Our 4th child was our easiest baby and has grown into our "funny guy" - he loves making people laugh. He was generally very happy and mellow as a baby - I think because there was always so much going on to watch. My oldest asked to me to bring him in for "live sharing" at her school when he was about a year old, and he was totally unfazed by 15 1st graders fawning over him and trying to pat him. :-) I also loved watching my oldest be a big sister to baby #4 - she had a lot of jealousy when the twins were born and still gets competitive with them, but she was so sweet to #4 as a baby and they get along very well now. So, yes, our 4th child was a big, positive change to our family dynamic.

Family of 7 - we're pretty comfortable. Our house and car are small considering our family size, but they are completely paid off. Keeping those major expenses pretty low even in a high COL area means that we have substantial savings and can spend on trips to visit family and kids' activities. I'm nervous about upcoming costs though - how much will 5 teenagers eat? How much will we be able to help them pay for college?

We've got a Kia Rondo, which sounds like what you're looking for. The Rondo seats 7 (driver, front passenger, 3 in the middle row, and 2 in the 3rd row) whereas the Mazda 5 only seats 6. The Rondo has been our family's only car for 5 years, as we've grown from 3 people to 7. Overall, I'm quite happy with it. The downsides are (1) the 3rd row seats are really tiny for adults over 5'6" or so, (2) there is no LATCH for the 3rd row seats, and (3) you can carry stuff or passengers, but not both. I think they only sold the Rondo in the U.S. for 3 years, 2007-2009.

I figure that if I look through a bunch of options and pick out my favorites for my children, they should be more to my liking than public school curricula picked out by someone else and intended to serve a wide range of students.

I'm not a fan of rompers, but I love that the company posts the height and weight of the models along with what size they're wearing. It seems helpful for figuring out what size to order.

I'll be the odd one out and say that we tried a bit of a block schedule this past spring and it worked pretty well, even with math lessons being only 3x per week (with fact practice the other 2 days). Less transition time was a big win in terms of getting a reasonable amount of work done without spending all day on school.

Some hardware stores (Home Depot, maybe Lowe's) offer building projects for kids on Saturday mornings. In my area, there's a place that offers a "junior woodworking" class. And another place that offers "young engineering" classes that involve making simple machines, bridges, etc. out of popsicle sticks. (My daughter LOVED this.) Bowling might work. Drawing classes - many art classes tend toward the messy, but not all. Music classes - if you have Music Together in your area, they have sibling classes that both of your little guys could do. Some piano and violin teachers do group classes that complement private lessons.

I think it would be fine until he starts needing to take tests in group settings.

50% Realizing that I'm worse than average at identifying faces was a huge revelation for me. I think I would've gotten many more of the famous faces correct if they'd included the famous hair (or lack thereof).

I loved the Princess Leia costume! :-D

I wouldn't bring worksheets or books in the car because my kids get carsick easily, and I'd like to avoid the barf-fest.

Ozymandias

I can answer yes to both of these questions. I nursed my oldest until her 3rd birthday. My twins were born about 3 months before that, so there were a few months of tandem nursing newborn twins and a 2-year-old. Honestly, that was just too much for me, even though my oldest was only nursing a couple of times per day. Then my twins nursed until about 2.5 years old. I weaned them at that point because I was about 6 months pregnant with their younger brother, and I was pretty sure I was not up for nursing 3 children again. (For me, the number of nurslings must not exceed the number of nipples!) I felt like one of my twins was much more into nursing than the other one was. So the one twin would always ask to nurse, and then it was like the other wanted to just because her twin got to. Also, there were lots of "nursing manners" issues where they were squirmy and fighting with each other for lap territory when they nursed. My fourth child was not as big a nurser as his siblings. He was born with a blister on his wrist from sucking on it in utero, and he's always been happy to suck on his fist or thumb. He started sleeping through the night very early on, and rarely woke up to nurse. I would pump before going to bed and then my husband or I would give him the bottle sometime the next day because often by late afternoon I would feel like I didn't have much milk. He also got teeth early on (he had 8 of them by 8 months) and really took to solid food in a way that my other kids hadn't. I found out I was pregnant with #5 when my fourth was 9 months old. I intended to keep nursing him through the pregnancy and tandem feed him along with the baby, but he stopped nursing at around 15 months as my milk dried up. He had no interest in trying again after baby #5 was born. I feel a bit guilty, like it probably would've been better for him to nurse longer, but it's lovely having a 2-year-old who snuggles with me without trying to get under my shirt. Baby #5 is 7 months and still nursing. He's a thumb-sucker too, and he just started eating baby food a couple of weeks ago. We'll see.

You could try using a cookbook stand to hold the book.

Here goes.... Family trip back East to visit grandparents and go to the beach Lots of read-alouds Library summer reading program Park days & hikes with our HS group Gardening Oldest: Continue WWE2 (should get to about week 20) Continue OPGTR (should get to about lesson 180) Review AAS1 & AAS2 - no new teaching, just a thorough review of all the words and rules she's learned so far. I'm aiming for about 15 words per day. Review lessons from GWG2 (we skipped them during the school year) Plant unit from RSO Life (we're not going to get to it during the school year) Start piano lessons at home with me Math, but I'm not sure what (the options are: Khan Academy, Dreambox, the 2nd half of MEP Year 2, Math Mammoth reviews, or Singapore 2B) 1 week of science day camp 1 week of engineering day camp Twins: finish Singapore Essential Math A continue OPGTR and BOB books - I'm hoping to start moving beyond CVC words to short-vowel words with consonant blends 1 week of science day camp 1 week of gymnastics day camp

We read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe last month, and my daughters (ages 7 and 4.5) asked for the next book as soon as we finished. My oldest son (also 4.5) followed the story, but didn't love it. I'm not surprised - he tends to be more interested in listening to non-fiction books about animals.

Ours is similar to Um_2_4: we have a 35-gal garbage cart issued by the company (other sizes are available) as well as a 65-gal recycling cart and a 65-gal green waste cart. Each week, our garbage cart gets emptied, and the pickup for the recycling and green waste alternates weeks. We can call up to 2x per year to have up to 12 35-gal trash bags of extra trash or green waste picked up each time. The cost is $28 per month.

I've had T-Mobile ever since I got a cell phone (maybe 10 years now?) I have a pay-as-you-go plan and buy 1000 minutes for $100, and that's about 1 year's worth of cell phone usage for me. I'm happy with the service here.

If your turnips come with their greens, this recipe is one of our favorites (and the reason I grow turnips): http://www.petesgreens.com/recipes/item/1812-stir-fried-turnips-with-greens/1812-stir-fried-turnips-with-greens I'd use the leeks and potatoes in Boulangerie Beans and Potatoes (leek variation): http://tummytreasure.com/archive/?p=557

My preference would be to use "one" as the generic pronoun and leave "he" and "she" for talking about specific people. I'd like to be able to use "it" to refer to people who don't identify as male or female if it were possible to do so in a non-offensive way (like how people sometimes refer to a baby as "it").

Yeah, it makes me feel better that this is what they're doing only after several months of investigation still haven't turned up a culprit. I would think that if all of the male staff and students are cleared, then at least people at the school will be able to trust that it wasn't one of them. The school will also have strong evidence that the rapist was likely an intruder and have reason to implement better security measures to keep the campus safe during the school day.

My guess is an Osage Orange.

I'm glad they're taking it seriously!

You might want to read Raising Freethinkers, which discusses ethics and morality as well as creating family culture and finding community without religion.

I love the language in Scuffy the Tugboat although I don't care for the story.