I have an intrathecal Medtronic pump. It delivers a combo of muscle relaxant and narcotic. It has changed my life. I have mine above my belt line on the right side. I am thin, so it stays fairly prominent. It actually allowed me to have my baby safely, so I am pretty biased, although when my pain Doctor joked about. Third breast I was a bit taken-aback:( But, as chronic pain sufferer, a chemist/biologist with pharmacy tech certification as well, I am incredibly grAteful that I am receiving relief from meds reduced by orders of magnitude! Please feel free to PM me for details.

For us the only way to convince our receptive but somewhat skeptical pediatrician was a combination of things I ordered a slew of home strep tests, kept a journal, and took videos. The key factor was recording the neurological issues that resulted. For my dd6, we see a shocking increase in anxiety, night terrors, OCD, AND neuro dysfuction. When you see he is having an issue, swab him for Strep...and get a handwriting sample. This was a key factor I our case. My daughter has beautiful handwriting, both manuscript and cursive. During a PANDAS/PANS episosode there is a shocking difference. I am so sorry. This is an awful, horrible position to be in. It was actually through this forum (specifically wonderfully helpful people like Wapiti that were key in even figuring out what was happening! I hope you will have good luck with your pediatrician!

Oh, how I desperately wish this would work for us:) I grew up with the 'eat it or sit there' family...eat it or be hungry until the next meal would be fairly reasonable, with a few caveats like choosing from a bowl of available fruit/making themselves a pbj sandwich were an option because I have been there! I ended up with a kid that will absolutely choose not to eat. It is misery. All of those things I swore never to 'cater to' I find myself doing:(

Hah! I guess I should have clarified:) Mushrooms have about 1/7 the protein as meat...but, since we don't eat meat, we tend to add mushroom to all sorts of things:)

Oh,see?! There you go raining on my parenting parade! Until recently my 15- mo will eat almost anything...he has suddenly, persistently been eliminating foods:( I am hoping it is just an independent pbasw😩

When my dd6 was BORN I aquired a massive collection of fantastic tools for creating amazingly creative food for kids: hungry caterpillars made from wholesome veggies, cookie cutter sandwiches with homemade bread and organic, homegrown garnishes...you get the idea! I even had aspirations of my very own cookbook of kiddo favorites! Yeah...I ended up with a kid who melts down over texture, is allergic to dairy, staunchly vegetarian, and steadfastly refuses to consider anything 'complex.' She eats things like plain rice, plain pasta, berries, protein substitutes, horrible white processed bread, and a small handful of smoothies and supplements. That is it/(

Absolutely.. But a bit of protein for vegetarians, we take it where we can get it:) An

I totally admit to jarred pasta sauce for a quick meal! I ALWAYS sauté mushrooms (for protein!) with onion and garlic, dump in a jar, some wine, and quickly rough chop/grate any expiring veggies.. Eta- we are vegetarians so our choices are influenced by that! We sometimes add Morningstar or Quorn crumbles to the sauce.

$150 per month but dd6 goes 2 days/week for 2 hour sessions. But there are always LOTS of extra fees as well. I should say that is for the team as she maxed out on the rec league. It was actually more per month because she was taking two classes per week, for fewer hours! However, there were no other fees.

We do have Zometool! Hubby loves it even more than Alex:) I did order Dash and Dot, prior to this thread as part of her coding materials for this year. Glad to hear it should be a great purchase:)

Okay- So I *Think* I pretty much have things hashed out for Alex for our Fall semester...at least until she bypasses them:) But although she is alarmingly advanced, she still needs fun, cutesy, and 'extra'. Last year we started with all new materials so it would be official and new. This year is just continuation. She doesn't even need much in the way of supplies, although I bought cutesy items. So. I want to buy extras for this year. If you had between $500-$1000 to purchase extras that a child could use long term, what would that entail? We have item like a microscope, A magi scope, molecular modeling, snap circuits, and LOTS of science materials (hubby teaches Chem at uni/mom is Chem/biology). Her favorite subjects are MATH, science, art, and writing..

Dd6 has PANDAS/PANS, now documented by two different peds and a neurologist...this means basically whenever she gets an infection we see an overnight surge in existing symptoms, as well as neurological effects. PANDAs/PANS can be somewhat controversial, but ultimately the treatment is primarily the same. You treat the behavior symptoms of OCD, Night TerrorS, severe ADHD, etc... We have appointments scheduled, but in the meantime dd6 has strange noises. Specifically moving her tongue back and forth in a wa wa wa wa wub thing! It.drives.me.nuts! I do recognize that it seems to release energy for her...but I also k ow this kid to be an extreme victim of habit!!! If I don't correct her now, I sincerely feel it will become ingrained. How can I correct without stigmatizing?!

I am so sorry. I don't even have words for how horrible and unacceptable this is...and I say this because I recently had to have a discussion with my dd6 on the difference between 'lies' and 'little white lies' because she was so incredibly anxious about a somewhat similar scenario in which she might be ostracized:( I find it is very common among my European friends at the moment...my PhD-educated German friends who are ANGRY that little German villages across Germany are 'losing their heritage' due to massive influxes of refugees (they equate refugees with Muslim/Islam/and ISIS?!)... Hubby is British, and Father-in-Law related a story about how a family attempted to open a High Street shop wearing 'Muslim costumes', and how the local people got together to boycott. (Both sons responded with heated repudiation of the idea, to little avail) And so on... It makes me want to scream and cry at the same time:)

This makes me SO sad. The 2nd half of Calais refugee site is due to be raised, and one sticking point was what would happen to the unaccompanied minors? I fear this will be further fuel:(

I know it shouldn't matter, especially since I am sadly one one those women who never, ever get to 'glow' with pregnancy. My best look was a slightly green hue, with a facial expression that not EVERYONE would recognize as 'stand back, she is going to hurl!' Still. One word. Underwear. Seriously. They are all hideous, but the most memorable were the pair hubby brought home proudly from some seriously expensive maternity shop in Dallas. He picked out several very thoughtful outfits, but the underwear have the ABC's printed in them in BOLD colors. Every time I wore them I had a horrid mental picture of the baby peering out of my nether regions to learn her letters😳 Huh. She did learn to read very early...

Definitely! There are a lot of places that offer educators discounts...even places like Michael's, Hobby Lobby, Blick, and more. In fact, here is a handy list of more than 60. Most apply to homeschoolers as well:) https://www.giftcardgranny.com/blog/the-complete-list-of-66-teacher-discounts/ Edited because I am a poor typist on my phone! Edited again because! Because I just discovered that even the Apple Store offers discounts to educators, and include homeschoolers! How did I miss this😳

Absolutely agree:) I love their materials, and they are quality! I would first have her sign up for their educators discount, and email or text coupons. I don't think I have EVER paid full price for anything as they have a steady stream of BOGO 50% off, or 20-50% off coupons, in addition to educators discount. If there is one near her it is even better as they tend to have silly shipping costs:(

I know you absolutely can, as we did the beginning books in much the same way, running them concurrently to keep Alex's interest. For example, the 1st book of Key to Feactions series is introductory material: even to the point of shading in fractions. Gentle, eventually moving up to addition and subtraction of fractions. You will get to the point where solid multiplication mastery is needed, but this wouldn't be insurmountable or on a timeline:) Same with book 1 of decimals, although I found that working through fractions first was very helpful. Similarly, the first Algebra book is probably the MOST easy accessible as it starts with positive and negative integers. Whilst it does ramp to order of operations, it only goes to parentheses and multiplication (basic) so you could teach this as you go... The first geometry book starts out as lines and Rays, so definitely doable...but of all,my little mathematician found this one infinitely frustrating. Picture horrible meltdowns. Not because the material was difficult at all, but because her fine motor skills were lacking when it came to the drawing and she is a perfectionist. And I should say she had Beautiful penmanship and cursive! We ended up setting it aside for almost a year, at which point she finished it in a day:) If you are so inclined and your LO likes Fred, the fractions book and decimals/Percents book coincide nicely with the Key to series, especially if you run them just a bit behind.

I am happy to go through my materials as we ran parallel with our coop doing SOTW 4-- at home we did ancients, but also did a Friday mixed-age coop that covered SOTW4. I have a very advanced/accelerated 6 yo...so we tend to run the gamut between materials for 5 yo...to high school-level materials. Just off the top of my head. For example, I was very worried when we covered the Holocaust. But we went to Washington DC at Xmas and visited the National Holocaust Museum, which hubby and I *really* wanted to see. At the info desk, trying to decide if it was possible, the lovely lady there directed us to begin with the kids exhibit. It is called 'Daniel's Story'. It is AWESOME! Perfectly detailed and sensitive for any age. Seriously, a must-see...and it is available on-line, as a virtual tour. It set the tone for our whole studies of that time. I have a lot more, but have to put the baby to bed... https://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/museum-exhibitions/remember-the-children-daniels-story

Just bumping this to hopefully hear an update on how incredibly well things are going. I really miss your 'voice' around here!

Whilst I can't imagine that a child growing up in the US but relatively well-traveled (as is mine) would imediatively intuit the use of a squatter, this post has inspired a mini-unit for summer:) Only in the world of home-schoolers: The places we Poo, Global Edition!

I think fostering a love of math might just be worth it:) Have you considered supplementing with the Key to Algebra series? The first few are so seriously gradual that if you did them as well you could put together a solid program...the fun of Fred with a bit of painless practice?

We pretty much school year-round, although since hubby teaches at a Uni he takes the first summer semester off. This means we have a lovely six-week trip. This year we did every national park, major city, science museum, art museum and such we could manage in a total of 11 states:) We did manage a lot of reading, all of the SOTW audio books, a ton of history DVDs, Popular Mechanics, audio books, and science DVDs in the car as well, so I guess it was still 'school' but very different from normal so it felt like vacation. The rest of the summer will consist primarily of camps, gymnastics and swimming, music, but we will do math everyday and what I think of as units: all those extras that don't get done regularly during the year. Dd wants more cooking so we have a week set aside for that. A week for chess strategies, a week of 'weird science', a week of only dissections?!, and so on... The traditional 'school year' will begin when Fall semester for Daddy begins in late August...

We are currently on a road trip from Texas through Arizona, Nevada, several weeks in California and the west coast. We have signed her up for a chess/programming camp near where my parents live, and it occurred to me that we might be able to find a math camp for my dd6 to attend. It might just be way too late, but we have a lot of flexibility and are willing to travel to get her there. ESPECIALLY if it means she might meet other girls doing math:) It would have to be flexible regarding age as well, since she is 6 but has covered all manner of topics. She has completed SM5, LoF through Fractions/Decimals and Percents, the Key to series in those and the first few in the key to Algebra series, Hands on Equations, and random other things. That being said, she is still a very asynchronistic, ADHD, exuberant little girl. Any ideas?

Kitchen Table Math absolutely fits that description! The books are available on Amazon, and you would only need the first one for now... https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0982921128/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1464129415&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=kitchen+table+math&dpPl=1&dpID=51LMcP3WCKL&ref=plSrch