Yeah, that was strange and I was very distracted from the message by the imagery too. But even listening with eyes closed, I just didn't really get a well communicated message that I could agree with much of. I probably agree with much of his usual commentary but that delivery and format made it seem way crazy and I can't see myself reccomeding that to anyone either. And I like making people think or re-think some ideas they have but not like that.

Thanks, I will probably go ahead and get it, if I'm not too late. :) Nope - too late. Oh well. Maybe another time something will come up.

Assuming HSBC does this again, is their price usually lower? I saw an older post at it being less than $20 for a year and if that is the case, I'm pretty happy to wait a little longer in hopes of it coming back around again because my child is just now really hitting the ae that I think she'd really like the site.

I don't buy things for the kids and birthdays and Xmas usually means just 1 or 2 gifts and that is really the only time they get something. So my kids don't ask for stuff and even my 17yo still doesn't either even when it is sometimes something I would have said yes if she had asked. Occasionally at a check out or the store they will point at something and say they wish it could come home but they don't press when I say no. We don't have tv channels either so they don't get that gimmie gimmie thing going on.

I sew and ran across the term SWAP (sewing with a plan) and I like this approach for planning a wardrobe for my girls. I try to plan enough tops and bottoms in coordinating prints so everything can mix and match. Sometimes the color combinations are a bit of a stretch but the girls like wild combinations too. I also like to plan it out so that dresses can become tunic tops over leggings as they grow. My plans are usually bigger than what I actually get made.

I would heat it to a proper temp before eating again, but yes, we'd still eat it.

Here is would be over $200 a week. Charging more for evenings and such, up to you. Since it sounds like you're just taking on 1 extra child, I would be fine with just having a set rate and not fussing over the hours, especially since it sounds like it may be a bit variable anyways. It's a blessing to find a great care provider when you do shift work, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't charge a fair fee for doing so.

Partially related, I know most people's name but as soon as I am face-to-face with them my mind goes blank. These are people I've known for years and it's espeically embarassing when it's DH's coworkers/bosses and I know their names but my mind is blank the second I want to say "Hi So-so." or something when we meet. This has happened for years and I find it very frustrating and distressing at times. I have no clue how to fix it and when I'm driving to social functions, I'll even spend some time mentally going over the names to try and stick them but *poof* they disappear.

Since I typically spend more time sewing than computing - I have a standing sewing station for a couple years now and I love it. I sometimes keep my laptop there too as well, but I often use it for watching movies and that I don't enjoy standing up. But I really love the standing sewing station.

No. No way. I feel the risks from the vaccine are too great and when my oldest's doc was pushing me to get it, there were still clinical trial posters for it all over campus at the same time. Felt like it ran through way too fast for me to even consider it could possibly be safe. The negative reports I've read have made me comfortable with my choice.

Well judging by the amount we spend annually in library fines, I imagine all the of libraries we visit (we go to more than one county system) will continue to flourish. :) But I love libraries, when we travel somewhere new, visiting their library is a highlight for me. We visit the library on average 2x a week and are fortunate to have good libraries. Now, I can't really comment on the book quality because I don't feel I'm a great judge of that. I sometimes browse shelves for fun but the majority of my searching is done from home, online, so I can request a hold at the drive up window for when I don't feel like spending an hour or more there if I drag the kids in too. Love that drive up window, life saver especially when my kids were even smaller. I also like the extras that I imagine many people don't place as much value on, like the large collection of Manga that my teen loves or the Wii games we can check out (love thi because we'd never buy a game). The library programs are nice and really promote literacy, which my kids really don't need that message, but I know the majority present do. And storytime is held 3-4 days a week, 2 different sessions each day. And I love the library that checks out toys too, another bonus for us because it is built-in toy rotation without the storage hassle. All that extra stuff keeps up coming in more often and we go through a ton of books too - so I don't feel like that stuff is useless extras at all. And if that is what gets a new family to visit for the first time, great, and I hope they fall in love with everything else offered. I've started many library addictions by bringing up those extras to friends who didn't know they were there and now we tend to see them at library events more and their kids have an armful too. Oh and another plus, I currently have 3 different curriculums out from the library to evaluate and decide if we want to use them. And if I plan it right with holds and requests, we can probably use the library copy instead of buying my own - but often times it's easier to just buy it instead.

For our family of 5, yes we can do that for $700/month. If we were a family of 3, it would be a struggle at $420/month. Adding in the extra people doesn't really increase our food costs a great deal but it does mean that we have more monthly budget to spend. Maybe when my two littles are eating more, it'll be more of a struggle.

Afterschool for a couple hours (while still at school - working with theathre group or other social groups) and usually 1 night a weekend as well, though 2 nights isn't unheard of. This weekend she'll be with friends the whole time at a youth group retreat. She wants to hang out during the week but I'm not as interested in driving her around then and where we live, her friends are usually 20 minutes away and I've had other errands in opposite directs to tend to during the day so I don't say yes to those requests very often. If she had it her way, I don't think she'd ever be home, sigh.

Yum! I want to do a CSA every year but since we have a large garden, well, it'd be foolish. But I drool over someone else doing the work. For us, the full-shares (of the ones we've looked at) didn't really seem like enough veg - obviously that can vary based on farm - but we're a veg eating family with no real preferences. I think a half would be a good way to ease into it and also to try out recipes and not feel like you're stuck when they fail and you still have a ton more x to eat or having to be extra creative.

I have struggled with this question a lot in the past couple years. I have two littles, age 4 and almost 3, and we're finally coming out of that fog and it's been a hard fog too. I started exercising and finally realized just how depressed I have been for practically 4 years and that is really hard to accept sometimes how much I've not been me in all this time. I really wanted 7 children but the lack of sanity had me questioning having more than 1. But now that I feel better, the idea of more kids comes back again. When I was so overwhelmed, there was just no was we could pull that trigger because it would have been insane to add more - we were very overwhelmed. But now things are better and I can see myself handing more, but I'm afraid of going back to that fog and that is holding me up a lot too. I don't want to be miserable again. So instead, I'm just going to keep moving forward with my family as is, try to repair so lacking intimacy having small ones has brought about, and just try to get into strong routines again that keeps the house clearner and life moving forward. And then, maybe then, we can think about more. Since I've broken out of the fog stage, just tossing another one in the mix isn't the same option right now and instead I want to do everything I can to feel more prepared to go down that road again in hopes to making it an esier transition that isn't so overwhelming. But the other factor is dh says he is done and feeling older. He is 12 years older and feels exhausted with work and parenting now (he is a great parent and very much a full partner in parenting). So I'm not sure if he'll ever be at a point to want more or consider more - so that could hold us up. Part of me sees how nice things are right now and how they keep getting better and thinks I should just really stick with that. But I do really want another child too, so it's hard to balance.

I have a girl turning 3 next month and she abandonded an easy nap months ago. We do daily nap/quite time so she spends time in her bed fairly quietly. If I sit in there, reading or knitting, it keeps her a bit more tame and after an hour she'll usually then fall asleep. I dont always have the patience to sit that long. So I often try to plan errands around a late naptime (and when I have my teen so she can stay in the car) once a week or so. She seems to do okay getting a nap in every few days and not daily. Quiet time, even when she doesn't sleep, does help with the evening crankiness too. But we usually just plan an evening dance party when the crankiness is topnotch and that helps us push through to bedtime without us going crazy.

Teen used a portable CD player with headphones or a plug in speaker. The littles have a boombox in the school room. Our library is increasing availability of devices called Playaway but their like mini-ipods with whole books loaded on them - so there is one book per device and they just need a AAA battery to run them. I love them. I hated loading books on CD into iTunes to put them on the ipods, it was just too much work. Our library also have a digital library where you can just download the files too (you can get a card for just $25/year for non-state residents, btw, and then you'd have access to the digital content).

4:55am here so I can be at the gym by 5:30am when they open and home before DH needs to go to work (and usually before the littles are up). I sleep in until 6am on weekends because the gym doesn't open until 7am on Saturdays. I switched after years of waking around 9am or later and I *love* it. I'm naturally a morning person, so I love having me time in the morning and getting to the gym every day. Before I would plan to go in the middle of the day but stuff always came up or I'd talk myself out of it by the time it rolled around. So now I'm seeing the results of consistent exercise and tons more energy and being much happier during the day. AND I can go to bed and just go to sleep - having suffered with insomnia and difficulty sleeping forever, that is wonderful too. I do get to bed at 9:30 usually, which was a hard change but I also realized that while I used to stay up until 1am or so, it was usually just staring at the interenet and wasting time (oh I would research stuff, but really, never really doing anything real), I was rarely really productive in the late hours and isntead just rationalizing that I was getting downtime that I felt I so desparately needed. Well now, I don't feel like I need as much downtime, I get more done during the day and am just overall feeling much more fullfilled.

I found an Alphabet book online somewhere - let me see if I can still find it... Here, it is linked from this page: http://www.lwsd.org/school/wilder/PTSA/Enrichment-Activities/MathAdventures/Pages/KindergartenResources.aspx Trying to think of others I've found...

Have you written out your current schedule? You have it loosely written there, maybe he'd feel better if it was just written out weekly and hourly on a sheet of paper. Also, does he considering drum practice, karate, sports, youth group and maybe coops are learning? Because maybe he's only noticin those items and not realizing the other work that gets done. To me, it sounds like you have a schedule, just not written out. You could write it out basically filling in all the hours that aren't extracurricula items with school work -- and then totally ignore it and change it like those of us that love (to pretend we use) schedules do too. :)

Hmmm, only comparison I can give is that dd played soccer and did 2-2.5 hours of practice 5 days a week. In the weeks before school started, whatever the earliest they were allowed to start, it was more like 3-4 hours a day but for a very short time. There are generally specific limits to how much they can have students practice - however, I know there are also ways around that like having open gym times (where anyone could come in, but it's really for the sports players) and what not. I'm not highly versed in all of that because I never felt like they were asking too much of my daughter. I know that I would not have my daughter do any additional training during sports season. Her competitive travel team also usually takes off for the fall season or will only do weekend games without any mid-week practices. If you already paid, you can see if he can get out of other obligations but usually that can be a bit slippery slope - here if you don't practice with the team, you don't play with the team. Or just let it go if it's too much for him at this time and consider it a lesson learned. He can also speak with her PE teacher and make sure he isn't pushing hard during gym and just do the work to pass the class but not for training purposes. Knowing how easy pushing too hard can lead to injuries, I tend to balance more reserve versus pushing harder competitively. Good luck.

We love audio books. My oldest's vocabulary increased greatly when I started getting more books on cd from the library. And I love that they properly pronounce things I would get wrong (especially in the Red Wall series). She was a big reader then and exploded into a constant reader. We're slowly adding some to the preschoolers because they don't seem to listen to them as intently as they listen to me. But there are lot os of short stories available which help with attention spans. In my book, anything that increases the love and enjoyment of reading is a great thing.

We really enjoyed the Wee Folk Art preschool curriculum with my 2yo and 4yo. We didn't make it through a full season because the local high school operates a very low cost preschool and we decided to send dd4 to give me some one-on-one time with my youngest - my oldest enjoyed the curriculum more than my youngest, so I didn't do it during our alone time. I thought I would keep doing it during the afternoons, but other play took over. I'm about to go pick up the complete set of Before Five in a Row and Five in a Row series to see if we want to use one of them, or a combination, for a combined prek/k program when we start up K.

Glad it has eased a lot of stress and is working well. I'm debating the year-round approach because I really like consistency and am pretty sure I would work better with keeping going without an extended break and being able to break our schedule into smaller chunks would also be easier to manage as well. Just a matter of figuring out when I should start... :)

I live in Carroll County, MD and it can be an affordable area to live. You do end up with a bit more rural community, but I'm just a half hour-ish from Baltimore or Frederick and it really isn't too far to go to DC, though I've yet to get comfortable making the trip now when I used to be able to just hop on a bus or train a short walk from my house. I just prefer staying closer to home, I suppose. :) Finding work can be a little more interesting though, my partner commutes about an hour most days, more or less depending on traffic and that isn't uncommon for many people. There is a good bit more to Carroll County than Taneytown since that is in the North Eastern side of the county and about 30-35 minutes from where I live (I'm in the Southern part). I personally find connecting with high school aged homeschoolers a bit more challenging than finding younger students but I'm sure more are out there. My oldest when into public school for high school because of the lack of peer group but that can also depend on the possible community as well - there were more conservative groups around that we didn't pursue. I've been here for 5 years and really like it and have found a great group of other families that I click well with too. We moved here because it was the only affordable option for buying a house with a little bit of land attached. Best of luck.