I would offer them two dates - the birthday and the first date next month that your girls are free - and ask your Dh's aunt and uncle which works best for them. If having your girls on their son's birthday would be too hard for them, they will just choose the later date without any explanation necessary.

I don't think any of them would "bother" me, but I would wait for a stall rather than change in the open if any of them were in the change room. If there are only women and baby/toddler boys in the room, I just cover myself with a towel while I change, but I wouldn't want boys this old watching me do even that. Not that most boys would even care, I'd just feel a little awkward. D, E, and G look 6+ to me, and look old enough to use the men's change room alone, but I would assume that if their mother brought them in the women's, she had a good reason for it. I'm lucky that my son with autism has brothers who are able to help him in the men's room, so this really hasn't been an issue for us. I'm from Canada and living in the US. At the pool where my kids took swim lessons when we lived in Canada, sending boys into the men's locker room alone wasn't an issue at all, because the male lifeguards took turns acting as "locker room attendants" while kids' swimming lessons were going on. It was great to know that there was a background-checked university student in there to keep an eye on things.

Leggings on boys isn't a trend around here, except with basketball players who wear them under their shorts. That said, Ds13 sometimes wears leggings to dance class, and doesn't think anything of stopping by a store on the way home or going out for Subway between classes while still in his leggings. They aren't exactly fashionable, but he wears a dance belt so there's nothing to see, and he's never gotten any comments about them. If he or any of my other boys wanted to wear leggings regularly, I'd just make sure they had appropriate underwear.

Concerts, plays, sporting events, etc. in familiar venues.

My 11-year-old says he believes in Santa "just in case". :001_rolleyes:

I'm not really sure how most people in my culture or subculture would react to this, but it wouldn't bother me. There are only about 8 people I would trust to take care of my elementary-aged kids for a week, and I trust them enough to let them make this type of decision.

No. My 13-year-old just started watching the series from the beginning, with Dh, but that's about the earliest I would allow it.

Chloe is getting a new bed for Christmas, and I'm sure the kids will buy her a few small gifts as well. No stocking though.

I have a Colin, and I've never heard anyone mispronounce his name, though I have seen it misspelled as Collin. :)

I have a friend who, as a very young mother, named her daughter Ariola. Her daughter was a toddler before she came across the word areola and made the connection. At that point, she was mortified, and was upset that no one (i.e. a doctor or nurse...) had pointed it out to her. Before her daughter started school, they had her name legally changed. Just this summer, I heard that an acquaintance had named her baby boy Grantham, and was planning to call him Grant. I don't think I would have used Grantham until Downton Abbey had faded in popularity, but I don't mind it as a name, and it sounds great with their other boys' names.

We send Christmas cards and enclose a photo of the kids, but only to family members and a few close friends. I think we'll end up sending around 20 this year. I know that some family members (my two childless aunts, for example) love having photos of the kids on their fridge to show off to their friends. We don't send letters, because our families tend to keep up with what everyone's doing.

We've had professional family photos taken twice, in 2002 and 2012. So, once every 10 years? Dh and his stepfather are both pretty decent photographers, so we do have lots of nice photos.

New hits this year: AoPS Prealgebra for both Ds13 and Ds11, which has surprised me because they are such different learners. I bought it for Ds11, but Ds13 asked to try it out and loved it. Moving Beyond the Page literature units for Ds13. We've never tried MBtP before (largely due to the cost), but he's loved the literature units he's used so far (The Pearl and The Hobbit). We've mostly just discussed literature up until this point, so I think he likes being independent and actually producing something. Daily creative writing time. At the beginning of October, I announced that every day from 11:00 until lunch time (around noon) would be creative writing. My high schoolers lasted about three days before they decided that they have no interest in writing and would rather just get their work done, but my three younger boys are loving it. I got a handful of writing books (The Creative Writer, Writing Magic, Spilling Ink, Writing Tools, etc.) and printed out the NaNoWriMo workbooks, but let them decide whether to use them or not, and what to write. Ds6 has mostly been writing comic books, Ds11 is writing a fantasy novel, and Ds13 alternates between using the writing books and working on a couple short stories he's started. It does eat up a big chunk of our morning, but so far it seems to be worth it! Conceptual Physics. We loved Conceptual Chemistry, so there's no surprise here. Dual-enrollment at the community college for Ds16. Hiring a writing tutor for Ds18. Misses: Legends and Leagues. Ds6 liked the picture book, but the workbook was a flop and we never finished it. CPO Earth Science. It's still the best middle school science text I've seen, but none of us have any interest in Earth science, and we just couldn't get into it. Nancy Larson Science. An expensive mistake. Old favorites that are still getting the job done: Singapore, Math-U-See, Key to series, SOTW, Handwriting Without Tears, Getty-Dubay Italic, Sequential Spelling, Writing With Skill, Writing Skills, Excellence in Literature, Breaking the Barrier

Depends on the kid. My 18yo wears a watch and has since he was about 7. My other boys have all received watches as gifts over the years, but none of them continued to wear the watch after the novelty had worn off.

How cute! Make sure to take a picture of his first day! My 13yo has picked up ballet again this year after taking a few years off, and it's crazy to see the difference that those years have made. He did get a little teasing from other kids when he was younger, but this time around everyone just seems to think that it's really cool.

Ds20- He has no idea. He's supposed to be applying to grad schools now, but instead he's :willy_nilly: about his future. Ds18- Skate park designer Ds16- Biomedical engineer Ds13- Actor/screenwriter/playwright, unless he marries rich, in which case he will be a trophy husband :huh: Ds11- Fantasy writer Ds6- Artist

I'd like to join as well!

My son's psychology, neuroscience and biology courses use APA.

I only have one in college so far. His first-year courses in chemistry and physics were the only ones that had online assignments. All his math and other science courses had pencil and paper assignments that were graded, or at least checked for completion, by teaching assistants.

In my experience, it's pretty random. My maternal grandmother was "Nana", but all my cousins called her that, regardless of whether she was their maternal or paternal grandmother. My mother and her sisters all go by "Nana". My paternal grandmother was "Grammie". Dh had a "Gran" (maternal) and a "Granny" (paternal), and his mother is "Gran".

This was definitely the case with my Ds18. He still did okay with sports and other structured activities, but when his friends went from "playing together" to just "hanging out", it took him quite a while to make the adjustment. This was also when he started to develop some social anxiety, and he began turning down invitations to birthday parties, or even just to his friends' houses if he didn't knew there'd be a group. It wasn't until he was about 16 that he was comfortable just "hanging out", and he's still immature for 18 in some ways, but he's definitely closed the gap considerably.

All three names are beautiful, but I voted for Margaret because I'm not a fan of Trixie and I think Alice is a little too close to Adelaide.

I was born A B Ivey. Except for my parents and sisters, everyone has called me Ivey for most of my life (there was another girl in my class every year named A, so I was known as A Ivey, then just Ivey). When Dh and I got married, I legally changed my name to A B Ivey D, but sign my name and introduce myself as Ivey D. My mother and sisters all dropped Ivey and took on their husband's last name.

I’ve always assumed that Charlie and Lucy were around 8, while Linus was about 6.

I didn't have a black friend until I moved to Texas 15 years ago. There was exactly one black person in my city when I was growing up, and only a few hundred (mostly university students) when I left. Now, two of my four closest friends are black, and my kids have some black friends, so I am friendly with their parents.