I bought a nice dress in a style which could be worn later for around $100 at Belk. My parents paid for it. As it turned out, I had 2 babies in the first two years of my marriage, both breastfed (which the dress was not compatible with), and then gained a good bit of weight. So, I never wore the dress again, though my 11yo sometimes wears it to play.

My husband hates mayo & miracle whip & sour cream & tartar sauce (and considers them all pretty much the same thing). None of my 4 children will eat any of those, either (although one of them will use it for tuna salad). As the only one in the house that will eat anything in the mayo family, I rarely buy it. I don't see much difference, and buy whichever I am in the mood for. My tuna-eating son doesn't seem to notice a difference, either.

My 19yo knew what the IRS was when he was 7, as did his brother who is a year younger. I just asked my 10 & 11yo, and they were vaguely aware that we pay money to the IRS, but they didn't know why, or that it had anything to do with taxes. (My 11yo suggested that the IRS takes our money to buy candy, but I don't think she was serious.) However, my "little ones" are very aware of what taxes are, and have a fair knowledge of what is done with tax money. That comes up a lot at our house, though I guess we haven't specifically mentioned the IRS much with them.

Have they considered myesthenia gravis? My husband started with extreme tiredness (which we overlooked at the time), followed by double vision, followed by weakness in arms, legs, and throat. His also progressed to a complete inability to swallow or breathe on his own. Myesthenia gravis is caused by the muscles not receiving (some or all of) the signals from the nerves to move, and typically the first signs are tiredness and weakness. It can affect any or all of the voluntary muscles, but does not affect involuntary muscles.

Are you sure you have to teach the same courses in homeschool that the public school does, and in the same order? In most states, homeschools set their own order of courses/courses for all levels, including high school. It is very likely that you would be allowed to teach a different science for 9th grade and then teach BJU Biology (or another biology of your choice) in 10th. You might want to double check that the new public school requirements even relate to you.

I wouldn't do WWE style dictation with my dyslexic child, or with my ADHD child (the only two still at home). However, I have seen such good results in spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and handwriting that I also wouldn't drop dictation altogether. We use something partway between CM and Ruth Beechick style dictation. We never use a dictation passage longer than a sentence or two. They would cry for sure if I used the whole paragraph and more dictations in WWE (and that CM used for 10-11yo). (My 10yo ADHD son sometimes cries that his single sentence is too long and that his hand will break as it is. He would give up if I tried to assign a full paragraph or more for dictation.) Besides using only 1-2 sentences, I only read aloud a phrase or so at a time, and repeat it however many times it takes. For my dyslexic daughter, I often have to spell a word aloud for her, though I try to help her break it down by sounds. However, she still really doesn't hear sounds in order (apparently), and will as often as not rearrange the letters in the words randomly if it is not a word she knows well. BUT--regular dictation of 1-2 sentences from various books has drastically increased the number of words she can spell without help. Since I read the passage in chunks of 3-5 words, she rarely mixes up the order of words or substitutes words. I also sometimes reread the sentence from the beginning as I add a new clause. Some of my dyslexic 11yo's recent dictations: Remember, Mike, truth never contradicts itself. Hebrews 13:8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. What if Earth were not tilted? The poles would be much colder, and the equator much hotter. Matthew 6:21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. One of the hardest things in this world is to see the difference between real dangers and imaginary ones. At the beginning of the year, I copy-pasted a lot of random sentences from Ambleside Online's copywork files and from an online Bible website and printed them out on colored paper. Then, I cut them apart. Each day (or every other day) each child chooses one of the papers from their personal dictation list to do for dictation that day. They are allowed to study it if they wish, but usually they just look for the shortest paper they can find and tell me that is the one they want. My 11yo does occasionally choose a longer sentence just because she likes it, though.

For my first and third babies, I was told that it was mandatory to leave after 24 hours--no staying extra unless there was a medical reason. I don't remember about my second or fourth.

I had a hospital insist I was not in labor, too (with my second). Since I had an appointment for a prenatal check-up there later that week (because he was overdue), they did an ultrasound "so I wouldn't have to come back later for that". The ultrasound indicated problems from being overdue, so they wanted to induce labor. They pressured me quite a bit for refusing to accept medications to induce labor, until my mother convinced them to check my dilation, etc. Then, they finally accepted that I was in labor. He was born about 2-3hrs later.

My two oldest didn't know their father could speak English at all until they were around 7-8 years old. To help them become bilingual we always had a rule "You have to talk to Papi in Spanish", and they thought it was because that was the only language he knew. (To be fair, his English was very shaky in the early years.) My younger two heard their father using English with clients over the phone, and heard the older two (and occasionally me) using English with him sometimes, so they figured out he was bilingual much earlier. And, of course, he was already fluent (except for a pretty strong accent and occasional odd grammar or vocabulary) by the time they were born.

My husband is Guatemalan; I am from the US. I met when he visited our Sunday School class. At the time, my husband spoke almost no English, but he had a Puerto Rican friend in my class. Since I had majored in Spanish, his friend asked me to sit with him (my now husband) while he (the friend) had to play music for the church. (My husband had only been in the US for a couple of years at that point.) My now husband asked for my phone number. We went on a date the following Sunday after church. I started attending the Spanish language church services he went to in the afternoon (with him), and we would go out to eat on Sunday evenings afterwords. We also went to the park a lot, or just hung out together watching videotapes at my parents' house (where I was living--I was 23). We have now been married about 20 years. We will most likely always live in the US, but there is a possibility that we might someday live in Guatemala.

Most DVDs & CDs are free to check out. CDs can be checked out for the regular check-out period of 3 weeks, with the same 25 cents a day late fee. Non-fiction DVDs are shelved with and treated like non-fiction books. (Regular books, CDs, and non-fiction DVDs are all checked out for 3 weeks, with the option to renew twice more for 3 weeks each time, as long as no one else has requested the item.) Holds are free, and mostly done online. We are given a week to pick up an item on hold before it is reshelved. To save money, our library (which has several branches) no longer returns items on hold to the branch they came from. Items are shelved in whichever library branch they are returned to. Regular movie DVDs are shelved separately. They can be checked out for free, but only for 3 days. There is a late fee of $1 per day. New release DVDs are in a separate section of "rental DVDs". (Certain new books are also in a rental category.) I have never checked the prices on library rentals, though I think they cost somewhere between $2-5. I do know that senior citizens are allowed to have a certain number of free rentals per year.

My youngest son has a lot of trouble with auditory comprehension (scored at 15th percentile on listening skills on his 2nd grade Iowa test, for example). He HATED that most of the test at that level was read aloud to him, and it did lower his scores somewhat. Last year he took the 3rd grade Iowa. Much less of it was read aloud--and for the most part even the parts that were read aloud also had the questions in print to read. I have given all the other levels to his older siblings, and starting in 4th/5th grade (I don't remember which) nothing but the instructions and samples are read aloud. The students are expected to have good enough reading skills to test independently by that level. His poor listening/auditory comprehension skills should be less of a problem each year. I do worry about my son's ADHD interfering with the test, though. It has caused a LOT of problems with teaching and learning this year, to the point that I will probably get him an official diagnosis and medication before the end of the school year. So, returning to your son, he shouldn't have any trouble with the other levels of the Iowa test. The 1st and 2nd grade tests have a lot of sections that are read aloud to help children who are not fluent readers yet. By 3rd grade it is expected that most children will have become sufficiently fluent in reading to read their own test questions for the most part.

I remember one of those from a playground somewhere when I was a child, but I was too short to reach the bar. (I was always one of the shortest kids in my school. In 2nd grade I couldn't reach the bar to open the school door, and often a kindergartener would open it for me.)

Our local Goodwill is very cheap. I found a desk for my oldest there for $16. Bikes are under $25. Books are .99 for paperback, $1.59 for hardcover. Toys are $1-4 (sometimes less than $1), depending on the toy. Backpacks are $5 and under. I haven't looked closely at the clothing, so I don't know what it costs. Maybe your relatives like Goodwill because theirs has better prices than yours?

I have 4 children, 2 of whom wear glasses for nearsightedness. My oldest began sounding out words at 3.5yo, and was reading an hour at a time by 4.5. He read quite a bit as a child, though he slowed down in his early teens. He has perfect eyesight. My second began reading at about the same age, and read about the same amount. He has mild nearsightedness, and started needing glasses around age 12 (though he refused to wear them until around 16). My 3rd could barely read until she was 7.5 (mild dyslexia). She now reads a good bit. She has moderate to severe nearsightedness, and has had glasses since age 8. My youngest read easily at 5. He reads very little beyond what I make him read for school. He has perfect eyesight. Since the first 3 read about the same amount, and the latest reader has the worst vision, I don't think the link between early reading and vision problems is very strong.

I've heard it the way you describe, though everywhere I have lived since I was old enough to talk (Florida, Georgia, Texas, Alabama, NC, SC, with visits to relatives in AZ) pronounces it the other way. I can't remember who I've heard pronounce it with the "book" sound--TV or Missouri relatives or Ohio relatives, or perhaps missionaries visiting our church. If it was TV, it could be from anywhere, but I have heard it that way more than once.

I would never have thought of Oliver, but it does seem to suit him. (The 3 of my children who live at home all agree that he looks like an Oliver, and one of them says Oliver is a better name than Cory William.)

Personally, I tend to think Adam and Eve were Homo erectus, or possibly sooner. I have no real evidence (Biblical or scientific), but that seems the most likely to me just by reading about early hominid species. I do agree that before God created Adam and Eve (whoever they were) the existing hominids did not have souls. I believe Adam and Eve were most probably 2 individuals, specially created, possibly along the lines that were evolving naturally. However, I accept that they might have actually been symbolic of all mankind. Alternatively, I am also open to the possibility that nothing has evolved and that all life was specially created. However, I do not believe that God used 6 literal 24 hour periods to create all that exists, even though he obviously could have if he had chosen to do so. The evidence he left us in our world and galaxy and universe tells us that that isn't the way he chose to do things. I wish God had chosen to tell us more about the very early history of our world and species (and I am willing to accept whatever Homo variations might or might not have been our ancestors as part of our species). However, that would have taken away space from things that are more important for us to know and understand, and would probably also have unnecessarily confused earlier generations who did not have the background knowledge to understand the early history. It is also possible that even today we don't have enough science knowledge to understand very well what God did and the early history of our world and ourselves. God is far enough above us that we will certainly never understand completely.

Even if they lived at different times, I tend to think that what we have been able to trace is Noah's DNA on the male side, and Eve's DNA on the female side. It is harder to trace male DNA far back, so perhaps they have only been able to trace as far back as Noah.

I hate that every single person on Bachelor/Bachelorette/American Idol/etc is "amazing". People seem to be incredibly easy to amaze these days. (My husband loves these shows; I do not. However, I often see bits and pieces while reading in the room where he is watching TV.) Also, Bachelorette is a stupid word, though I guess it is better than spinster, which it replaces. I am trying to train my daughter not to use "like" as a random word in sentences, by pointing out every single time she uses it wrongly. Sometimes I even analyze her sentence out loud, noting that the sentence doesn't have a subject since she turned the subject into a prepositional phrase by beginning with "Like a..."

I usually say Pooey Ooooo! Grrrr! (really) No Fair! Stupid ___________ (name of whatever I dropped/bumped into/etc) No Good ________(same as above) Oh, butterscotch (I like the sound of the word butterscotch and the way it feels in my mouth. Sometimes it cheers me up.) I often go into a long boring rant about why it's no fair, or how stupid I was or whatever, too. I tend to ramble and grumble when I'm annoyed. Much of this consists of repeating combinations of the above.

The "I can't decide" comment makes me think that a CM style narration might work better for now. With the CM style, the child tells everything they remember about the passage/story, rather than trying to summarize it into 1-3 sentences. This would eliminate the struggle to choose only one thing to say. If you wish, you could ask for a shorter 1-2 sentence comment about "What do you think the most important part of the story/passage was?" after the longer narration has been given. Alternatively, sometimes a child just isn't sure what is expected in a narration. For these children, it often helps to narrate the passage yourself to give an example. (Of course, if you are going to do this, you need to break the passage up into sections to make sure the child has a chance to narrate as well.) Young children also often do better narrating after each paragraph or so, rather than at the end of the whole section.

For this particular problem, her method is better than using bar diagrams. Bar diagrams aren't a universal solution for any and all math problems. Some problems are more easily solved with bar diagrams (especially before algebra is introduced), while others are more easily solved by other methods. The key is deciding what the most efficient method for the particular problem you are working on.

I read the first books in that series. The actual story is pretty good, if you are willing to skip 3-5 pages at a time describing the scenery, and then 3-5 page sex scenes, described in exactly the same way every time. The descriptions of what plants are good to treat what diseases, and what plants are good to eat is interesting, assuming that those plants are still available several thousand years later. However, this is also repeated almost verbatim every time it comes up. I think the entire series could be condensed into 2-3 books if all the repetition were omitted. I haven't read the last book, though I did intend to get it from the library. The Amazon reviews sounded like it had even more mindless repetition and endless description than the prior books, so I definitely wouldn't want to own it (but the other books aren't worth paying for for me, anyway--I even chose not to buy a paperback in the series for a quarter at the library book sale).

That is my oldest son's favorite bumper sticker.