There are DOS emulators for newer machines to run the old software. :) I think I still have our old Apple IIc+ in the attic somewhere. The newer Carmens just aren't the same.

I read that book. :) It's pretty good. (H. M. Hoover's "This Time of Darkness") The heroine is one of only a handful of people who can really read, and she's labelled defective because of it. Juvenile sci-fi. (She escapes with the help of a friend and they get to see how degenerate their world has really become. But it ends okay.)

Ack, that story sounds familiar! Why am I also thinking there was a girl with a birthmark on her face? Am I mixing it up with another book? I want to say there was something time related in the title, but it's totally escaping me.

Late to the discussion, but I've got a quirky kid too. :) I just love him to pieces, and I can't really blame him for being quirky when he comes by it honestly. :) We did have him evaluated at one point, but he's just bright and quirky, and that's that. Luckily, his whole Tiger Cub den was just as oddball as he was, so it worked out great. I am SO hoping we can keep all the same boys together for Wolf Cubs next year.

I'm no expert, but I am experiencing pretty bad sleep difficulties like your daughter's, and I also have an anxiety/panic disorder. If it were *me*, I'd probably try the drug short term, while working on establishing better sleep-inducing habits. (I know you said you've tried a lot of suggestions, but trying them again while on medication and actually getting rest might get better results.) I've had to work hard on my go-to-sleep routine, and it still takes forever, and I don't stay asleep. My psychiatrist is working with me on the medicine end of things, and my counselor on the routine end of things. I'm reading this thread with great interest so I can get some ideas for medications that might not react badly with my anxiety meds (all of which are supposed to induce sleepiness but no longer do for me). I hope she finds some relief soon, one way or another!

We did Noeo Bio 1 this year and enjoyed it. We did have a few glitches with the Young Scientist kits ... I love the concept but a few times the experiment didn't work or the directions were unclear. (Google was good for this, and there's also a Yahoo group for Noeo users ... it's small but growing.) We're going to try Chem 1 this coming year. Looking through it, it has WAY more experiments than the Bio did, and it has (as usual) lots of awesome books. I did find that one of the kits is missing a component AND a page of instructions, so I have emailed and hope to hear back soon about how they can fix this. The kits are nice because otherwise I am much less inclined to gather ingredients and do stuff. But I also like having google to help me straighten things out when they don't go as planned. :) Or I let my dh repeat the experiment in the evening, if it was a nonconsumable sort of thing ... he can make all science stuff behave. LOL. We've found it to be worth the money for the great books and the handy reading guide (it's very light on directions in bio but looks more thorough in chem). The kits ... good to have, but not always great. My kids are clamoring for more, and my son can't wait till we eventually repeat it with my youngest so he can then lay claim to all the spare bits from the kits and do his own experiments ... that speaks tons to me! (I will definitely be setting him up with some sciencey gizmos to tide him over.)

Hey, cool, I found this one at a rummage sale recently too, and was also without instructions. :) Now I know!

There are two versions of this, I think. I know Feature Films for Families distributed a version, and they only use clean movies or ones they can clean up and edit. So you might try browsing around to find one of theirs, if that helps. (I don't know if Space Camp was one they left intact or had to edit.)

Check out the writer's forum Forward Motion. They have a closed subsection for young writers, and the advice on that site is GOOD. At least on the grown-up part, I know it is. They run workshops and classes and all sorts of stuff, and you can find people to swap writing and practice critiques. Plus some of the owners and moderators are published and can give suggestions on how to get started. I've not been on the forum for a few months, but I spent much of last year there and I learned tons. Also, Susan Marlow runs a writing program which I *think* is a free one, and she's got a blog with it at Homeschool Blogger. I don't have the link.

Actually, the criers didn't learn it was okay. They stayed criers. (Granted, this is one small program, so my statistical sample is small ... but from what I observed, the drop-and-run was okay for a very small percentage of kids, and the rest fussed the whole year. Maybe they were better the next year though.) It does matter about the child's personality, definitely! Even babies have different temperaments. (And I am the ultimate in paranoid mamas, LOL. So I know I can be overprotective and coddling at times. Working on it, I promise!)

I would let her know ... and then let it be her choice. My dad was out of the country when one of his brothers passed away, and it was pretty awful for him. I don't recall if they made it back in time for the funeral or not (it was an unexpected passing) but I do know he would've preferred to be on hand. If it's a pretty sure thing he's not going to make it, the choice needs to be your mom's. At least that way you don't end up getting in trouble for it again. ((Hugs))

We did a few years of Mother's Day Out before starting our full-time homeschooling. At three and four my son was going through a seriously awful tantrum phase. I could hardly take him shopping, he'd wail for hours at any perceived disappointment, and so on. Real Supernanny material. (Actually, we later had him evaluated for autism based on that and some other behaviors, but that turned out not to be the problem.) BUT ... his 'teachers' never saw that side of him. If he was upset at school, he'd almost always bottle it up until I picked him up, and then in the car he'd just start bawling. This was really disturbing to me, because I could always see it in his face on those days, that he was holding something in ... why couldn't they see it? He's MUCH better now about the tantrums, due to much patience and discipline and working on techniques to help him cope. I KNOW that homeschooling helped in this area, because it meant I could help him on a full-time basis, not just after school and on weekends, plus it cut down on the number of stressful situations he had to deal with. I am here to coach him through situations (he's 7 now) and it's just much better. (FWIW, the mother's day out program is a pretty good one, and he did enjoy attending. The last couple years I also taught there one day a week, so I got to see how things operated pretty well.) My kids were also clingy when young, and I'd take the time to stay with them till they were comfortable ... which led to lots less crying than the drop-and-run moms who had to hurry to work. Not that I am blaming them ... life is what it is ... but I did feel bad for the moms and kids who didn't have the luxury to ease into each new morning.

I missed where shoe-tying came into the thread, but my kid lives on velcro and elastic too. :) Fortunately knot-tying is a Wolf Cub thingy so I think we'll finally buckle down and work on tying those shoes!

I believe Lexapro is one considered safe for nursing. I was told (back with baby #1) that Paxil wasn't, but since I could barely tolerate the side effects, it didn't really matter much for us.

As a parent of a quirky kid, I want to add that it doesn't hurt to ask for an evaluation. We ended up going private, out of pocket, to a place I figured I could trust, because they had evaluated some autistic kids that were at our church preschool. And one thing I knew for sure, my kid was VERY much like the 'officially' spectrum kids ... they played very well together. :) My son went through a season (couple years) of very severe tantrums, plus some other odd behaviors like bouncing the bejeebers out of our sofa, and being obsessed with numbers, stuff like that. Anyway, we got a "This kid's not autistic" result, and were given the advice to just deal with the behavioral issues. It was helpful in a way, to be free to just treat some of his stuff as discipline, but I still think if we'd gone a year sooner, we might have gotten a different answer. But I've still been in contact with some of those same kids he was in preschool with ... and while they still have much in common with my son, I can see how he's progressed and they struggled. Even the ones I knew who weren't officially labelled back then are labelled and receiving help now. (And I adore every one of them. They and my son still get along great together ... common interests! And I deal well with them as co-teacher for Sunday School and occasional den leader assistant in Scouts, because they behave and react as my son does, so I can help ease things for them.) Actually, out of the roughly half dozen kids that ended up in our Tiger den this year ... half were 'officially' on the spectrum, and the others were all just as quirky in their own way. They made a great den because we could accomodate for them all at once (all of them highly sensitive to loud noises, for one example). Even if he's not autistic or some other easy-to-label issue ... getting a good look at symptoms can help. Myself, I fit an ADD profile. I have no official diagnosis (still working through the severe anxiety stuff) but just reading about coping strategies for ADD helped a ton. So even if the label doesn't fit, sometimest the therapies can help. Does that make any sense?

Um, ETC is a full phonics program on its own, especially if you actually look at the teacher's guide (which I rarely do). Just throw in your favorite readers for some extra practice. I know lots of folks seem to use the books to supplement other programs, but I've never quite figured out why, since all of them are supposed to be complete as they are. If that doesn't suit you, I have heard very good things about Reading Made Easy, and I would bet OPGTR is good (that's by the Bauers, yes? FLL looks great so I am betting anything they wrote for reading would be good too).

Depending on how many books they go through ... We've got a 'Recently Been Read' bin on the floor of my library (well, I say mine, but I let the kids in, LOL). Borrowed books are returned to this bin if they can't get them on the shelf, and anything recently used in a lesson ends up there too ... this way the kids (mine are young) are encouraged to keep browsing what we just learned about. Anyway, make a Returns bin for your library, and then either you can empty it on a regular basis (once a day, once a week, whatever rate it fills up) or you can make it part of the family cleaning routine ... the kids hand you the books one at a time and you put them back. Models how they go until the kids are strong enough to do it themselves, and still keeps them responsible for cleaning up rather than leaving a mess.

LOL on the toast. I read "Bread and Jam for Frances" to my 4yo to try to help her get over her dinnertime issues ... and now all she wants to eat for any meal is bread and jam. Can we say backfire? LOL. "Bedtime for Frances" didn't help much either, come to think of it. That's awesome that your daughter is reading so well! And I get how scary it can be ... mine is beginning to read and it's throwing me off because I wasn't prepped ... both kids knew their letters sounds as soon as they learned to talk, pretty much (both late talkers, at 2), so I kept expecting #1 to read any day, and it's been a very slow process. So wasn't expecting this one to be sounding her way through easy readers already. Ack! Not on the same level as yours, but still ack!

Go to the Lego page, or google for Lego Digital Designer. He may LOVE that. My son, who's 7.5, likes to make up odd models using all the virtual pieces. He's not into complex stuff yet, but the program can handle really cool stuff. (The part where it shows you how to build the model you've just created ... the 'instructions' ... doesn't seem to be very good yet though.) Anyway, one cool thing ... if you don't use too many odd pieces, you can actually upload it to the site and purchase the kit you designed! And if you play on the My Lego Network game site, you can showcase some of your creations, and if it's a purchasable item you created, others could buy it too. He might think that's cool. (No monetary kickbacks, alas, though. LOL.) Anyway, I've liked the digital one because I don't have to trip over small pieces. :) It sates my son till I'm ready to get out our rather extensive Lego collection (mine from growing up, which is stored in several containers in the garage). He's also got his own small beginning collection.

Scholastic has this new series they're reprinting called The Adventures of Riley ... they are picture books but kind of fiction and nonfiction at the same time, like Magic School Bus. Riley travels with his uncle to various locations to help study endangered animals. The ones I've gotten have been pretty cool. They combine drawn art (cartoonish) with photo art in a really neat way, and they quote genuine scientists (like Smithsonian ones) with different facts. They might do for your son. (I like Horrible Harry. He makes me laugh. LOL.)

Here's an odd bit of trivia for y'all: The Disney movies of The Parent Trap are based on an old German book called Lisa and Lottie. The book is really cute and worth hunting up. In some ways the newer one is closer, because the girls were around ten, but in most ways, they are just completely different. But it's in the credits if you read them closely. Astrid Lindgren has some interesting books into movies, one called The Land of Faraway based on Mio, My Son. I haven't read the book so not sure how it compares, but it's pretty good as a movie. The Princess Diaries ... that movie was way better than the one book of the series I read. So one point for Disney there. Swallows and Amazons... not bad but they cut the ending (the big storm) out of the movie. No idea why. The Railway Children by Nesbit came out okay, but The Treasure-Seekers was dreadful. What do y'all think of Ballet Shoes? I felt it missed a lot of the nuances of the book and made the girls look a lot more selfish, and Garnie lots more dippy than she is in the book. Murder She Purred ... totally different from the Rita Mae Brown book it's based on (the second or third of the series, I forget which). I actually like the movie, but the characters are completely different people. Her books are good ... I got annoyed and stopped reading at one point, but she sure can develop characters. Oh, they made a Mrs. Pollifax movie starring Angela Lansbury ... she did a great job as the character, but they butchered the plot (and they butchered a few characters who were supposed to be recurring in the series ...oops!). It was a TV movie, and I can see why it must never have made it to DVD. LOL. Madeline wasn't too bad for an amalgamation of several picture books. Matilda by Dahl was pretty awful as a movie. (I've been glancing over my shelves to see what we've got, and wracking my memory too. I'll stop rambling now.)

So far, thankfully, it's worked out. Our plan was for us both to work till we had kids, then I would be a SAHM, because we both believed that was important. We were also considering homeschooling. When I became pregnant with our first, unexpectedly only a few months after the honeymoon, my job's stress level had gone sky-high, I was sick as a dog, and we had a threatened miscarriage. I ended up with no choice but to resign my position. We decided we could make it on his income (software engineer for a small company being bought out by a big one), and we didn't want to risk our baby. Shortly after that, the big company that bought out the little company went bankrupt. So there we were, newly married, baby on the way, a mortgage and bills to pay, and NO steady income! My dh pulled us through on contract work from home, which was a big help when the baby came, actually, and later found steady employment with a local company. So we're doing okay on one income. But we sure went to shoestring budget for a time. (Thankfully, at that time, my mother was our mortgage holder, so at least we weren't really in serious risk of losing our home, since she let us drop to lower payments for a time.) One thing we learned was to budget for some luxuries. If you're going to feel horribly deprived if you don't go out to eat or order pizza every now and then ... then cut a corner somewhere else and make sure you can order a pizza once in a while. It makes you feel a lot better to know you CAN do a few of those splurges, and then when you inevitably do order the pizza, you're not wracked with guilt that it wasn't in the budget. We also really read through the Tightwad Gazette volumes ... didn't use most of the ideas but did find some good ones, and it got us thinking more frugally. It was also probably a blessing that it was early in our marriage, while we were still establishing what our 'family' habits were, so there were changes going on anyway. It certainly wasn't what we wanted to go through, but we made it, and we learned a lot. I currently have a panic disorder (triggered by my former job, actually, we think, but with a lot of underlying roots), so I can do part-time work if I had to, but probably not full time. (I did do part time at our church preschool for a couple years.) So we know we have to be able to make it on one income. That's a bit of a burden for my dh, but he shoulders that responsibility ... he feels strongly I should be home anyway. And the kids are loving homeschooling so far, which is a blessing (they are now 7.5 and 4.5). Rambling on, I guess. But just want to say ... if you can find a livable budget, it works. It takes some talking to work out, to find what's important to each person and what can be let go.

They are fun, addictive, and the website runs to glitches. Ganz customer service ... they are nice people but the company never actually gives them the right information to work with. I do like the games, and it's cute fun to get to cook recipes on the little stoves and not have to clean up. LOL. I know lots of moms who play more than their kids! My favorite site to direct the beginning Webkinz fan to is www.webkinzinsider.com ... their forums and info guides will tell you tons, and they go to great lengths to keep out trolls, cheat posters, and the like. They are harsh on scammers too (you can trade virtual items you and your pet collect). They even make all their mods go through a background check, since so many of the members are kids.

Ooh, haven't heard of those. Author?

I think the placebo was a good idea, if using it calms him. It buys you time to help coach him into better responses. Just as I take fairly strong medication for my severe panic disorder, while my therapist works with me to find better ways to deal with life. The suggestions to practice breathing, and try supplements, and all, were good ones. I know at one point my 7yo started picking up on the "Mommy's not feeling well, so she can't do X today" and tried pulling that himself. :) He felt just a little poorly so decided he wouldn't go to scouts or church or whatever. I had a little talk with him that his sick was different from Mommy's sick (he had an allergic sniffle or two) and that he was perfectly okay to go to his activities. He just had to figure it out. I know that's not what your son is going through, but once he calms down, maybe a chat about how to tell 'real' sick from fear that can be conquered would be a good thing. And when to push himself and when not to, if the anxiety becomes a long-term issue. (Which, if it does, would be the time to get a good counselor involved.) It's really all about matter-of-fact coaching. There's nothing wrong with his using an inhaler or a face mask or whatever to start with, so that he can re-learn how to play without feeling afraid, and then weaning off those items. Just like using a crutch is fine while your leg is broken, but eventually you have to learn to walk without it again, and sometimes you need a little physical therapy to get you there. :) Once you learn fear, it's hard to un-learn. Patience. And hugs. Lots of hugs for all of you. :)