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KAR120C

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Everything posted by KAR120C

  1. You know my mom is the same -- she has had four, and one made her "grumpy" but she said it wasn't terrible... and she did Lamaze for four kids including her 10-lb. first. I'm wimpier than that! LOL
  2. I should add... honesty is better than comfort right now -- if it really is terrible I'd rather know in advance, get some valium and make DH take the day off work to drive me there and back. If it's not terrible I'll deal with it myself, but I'm a complete baby about dental work and I'm not above pharmaceutical means of dealing with it!! LOL
  3. I'm getting a root canal in two weeks and I'm petrified. My mom (who has had four) says it's no big deal, and a friend of mine (who has had one) says it was a fate worse than death. I'm a tiny bit hopeful because this particular tooth has had a lot of work done on it and I've never had a twinge at all, AND apparently I've had a terrible decay problem underneath an old filling and never felt a thing... but then I've never had a root canal so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about (and I have had problems with dental work on other teeth....) But I have a theory about my mom's experience compared with my friend's... which is that the molars don't hurt as much and the upper jaw is better than the lower. So of course I need a poll to substantiate that... Must. Have. Data. LOL!! So for anyone who has had a root canal, was it terrible or not, and was it an upper molar, lower molar or one of the front teeth?
  4. I love icanhascheezburger!! It's where I go when I need a little break. :)
  5. I think they must have -- I have an old pair of GV chinos (like 15 years old!) that fit perfectly, but nothing I've tried on from them fit at all anymore. Chic too... I have a few ancient and nearly shredded Chic jeans that fit like a glove, but on the rare occasion that I can find the brand at all they aren't the same. On the plus side I've gotten really good at patches and I have the best-fitting yard work jeans on the block... LOL
  6. Well... we're being more conservative than we might be about house expenses... If real estate was still increasing in price we might be more apt to throw more money at our house knowing we'd get it back when we sell (not in the near future or anything, just thinking long term), but as it is I'm leaning toward just the minimum needed to keep it up. Grocery shopping hasn't changed for me, but then we've been pretty frugal about that all along.
  7. DS (8) has a nice big desk in his room with a shelf across the back, and all his schoolbooks "live" there... although most of his work he still does in the dining room... I'd love for him to work at his desk in his room, but he likes to be in the middle of things. There's a laptop in his room but no internet access -- we have a no-internet-in-bedrooms rule for all of us, not just him! :)
  8. I've got the same problem, only in a size 6-8 (but with an even-smaller waist!) Apparently someone with my waist is meant to be a toothpick from there straight down. :rolleyes: I've had good luck with the results from a http://www.zafu.com/ search... it turned up the one cut of Levis that fits (and I mean exactly ONE cut -- nothing else from Levis is even close!) and a bunch of other options I've not tried yet. I've also had moderately-good luck with L.L. Bean -- their proportions are very different from Lands End, but similarly good quality. Hope this helps!
  9. My favorite science projects of DS's have been those that took something known (like what baking soda does with acids and what it does with some colors) and applies it to something that was never specified (like what it will do with paint). In the baking soda experiment, he had to research what baking soda does (reading, doing "kit" projects from the toy store, etc.) and then use what he knew from that to make a hypothesis about what would happen with paint. His hypothesis was that "if the paint is acidic it will foam, and it might change color" (which wasn't too bad for a six year old... LOL) And then he tested it on the paint. It didn't do a darn thing, but he knew why -- it wasn't acidic, and apparently it's not the type of coloring that changes color with pH. By the end of the project he was super-clear on pH and the vinegar/baking soda reaction (not just acid/base, but acid/carbonate), knew how to use several types of pH paper and which ones would work best with something heavily colored like paint, and was at least moderately clear on the thing where some colors, apparently mainly those in fruits and veggies, are indicators of a sort and will change color with changes in pH. So for us, it isn't necessarily about finding out something completely new as much as it is about coming up with a good way of testing known facts against unknown (and interesting!) situations using a reliable procedure and good data collection. This year's project was more sophisticated but actually not quite as good... It involved understanding air resistance/drag and testing it against leaves falling, but while the whole thing was fascinating, he didn't do as good a job communicating all the research he did first, or describing his procedure, or emphasizing the reliability. So his conclusions weren't quite as solid as they have been in previous projects, and the judging reflected that extremely accurately... by which I mean he didn't win, but there was an excellent reason! ;) I posted something on the old boards about how much to help... which I'll cut-and-paste here..... Hope this helps!!
  10. I agree with nmoira about Mindset -- I've not read the whole book, but I've read several articles about the book and they made really good points... however.... according to what I've read we've done everything right (ha! LOL) and DS is still a perfectionist. I figure it could be much much worse though. And I should probably read the whole book before I check that off my list ;) And I agree with lovemyboys that 8-9 seems to be a very fragile age. Old enough to see all his faults clearly but not experienced enough to really trust time and practice to fix them. One thing that has worked wonders with DS is to keep old papers and bring them out every so often to show him just how much he has improved with nothing more than good old fashioned practice. Reminding him that learning to walk was hard but that now that he's been walking for seven years he doesn't even think about it, and that lots of things work that way. And we always have a good eraser on his pencil.
  11. One quick thing to add to the list -- we have really enjoyed a board game called Knights and Castles, which is sort of like Parcheesi, but with a medieval trivia component.
  12. We use the paragraph editing and really like it. It covers a lot of basic grammar and punctuation, but not a lot of spelling... mostly just homophones and near-homophones (their/ there/ they're, or where/wear/were). I know it says "daily" but we don't do it anywhere near daily, and one book has lasted quite a long time. We probably get to it almost once a week... so I bought the highest level I thought he could manage, knowing that I wanted it to be "good" for a few years. It isn't our spine at all, but it's an excellent little review/independent work/ here-do-this-while-I-find-your-science-book tool. Hope this helps! :)
  13. I budget $50 a month just for curriculum and materials, and I stick pretty close to that. If you add in activities (dance, swimming, co-op) it probably triples.
  14. I didn't use the TG for any of the levels. Just the text, workbook and activity book (and I've heard good things about the Higher Order Thinking Skills books but I don't know what levels they're available for!)
  15. The way we do it is to have five "courses": Science Math History/Geography Literature/Comp Foreign Language We spend an hour on each every day. If we do a whole hour of history then we skip geography and vice versa -- or preferably we do about half an hour of each. All the language arts we do is under lit/comp (but this year we're focusing primarily on the composition part and less on the spelling and grammar outside of writing) Then after all that he practices his flute and does some extra reading, and we try to do something active for an hour at least three times a week (tap dance class, swimming class, go play some tennis or shoot hoops...) but those are more or less on "his" time. There may be several items within any of those "courses" but grouping them like that has really streamlined how our day goes. So for instance if he's not working on a paper at the moment, we might take the time to do some extra spelling or vocabulary, or diagram some sentences, but if he is working on something then it's just that -- edit the paper he's writing, use it for typing practice or handwriting, etc. We also have outside things, and some of them I allow to "count" for a course... so if we have Latin class on Fridays we won't do another hour of language on top of that.
  16. Red koolaid. It was seriously all I could keep down for six weeks, and I still lost 15 pounds (that I did NOT have to spare!) And that was while I was on phenergan. :eek:
  17. New roof and some added insulation in the attic. If we have any left (between the proposed rebate, our regular refund because we WAY overpaid this year, and the savings we already have for this purpose) I want new windows. That combination should reduce our energy bills by quite a bit, and then I want gutter covers (to keep the leaves out). Then I'll go fix our withholdings so we don't overpay again-- we've not had a refund in about a decade, but DH changed jobs twice this year and somehow the withholdings didn't come out right. Oh well -- it's a nice surprise for just this once! :)
  18. The only money anyone can make for chores here falls under the "whoever does the laundry keeps the change" rule, which serves both to encourage DS to do the laundry and to remind us all to check our pockets before clothes go in the hamper!! ;) The same rule holds for cleaning out the car. If you clean out the car you can keep what you find. If, on the converse, you lose something by leaving it in the car (or in pockets of dirty laundry) and someone else cleans behind you, well you should have been more careful now shouldn't you! :p
  19. Oh you know, ours was through MATS too... maybe Duke is faster but since they all go through ACT for the report I expect it's about the same!
  20. It took every minute of the "five to six weeks" they said! Well maybe one day short of six weeks... but not more than that... Which I was unaccountably irritated by! LOL And even worse, DS is taking it in February this year because the January date conflicted with the science fair, so I don't expect his scores to be back before the first week of April. *sigh*
  21. Maybe ours (Northwestern) is different, but what parts were "too much pressure" in the one you've dealt with? So far all we've had was testing (Explore) which wasn't any more pressure than any other testing (and we have to test every year anyway, might as well make it interesting...) and they've offered some classes which didn't really look too bad. I mean if we were anywhere near Chicago...
  22. I like to aim for a "low simmer"... that is, it's too much if it causes a meltdown, but too little if it doesn't require some effort. That's going to be a different amount for every kid -- some love writing and will go on and on, and some will melt down after three words. I had the latter type at that age, and so in first grade we did VERY little writing. By the next year though he had improved a great deal (just the age and maturity I think) and could copy a solid page twice a day. Right now we're working on doing the writing and composition at the same time, which is yet another part, more than just the physical writing. Keeping the copying separate from the composition gave him room to do each as well as he could without one relying on the other, but he's at a point now where he really can start to put them together, although I would say his composition has taken a step backwards with the added effort... And if you're looking for what is average at the level, we have a friend in private school who at first grade brought home spelling words to copy (three times each for ten words I think) and fill-in-the-blank answers on worksheets. And at least one time they had to write a kind of crostic poem (like if it was about tigers it would be six words to describe tigers, starting with t, i, g, e, r and s). So in a given week it seems she did about that every day for at least four out of five days.
  23. You know, I noticed the same thing with DS... his shirt-chewing has definitely "peaked" with losing his front teeth, but he's done with that now and it hasn't ended... I think now it's more of a habit than anything, because he can go for a long time without chewing on shirts -- mostly it comes up if he's watching TV or playing video games... I like the fake tag idea... we'll have to give it a try! :)
  24. I'll have to try that! only I'm not sure how many of DS's shirts have tags either -- he usually cuts them out... :rolleyes: I was thinking of threatening to make him buy his own! Hey... maybe I could teach him to make a shirt from fabric, and all the work he put into it would discourage the chewing? Or at least it would be his job to repair them... LOL
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