Well it was a long time ago but I don't remember it being that bad...just a couple of days of discomfort. And I leaked a little. But other than that it was no big deal.

I did it for years and it is busy but it is doable. There is little to no down time but it is worth it. The hardest thing for me was learning to delegate and letting go of the "control". :grouphug:

:grouphug::grouphug::grouphug:

Me too. I love Genevieve though. So elegant!

I am going to a baby shower for a close friend next week and the invitation included a pink piece of cardstock and request for us to write a bible verse for the baby to go into a keepsake book. Which would you choose?

My nuclear family and what is best for them comes first. My extended family comes second. I would not say I will "never" move away from my mom or brothers, etc. because my loyalty is with my husband first. I go where he goes. I miss my family terribly but I do not regret for one second moving here. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity I can give my children even if it means I will miss my extended family. The sacrifice has been well worth it. And skype is AWESOME!

Yep. If you choose a non-traditional spelling for your kid's name that is your choice BUT do not be surprised or angry if you and your child spend the rest of your lives correcting people who spell it and pronounce it wrong. For instance, how would you pronounce this: Mikhlale Yeah, I don't know either. But it is a student's name (American) and somehow I am supposed to know how to say that and how to spell it? :001_huh:

:grouphug: wow, I am so sorry... :grouphug: OH. MY. WORD. I am getting angrier by the second. :cursing: You are SO RIGHT! and "dumbassedness" is my new favorite word. :D Maybe my REAL problem is that I let people get away with too many of these comments. I usually try to be so understanding of their dumbassedness. But my patience has worn thin so I pity the next person who makes a stupid comment about adoption to me.

Mine has nothing to do with homeschooling.

If it is small claims court you get one appeal. If he wins again you have to pay BUT he still has to collect. You could pay him one dollar a month. He could request a wage garnishment but if you have no wages???

I knew it was a typo but I am silly and thought "wow, I bet that hurt!" :D What a cool story though!

Just "listening" is not one of my strong points. My dh says I am like a man because I always want to fix everything and sometimes people just want to vent but not fix the issue. That just makes me go :001_huh:. So I have to work very hard to just sit and listen and NOT offer any advice but it does not come natural to me. I have one friend who is a drama queen and always has some kind of major crisis going on (in her mind at least). I call her calamity Jane. I do a lot of deep breathing to control my need to fix her (and honestly, I answer about 1 out of every 5 calls). I am a work in progress.:tongue_smilie:

Here they tell you that you will catch a cold if you drink cold water. :D

This is what I was thinking too... It's the wife and the husband doesn't know.

It broke my heart. Truly.

I know! She is almost two years old!!! Time goes so fast...

Congrats!!!!

:iagree: and the teens I have worked with for years would call that "using" someone or "leading them on". Casually dating one person after another gets you a very negative reputation where I come from. I am sure she does not intend for it to come across like that but if she is not ready for a relationship then I agree with the hanging out as friends in a group idea.

You know, usually I am not really "sensitive" when it comes to people saying stupid things about adoption but lately... So I have 3 kids and 2 are adopted. We are used to people staring, asking questions. When you have 3 kids of 3 different ethnicities, it's going to happen. We know that. At a Chuck E Cheese an employee once accused us of trying to kidnap our ds even though our numbers matched. We hear: - Are you going to tell them they are adopted? :001_huh: - I bet he will be really good at karate. :001_huh: - How much did you pay for her/him? :glare: Whatever. I blow it off. BUT THIS WEEK... a woman at the park saw my kids playing and asked a bunch of questions about my two adopted kids and I answered politely like I always do. I consider myself an ambassador for adoption. :D But then my oldest (bio kid) walks up and after I introduce him she says "Oh, so you only have one son." I was like HUH? I just spent 20 minutes talking about my other two kids one of which is a boy and is sitting right by her. So I said "No, we have 3 kids. Two boys and 1 girl." And she says "Oh, are the others at home?" :001_huh: So I am thinking "OK lady, try to keep up" and I explain again: NO, I have THREE children: 1 girl and 2 boys as I POINT to them. Then she says again "Oh I see. But just one son." It was OBVIOUS she did not consider my adopted children my REAL children. So I walked away. At the night market a lady asked me "Where did you get her?" in a nasty voice and pointing at my daughter like I stole her or something. Then my kids were asking me yesterday about the way my dh and I met. It was cute and my oldest said "If you and dad had not met I would not be here" and my adopted ds says "Yeah, and I would still be for sale". :svengo: This idea got in his head from something someone said at school about us "buying" him from his real mom. Like I said, normally this stuff doesn't get to me but lately grrrrrrrrrrrrr.......

You mean if a particular denomination has decided that something like a belief in YE creation is ESSENTIAL to salvation or mandatory for joining their church... And I felt that this issue is a rib issue and shouldn't matter so much? I wouldn't join and to be honest, they probably wouldn't want me. This did happen once to me. A church we were considering joining had something in their SoF that I just couldn't sign my name to. I explained my reservations and they said I couldn't join unless I did. Their party...their rules. So I went elsewhere.

Spine issues and rib issues.... The spine issues are the deal-breakers... The rib issues are ones you can agree to disagree on. For instance, I am against abortion and could not be part of a denomination that is pro-abortion. It is a spine issue for me. A rib issue for me would be the YE-OE debate but it might not be for someone else. You have to decide which issues are spine issues and which are rib issues for you.

:iagree::iagree::iagree:

My oldest believed until he was about 10 or 11 I think. He was not emotionally damaged in any way and he still pretends to believe for the sake of the little ones. My 7 yo still believes.

Well it is not quite that easy. This is an American school with about 300 American students and their American parents all of whom want THEIR holidays too and they are the "clients" so to speak. So we are trying to juggle American, Malaysian, Indian, and Chinese holidays and still somehow teach these children. We are actually more accommodating than the other international schools but it never seems to be enough. I guess I am just frustrated today.

Yes they do. A LOT OF THEM. So we take a multitude of official malaysian holidays... some are religious in nature some are not. And we take only one day for thanksgiving. Christmas, New Year and Chinese New year sometimes get rolled together and are sometimes separate depending on when and chinese new year lasts for two weeks, and we take Easter. Then there is all the indian holidays. I enjoy being a part of all the celebrations but we cannot feasibly take everyone of them off and everyone thinks THEIR holidays are the MOST important and won't budge. I guess I just wish that "diversity" included a little more compromise. :confused: Instead it is more like "we all live near each other and work at the same place but that's as far as it goes for integration."