I was so glad to hear it. The news story I heard also reported that the adult who had taken the nine-year-old to the town hall meeting woke up asking for her, and her husband had to tell her. My heart just bleeds for that poor woman.

Breakfast was yogurt with frozen raspberries and a mug of chai. Lunch is leftover pasta with broccoli, edamame and walnuts, or black bean burgers: diner's choice. I'm thinking we'll make a curry for dinner. Dh will be in town until late at a church meeting. We're on our normal schedule. Snow is not noteworthy around here. Our Town Level MCT came this morning, though. We're excited about that. And multi-digit multiplication is going better than I thought it would, though I should bite my tongue. I'm finally able to snowshoe, and so I'm mostly maintaining my normal exercise program. We have yoga on roku now, though! w00t! I may also try hooping on bad days...today it was five degrees outside when I got up. The kids play out in the warmer afternoon, so they're OK.

I've got to tell you, Bill, speaking strictly from personal experience, this laundry list is all smoke and no fire. I've got to wonder what other factors are at play here, such as: •use of bath soaps that are irritants, which can also cause UTIs in girls •at the other end of the scale, issues with personal hygiene, or parental discomfort with giving related instruction/checking hygiene •proneness to UTIs in any given family •forcible retraction of the foreskin at an early age *by pediatricians or at their behest* (I had to interpose my hands between my eldest son and his first pediatrician. We left the practice.) Naturally, you are far more likely to get irritants between the foreskin and penis if it's forcibly retracted at an early age, especially before potty-training. It serves a purpose, and the subversion of that purpose will have consequences. I don't agree that it's better to remove the foreskin than to properly care for it, and that seems to me to be the argument.

I always find the hygiene argument sort of funny. I mean, you do what you need to to keep things clean, you know? It's only less hygienic if you *don't* clean it properly, but certainly you *can*...it isn't...ahem...rocket science. And I say this as someone surrounded by uncirc'ed males. Which is a disturbing image, I guess, but you know what I mean.

This made me think of the Spartans, and the idea that boys in training were supposed to steal food...they were only in trouble if they got caught, b/c they were incompetent enough to get caught in the first place.

I'm bumping this thread. I just put a used copy of The Way Life Works in my cart at amazon, and I'm going to start going through it ASAP, but a couple of things jump out at me from looking at the index, and I wondered if anyone had any input. Here are some things that I'm used to seeing in Bio curriculum at this age that I don't see in Hoagland: •Taxonomy/classification •Anatomy/dissections •Food webs (as opposed to food chains) It also looks like I'd need separate human body resources, but that's not a big deal to me. Would you supplement? Use virtual online resources to explore anatomy? Partly I'd like to do some of these things and don't want to find that I've purchased a make-work spine, and partly I don't want ds to sit down with the ITBS later and find that we've got a great science background and a gaping hole in the hoop-jumping department.

I'll be honest. I was a die-hard sentence diagrammer, but I like four-level sentence analysis enough that I've made four-level forms for my ds9 to use with his Lively Latin in place of the diagramming pages.

Worth throwing out there...if your ds finds vocab practice mind-numbing, you might try Barron's Picture These SAT words. (That link is for the Kindle edition.) They use silly, silly stories and mnemonic devices. Things I recommend: -Latin and Greek root study (if you don't do Latin or Greek) -Sadlier-Oxford's online vocabulary podcasts (found on their website, similar to some of CAP's audio files) -If your ds is doing any foreign language, have him go through the vocabulary looking for etymological links between his vocab. words and SAT vocab. words. -Sylvan has some online SAT practice -Someone posted a thread about Kaplan's free nook books yesterday....some SAT prep titles are included. There's a free nook app for the iPod/iPad. If you're really lost for ideas, take a break and try freerice.org. It's a fun time, but some of the words are pretty specialized. Hope some of that helps!

Really, truly excellent post. And I did need that today. :D

You're welcome!

There are different levels of play, but here's the beginner level: The structure always rests on a triangle, and that's the field of play...whatever triangle it is resting on at that moment. So, you move by putting one of your colored game pieces on one side of that triangle, and then you rotate the icosahedron in that direction. You win by being the first to control all three sides of one triangle anywhere in the icosahedron. It's a strategy game, but you have to think three-dimensionally. There are rules for what to do if it's your turn and all three sides of the triangle have other player's colors on them, etc..

Icosagame! I posted a thread about it here.

Ack! Sorry, Kareni, I just saw this. It's been a while, but I'll see if I can hunt the thread down. We got the game from my sister for Christmas, and so far, everyone loves it! There are multiple levels of play, so as people master the basic rules, they can add complexity to the rules. I'm really glad I found it again!

Here, here! Two kids were done before lunch, but the oldest, who is determined to make everything a slog and paint it in the worst light possible...is. I'm finding it really exhausting, but I've got him stationed in the kitchen so the rest of us can use the rest of the house, and I'm going out to shovel the driveway in a minute, since the snow seems to actually mean it this time.

I'd call the vet and ask about purchasing a laxative.

I don't know if anyone saw this. Dh and I caught the first episode, and missed the second (out of town). Thought someone here might like it. I'm going to download the second epi at some point.

:lol::lol::lol:

Word. Maia (Μαια) is the name of one of the Plieades in Greek mythology. It's a totally legitimate (and traditional) spelling. My youngest's name is Graeme, which is a traditional English spelling, although Graham is more common. And there are plenty of old names that people simply don't recognize, so they assume the names are "invented". I watched somebody go into paroxysms of grandmotherly grief over a very traditional Irish name (Kieran, I think) simply b/c she'd never heard it before. Her son's and daughter's intentions were to honor their family heritage. Sorry, Impish, not trying to derail! In solidarity, I will say that I had a horrible time with all the Briannas in my oldest's playgroups when he was little. The toughest spelling was Brieannah. Ooh, and that designer I didn't like on one of the TLC shows...Chayse Dacoda?

I don't think individual building administrators (or even superintendents) are what people mean when they talk about trimming fat. A principal who worked on a graduate degree while teaching and moved up to an administrative position has earned his/her stripes. I know how awful their schedules are. However, I've seen a lot of stratification/redundancy at the district level (and I suspect it happens at the state level, as well), so that someone working far less hard than your friend is being paid just the same...and is one of five people doing similar/overlapping jobs. I'll give you an example. The last district for which I taught was in Ohio, which has regional centers throughout the state. These regional centers were responsible for spec. ed. co-ordination...except, in our county's case, in two small city districts, ours included. We had an office with five special ed. co-ordinators located next door to the Jr. High. They were considered county employees, but were paid out of the district's budget. It was, at various times, unclear who I reported to, my principal or my spec. ed. supervisor. Of the five, I got one that was...well, I'll pass the bean dip. Suffice to say she told me to buy candy with my own money to incentivise my students. A student explicitly threatened me while I was pregnant with my youngest, and she wanted to keep him in my room while they looked for alternative placements. She made it harder for me to do my job the entire time I was there. She intimated that I was the problem, but she'd get upset with me for not following procedures in a two-sided memo she'd single-side copied, for example, and I was teacher of the year in my building that year. It was hard to take so much cr*p from someone who was earning way more than me and doing things like this.

I use the fat-free plain greek yogurt in place of sour cream, and it is the best thing going. It's so good! But yes, as a meal by itself, I eat it with cereal, with fruit and stevia, honey, maple syrup and apples...it's incredibly creamy and filling.

That's wonderful!

I'm struggling. My foot-dragger has been...well, foot-dragging. Since about Thanksgiving. I finally started getting him up at 6 a.m.; I was soooo sick of our very reasonable homeschooling schedule being dragged out until none of the rest of us could go anywhere in the afternoon. Now we seem to be on a one-person-at-a-time merry-go-round of 24 hour fevers/sore throats. It hasn't interfered with homeschooling much yet, but today I canned seatwork completely. I do NOT want to take a bunch of semi-sick kids to my in-laws next week. Everyone needs to rest.

It only bothers me insofar as, like anything else (childbirthing/rearing choices come to mind for me personally), it always seems to be the people with the least information who feel most free to dispense their opinions. I do get tired of that.

One more "vote" for using a cup, although I'm a fan of the keeper/mooncup. I used OB forever, but got worried about the bleach.

My mom said *everybody* knew those dogs. :lol: