It isn't possible to make/keep a promise to love someone forever because no person has that much control over an emotion set that is so delicate. You can promise to try, promise to stay with someone and act loving even when those feelings aren't there, but all promises to love forever are just wishful thinking.

If he's not fixing them up, and they don't have plates, could he (or his friends) be stealing them?

Don't think of that stuff as food. Think of it as poison. Food nourishes and builds us up. That stuff does not do that.

Oh, yes! I completely agree that what Calming Tea described is not only true for myself but for ALL of the homeschool parents I have known in my seventeen years in the community.

5rd: MindBenders 6th: Art of Argument 7th: Discovery of Deduction 8th: The Argument Builder

I vote for Abraham. It's an awesome name. Everyone knows how to spell and pronounce it but you never hear it anymore. It makes me think of some kindly old man. In both those ways it matches Milo, Ari & Gus, too. If you go with William, consider the nickname Liam. Maybe someone else has said that. I can't stomach five pages of baby name talk. I named my sons the names that I had gotten used to calling them during pregnancy rather than the best names I thought of, and I deeply regret doing so. So I will put my two cents in against Ronan. Also it doesn't really go with Milo, Ari & Gus. It is trendy and sounds new (even though I know it isn't). Also, Milo, Ari & Gus immediately bring to mind sweater vests whereas Ronan makes me think of T-shirts.

My middle class relatives always said "pass gas" or "break wind". My well-off relatives always said "fart" or something funny but brief. So I grew up with the impression, and this is just mine, that polite terms are ways of seeming hoity toity. I have no interest in seeming hoity toity, but I also don't like the word fart. So I use the word plumper. I like it because it is fun to say. That combines the disinterest in the ugliness of "fart" of the one side of my family with the delight in just being honest of the other side of my family.

I sent my then eleven-year-old son to the public middle school for a STEM camp this past summer. I was a little worried because middle school can be so gross, socially, and he was going in full homeschool mode - long hair, old sneakers, bicycling there on his own rather than being delivered in an SUV, and thrilled to be there. He had no complaints about the social environment, was treated fondly by the teachers and had a blast playing with the expensive and complicated STEM toys we can't access as homeschoolers. The activities were set up as mini-competitions and for the first two days he came home with ALL the first place certificates. After those two days they changed the format. No one gave him any guff about it though. Perhaps because it was an opt-in camp for kids who are interested in STEM topics, it was easier socially for him. He's a pretty resilient little dude, though. He tends to attract friends because (don't laugh) he's pretty-- long blond hair, brilliant blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and a classic face. We joke that he could be a sociopath and people would want to please him. He is a bit standoffish and doesn't tend to initiate friendships but people follow him around nonetheless. Also, he's older than eight. I'm pretty sure I would not send a kid that young into any kind of school environment. It would probably be fine, but if it wasn't, it would take years to recover. (ETA: Wow, this sounds like a braggy post. Maybe I should also say that he's a seriously grumpy snot with me most of the time, would sooner starve than eat anything that is not beige, and has mastered one hundred and twenty ways to make one dictation assignment take five hours.)

My two older boys alternate who gets the evening shower before bed. My youngest gets a bath in the mornings.

How about if you offer him a trade? If he does Latin and piano in half an hour each with a good attitude, he gets half an hour to either watch TV or play a video game in the evening.

So, my family has recently been talking about what the sky would look like from a planet in a binary solar system, and we have all these questions and I'm not sure where to find the answers. So here I am, because you folks seem to have answers, or ideas about where to find answers, for everything. Here are some of the questions we have. How do the stars in a cluster interact with each other? Do they move in each other's skies or are they fixed like the faraway ones? Would you see them in the daytime? How does a planet orbit a binary star system, and what kinds of seasons does that produce? For that matter, what kind of days and nights? Any ideas?

Canadians are CANNIBALS?!

I just got CogAt and ITBS scores back for my twelve-year-old seventh grader. His results seem to be really good. I'm wondering if I should trust them and feel awesome, or if I'm somehow wishfully interpreting them. Shoot me full of holes, please. With the ITBS, he scored grade level equivalent 13+ in everything except math concepts & estimation (10.9), math computation (11.8) and science (12.8). His percentile composite is 97%, with lows in capitalization (89%), punctuation (84%) and science (86%). Everything else was in the nineties with four scores above 95%, two of those 99%. His stanines include two sevens, but are mostly nines. With the CogAt, his composite score has him at the 97th percentile, stanine of 9. So, is this awesome? Or is this a really easy test? Or maybe both of those things are true. Also, and I realize this is a vague question but I can't quite articulate it better, does this mean anything? Maybe I mean, should I do anything with or about these scores, besides email Grandma? We have been happily using a relaxed LCC-inspired curriculum for the past four years. He's not enrolled in any kind of classes or programs or talent searches. Would you let these scores change anything you do?

Dumpster diving and Food Not Bombs?

My grocery store has an "older produce" cart with severely discounted stuff that has to be used today. One in your neck of the woods probably has something similar. How about a stir fry with whatever vegetables are being clearanced at the grocery store and tofu or some kind of nut? They're good with just soy sauce, or you could get creative and combine some Asian spices and yogurt for extra protein and a curry-ish feel. (. . . I type, as I shovel a cauliflower/spinach/almond stir fry into my mouth.)

Have you considered organizing them by color? I know you say you want them to feel like they aren't there and you don't need them as a style expression, but something the things that stick out in our subconscious do so because they aren't blending with our style or integrating themselves into the decor. Does that make sense? If the books look wrong there, you will keep thinking that you have to fix them. But if you can make them look like they belong there, they'll stop being on the fore of your mind when you walk into a room.

Could you post your weekly and daily schedules with a detailed breakdown of activities? I was thinking something like 8 circle time: singing, recite poem, yoga, light candle 8: 30 - main lesson: listen to story, act out story, draw in main lesson book, craft 10:00 handwork: knitting lesson, then practice Et cetera. If you can. I'm really stumped on how this all gets put together.

Really? You've never had hot tea?! I am only believing this is possible because I got to age twenty without ever having tried ketchup. But still, I'd seen it served and knew how. Wow. Where did you grow up? You can make tea the British way or the American way. The American way is to put a tea bag in a mug with some water and microwave it for a couple of minutes, then add sugar and maybe milk or lemon juice, depending on your personal preferences. The British way requires a tea pot, a tea kettle, and containers of cream or milk and sugar. You boil water in the kettle on the stove, then pour it onto tea bags you have placed in the pot. You let it steep in the pot on the table for a little bit, then serve it from the pot into individual cups. Each individual adds sugar and cream or milk into their own cup. I usually just make tea for myself but I do it the British way because I like having multiple cups ready to go. Then I guess there's the hybrid way - boil water in a kettle on a stove, but pour it over a teabag that's placed in the cup. After a few minutes, remove the tea bag and add your sugar, honey, lemon and/or milk. Teas taste radically differently. Your main choices in any American grocery store should be black, earl grey, English breakfast, oolong and Irish breakfast. I really can't guess which one you'd like more. My favorite is earl grey; I tend to like nuttier, more savory teas. My guy can't start a morning without Irish breakfast; he likes super sweet teas. He always adds milk. I never do. Oh, and he can not stand iced tea, hates it, whereas I adore it.

Rick Riordan did his homework, and you can trust the mythology and history you get from those books. Mythology itself is variable, but the contemporary stories are based on one or another authentically ancient version of the myths.

Ugh, I'm sorry. I would go to the ER if urgent care and my doctor couldn't see me.

I am considering doing something like this right now for most of the same reasons, only I'm a single mom. I will need to work when my kids are grown, and I don't want to get to fifty and end up doing retail. But, I am unwilling to do something that keeps me from being able to homeschool even my teens. My mom worked two full-time jobs, and I never saw her, and we had no relationship. While she was gone, my brother and I were alternately neglected and tormented by a string of sadistic substitute caregivers, including the public school system. Yes, I do sometimes say to myself, "If Mom could do that, I can do this," but I think I would have been able to say that if she only worked forty hour weeks too. And then I might have spent ages seven to twelve believing that my parent loved and enjoyed me. All I saw was a mom who was desperate and determined to get away from me as much as possible. As an adult, I can go back over those memories and see that I was misreading her cues rather badly, but I didn't have that maturity as a stressed out seven-year-old being shuffled from school to babysitter. All that said, I want to and mean to cheer you on. I think you can go to school slowly for a fantastically fulfilling medical career and still be present with your children. I'm not really sure a doctor is the end goal for that, though.

This year I am taking a swig of this concoction daily.

Things I used in the nineties and am using with my kids now: Famous Men series (Greenleaf Press versions) copywork, dictation and narration Oak Meadow Dover coloring books Writing Strands Bob Books B McIntyre's The Drawing Textbook

You want the blue book. It is a fantastic, awesome, amazing, simple program - just like Phonics Pathways, only for Hebrew. Step by step, one letter/sound at a time, vocabulary introduced slowly and gently as you go. It will have you up and really reading Hebrew in a couple of weeks with only ten or fifteen minutes a day of practice. And it's $5. The trick is, it's hard to figure out how to buy it. The primer was written to accompany a "Read Hebrew America" program sponsored by a national non-profit. It is distributed in classes all over the world. Go to the program's website, here. Scroll to the bottom, question #11, "can I study this at home?" There is where it says the book, The Rei****h Binah Hebrew Primer, is for sale on its own. You don't need the audio but you may want it. (For some reason, the forums won't let me post the word in the title. It has a four letter cuss word that starts with s, right in the middle there, and it keeps asterixing those four letters out automatically. Weird.) Contact them using the "contact us" page, here, and ask to buy a primer. I wish all curricula were this good. It really is amazing. I would fork over $100 for it. Seriously. Get this primer.

I agree that it will help a ton to find some physical activity she can do that is appropriate for her shape, even aided by it. Some of the fat women I know enjoy swimming and bellydancing. Also, get and read the book Fat! SO? It isn't for children, not by a long shot, but it does have a lot of facts and ideas that you can pass on and use with your daughter. You could also find and subscribe to some fat-positive fashion blogs, and make a point of telling her when you see a cute outfit on one. Don't qualify it as, "she's pretty even though she's fat!" Just talk about that belt looking cute or that hairstyle being really flattering or whatever the fashion object might be.