I made sure that everything had a home. I had a Rubbermaid box for My Little Ponies. I put all the girls favorite ponies in there....if they wouldn't all fit, the rest went into the Goodwill box. Same went for Little People, dress up clothes, Disney figures, animal figures, Trio blocks, dishes, Zhu Zhu pets, Playmobil, doll house figures and furniture, and any other imaginable sets that would fit into Rubbermaid bins. All of these bins are kept in the playroom closet and are only allowed out when the kids ask. They can have two at a time. If they want another, the other boxes must be cleaned up. In one corner of the playroom I have the "stuffed animal corner." There are three very large laundry hampers set up and the stuffed animals fill those (and overflow them....but with them arranged in a triangle, the overflow just sits on the top). I put bookcases (from Wal-Mart....like $20 each) around the playroom. On those sit the "bigger" toys.....Little People houses, a princess castle, a pirate ship, etc. In another corner of the room, I have another laundry bin. Into that goes all purses and backpacks (after I purged them). In the third corner of the room there's the "movie square". I arranged the kids miniature red couch and two shelves to form an area that's sort of blocked off from the rest of the room. Their TV sits on a shelf and beside it is a multimedia shelf filled with kids movies. Each night, before bedtime, I have the kids do a clean sweep of the playroom. Whatever is not in its place after they are in bed, becomes mine. Sometimes I get a little too lax with the bedtime cleaning (like for the past week) and there's some items that get left on the floor. Right now the dress up clothes are strewn about. So I'll have to crack down on that again. But seriously, this is the most sane I've been with the playroom. It literally used to look like a destruction zone before I implemented all of this stuff. I just got really tired of it. Once it gets too bad, it overwhelms the kids to clean it so I had to do it. I haven't had to do that in months.

I tend to type longer blogs and add photos....that just wouldn't work for me on an ipad.

Pre-kids, I'd take one whole day every 2 weeks and do a top to bottom cleaning of the house....dusting, vacuuming, sweeping, deep cleaning, the works. Since having kids that's just not possible LOL. I prefer task based cleaning. If I'm going to do the floors, I'm going to do the floors in the whole house. I don't want to walk into the kitchen and see shiny, mopped floors and then go into the living room and see dog hair. That would drive me nuts. Same for everything else too.

Poor guy! Getting sick in the midst of your friends is never fun!

Yes....they are made for children who are sensory seeking. If you google something like "sensory chew toys", I'm sure you will come up with a good variety. They make necklaces too!

In my opinion, it's too long. My 7 year old would not want to sit in one class, doing one subject, for an hour. Not to mention, that's a huge range of skill levels for those ages. DD attends a homeschool group with classes. But mixed into those class times are also group game times, outside recess, lunch time, and gym time. So there's a mixture of sitting down and being active. Her homeschool group lasts for 4 hours (that's including lunch).

Yikes! I'm not sure I could spend that much on a wedding that wasn't even my own!

Rash guards are the answer. All the covering of a t-shirt, and none of the weight. Our whole family wears them.

How long have you been blogging? Hmmm...for a few years. Maybe two? Three? What uses have you found for your blog? I like writing the story of us. It's about our family, our adventures, my thoughts. One entry may be about homeschooling, the next may be about a trip to Disney, and the next may be my thoughts on an issue in Christianity. It varies. Some entries may be deep, while some shallow. Do you allow your children their own blog? They are not old enough yet....not sure how I'll feel when they reach an age where they would want to do that. Do other educators interact with your blog? If they leave a comment in the comment section. What do you feel is the most useful content on your blog? Maybe moms can gather ideas for fun things, someone can see what homeschooling is all about, someone can see how much I love being a mother and being with my kids.....I know I like to view other mom's blogs for these type of ideas. What content on others blogs do you find most useful? What works with homeschooling....craft ideas....other neat ideas to do with kids....blogs about families with children of similar ages to mine....etc.

Now I had to go back and look at my pics to see which Flynn we saw LOL. I believe it is the first guy posted....not 100% sure though. Their profiles look the same though. I didn't get a good pic of Flynn because my DD's were not interested in him one bit LOL....they were too focused on Rapunzel.

My 4 year old is funny LOL....she won't take any classes. 7 year old will, but just won't speak while doing it. I'm not sure that anything is helping DD be less shy. She's been with the same group of kids at church for 3 years now and has never said a word to anyone. She's been in this homeschool group for 2 years and it's the same there too. DD4 wants to take a ballet class with DD7, but they fall into different age groups. I asked DD7 if she would take a class with DD4 if the teacher allowed her to be in there....DD7 said she didn't want to learn "baby moves." :001_huh: Maybe I can convince DD7 to take her own class as well as one with my 4 year old too....that is, if the teacher will allow her to be in the younger class. What would be awesome is if they offered classes for the 4 year old (if she would go in there) while DD7 was at homeschool group. But they don't since all the PS kids are in school. DD4 is too young to attend the homeschool group classes.

One other appeal to me for dropping the homeschool group is that I'd love to have "Fun Fridays" where we do science, our SOTW activity, sign language, and all the other fun things that we never get around to doing. With only doing school for four days, I don't feel like we can incorporate Fun Friday. I'll definitely ask DD what she'd like to do.

I'm down here in Florida....the land of constant summers. :D

Expensive is around $130 per month for both of my kids together (newborn will not be charged). Children cannot enter the premises without being a paying member, so I have to pay for my younger child too. However, with this fee, we can take ANY amount of classes that we want. I could have my kids in 3 dance classes, sports movement, cooking, and a science class, etc. These are all in addition to the actual homeschool group that runs on Wednesdays. These other classes occur in the afternoons at various times during the week so that public schooled kids can take them too. But like I said, none of these classes are of any substance. And I really don't have time to take them to a bunch of classes. For example, I signed my DD up for the cooking class last year. We attended for a while, but they never did any actual cooking. They'd usually always make some sort of simple dessert and it always consisted of just doing something like adding frosting to a cookie or something like that. As for another outlet, we attend church on Sundays and Wednesdays and DD always goes into her class. She used to play soccer when she was four, but doesn't want to do that anymore. She also took ballet when she was four, but doesn't want to do that anymore either. She's really very content to be home with her little sister, pretending and coloring together. She did mention something about ballet again....but I'll have to see. Sometimes she can be wishy washy about things like that. I *could* take the first part of the year off. I'd have to put my account on "hold" so that they would not charge me the $130 each month. If I cancel my account totally, I would have to pay a re-enrollment fee and I risk the fees going up. I'm locked into my price per month right now. It costs like $10 a month to hold my place, I think. So that's an option too.

Some people look at Facebook as a way to gather friends, up their numbers, or just connect with *anyone*. I use Facebook for people that I only know well....and who I know are not crazy LOL. I don't want to post details about my upcoming vacation for someone crazy to break into my house while I'm gone. I wouldn't want to be friends with the people that you mention either. Although, I'd lean more towards the young mom than the crazy pool lady....the young mom may just be looking for friends in the area.