They just got the website up last month I believe and are still working on later grades/forms. I'm waiting for them to get to those since my kids are now past the age ranges that are posted so far.

That should be fine. We get to grammar 2-3 x a week and already my kids have learned more than I did during the one single year we did any formal grammar in school (which wasn't until seventh grade).

Well I decided to try and order and when I got everything loaded up and went to fill out the payment details, the website told me that since I was in Canada I should contact them by email or phone. I have not done so yet. But just a heads up for any other possible Canadian purchasers. For Canadian buyers please contact us at mosdospress@ydtcleveland.org or 216-291-4158 to place your order.

It's interesting because I can intellectually enjoy Forster but I'm just not feeling the love. I might decide to skip ahead to the next book and come back to Passage. I'll check the threads on that one.

Hugs for those of you who have lost beloved relatives or pets recently. I think I've finished 4 books since last I checked in. Tribe by Sebastian Junger - this was for book club and I did not enjoy it. It was fast and easy but too much pop psychology and not enough scholarly research for me. Wild Swans by Jung Chang - this was epic non-fiction, covering pretty much the whole 20th century in China through the lens of the women in one family. I found it slow going and very detailed and it was only when the author got to be about 12 or so and started to frame things in terms of her experiences that it picked up. Horrifying to read about how things proceeded in China, and gave me more insight into the backgrounds of the Chinese grad students I met in the 1980s (my dad was an engineering professor and we had a lot of grad students stay with us), many of whom were older and married unlike North American grad students. Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich - using this for my Translated bingo square. - Overall I'd recommend this but did occasionally find the style frustrating as the book is a string of oral narratives from people affected in many different ways by Chernobyl and sometimes when people speak, it's not as clean and neat as it would be if they had written down their thoughts. Despite this, very affecting - I had to stop about 3/4 of the way through and take a break because there really are no inspiring stories from Chernobyl. The Road Across Canada by Edward McCourt - this was my 'bathroom' book because it was easily put down and picked up again and could be read in short chunks like a page or two. It's a clunky dated book from the 60s about his trip across the Trans Canada Highway with his wife shortly after it was officially completed. A bit weird to read his opinions about certain places or people and see how time has changed them. I am currently reading Howards End by E.M. Forster and finally got Underground Airlines back from the library after it was recalled when I was halfway through it. Here's my question for the BaWers: Howards End is one of my books from my current Shelf project. It will be the third Forster book I've read from the shelf (Celestial Omnibus and Where Angels Fear to Tread being the other two). I still have a Passage to India up there - next in line to be read. However, I haven't particularly enjoyed the 2 1/2 Forsters I've read so far - I can appreciate aspects of them but overall haven't connected to them. Is there any particular reason why A Passage to India is one that I should definitely give a go? Or is it fine to skip it? (In terms of my own personal project, I have no moral objection to deciding to skip it - I'm just wondering about it from a literary perspective.)

Finished reading The Lotterys Plus One by Emma Donoghue to the kids. They really enjoyed it and are busy playing make believe games inspired by the book. I found it a bit choppy myself - I liked the premise and the characters and it was fresh and very very modern (but in a way that I'm afraid might date it easily) but I couldn't really get into the characters and I didn't quite believe in some of them. Perhaps the function of having a large family of two moms, two dads and 7 kids plus one grandfather - not enough time to get to know people. For myself I read They Left Us Everything by Plum Johnson - a memoir - so for those of you who don't like that genre, be forewarned! I, however, tend to enjoy memoirs and read this one very quickly (a 24 hour turnaround from getting it from the library to finishing it). It was easy to read, and now that my parents are getting older, it gave me pause and sent me thinking about my relationships with them and with all the material stuff they have. Still reading Wild Swans, Suite Francaise and just started Voices from Chernobyl which someone here read and recommended - the latter is likely the one I will finish first although I think I'll bring Suite Francaise to the lake this weekend to force myself to get some reading done on it (since we have no internet/tv and I can't garden yet, I will either be playing games, knitting, doing puzzles or reading for 3 days - which actually sounds lovely). DH is not reading anything these days. He loved Terry Pratchett and we have every single book and he rereads them on occasion. His last book was a Wiilliam S. Gibson one and before that Robert Sawyer - both sci-fi. One kid is reading The Strictest School in the World and the other is reading Peter Nimble's Fantastic Eyes and will move onto Sophie Quire and the Last Storyguard soon.

When my kids were younger (2-4ish) I had a friend's daughter come over a couple of times as a mother's helper. She was almost at babysitting age, but not quite, and she knew my kids a bit but hadn't spent tons of time with them. We were basically trying this out over a couple of months so she could get to know the kids (and vice versa) and I could get specific things done (eg. I had her come over on the day I switched out all the summer clothes for winter clothes, which is a ridiculous task in this house even with only two kids, or I had her come over and I focused on making a bunch of freezer meals for the slow cooker). It worked pretty well - she loved the kids, they loved her, she was always engaging them in things, taught them to do cool things, read to the, played games with them. Once she was a bit older we did use her as a babysitter on the rare (3-4 x year) occasion we went out.

I'm currently working 10-15 hours a week while homeschooling both kids. Mornings 3 x week. I'd say that the major con is that mine are still a bit younger and less independent (although getting better) and sometimes they goof off and don't do the things on their lists or do them so sloppily that we have to redo everything. Another con (although this may just be specific to my job) is that it's one more thing to keep cycling through my head and I do spend a lot of time not physically at work still thinking about work, planning work, checking my email/messages related to work so I can determine what the next day/week will hold. And that just gives me less time to devote to thinking about homeschooling, running the house, cooking etc. Not tons less time, but enough that it feels like it adds a layer of stress that I would rather not have. I've only been doing it for a couple of months now and I can tell that things feel a little bit more chaotic and time-sensitive and I get snappier more quicklyl. Pro is definitely that it's easier to find work in the future if I don't have 8 years of unpaid work on a resume. (I worked PT until 3 years ago and did a full time stint for 4 months last year and I think those things have been helpful in landing this job). The extra money is nice too. Being a librarian sounds like a lovely job to be offered so I would definitely consider that if someone were to hand that to me!

Well I'll take all your Creative Memories and scrapbooking supplies! But I hear you. We have lots of electronics stuff that DH buys that never gets used - he bought a GoPro brand new a year and a half ago and it sat untouched until he 'traded' it away to a friend for a video card (of which we already have probably 10). His Oculus Rift - he bought not only the first two versions that weren't really for commercial use but then bought the commercial one when it came out. And used none of them. His Bitcoin miner which ended up costing more to run than it gained in Bitcoin. Also, his investment in Bitcoin. I have some yarn that is waiting for a project but I have been very very good for a year now and have only bought two skeins destined for a specific project and have been using up all the skeins lying about the house (to be fair, there's quite a few but also many were given to me so my financial outlay is not that much). We have lots of books but we're actually good about reading them and then evaluating if we are keeping them and we have been mostly getting them from the library. Games - I have a problem with games. I love games. I want my family to love games. I want them to play games. They do not want to play games. Yet I keep on buying them. Granted I am buying most of them used but we still have way too many.

Interesting. I read the book but did not particularly enjoy it, largely for the reasons you described above. So I was not at all tempted by the Netflix adaptation. But I'm now reconsidering.

Black licorice = yum in any format. Would eat only black licorice jelly beans if allowed. Okay, maybe some other food occasionally. Popcorn OTOH can disappear from my life any time now.

I read Radiance by Catherynne Valente this week and like others here, I found it a bizarre and unsettling romp. Mostly my thoughts revolved around the following: - if you have to pick a book to read right before and during a fever and hallucination this is probably not the one (it was a very interesting 48 hours last weekend) - I felt like I was reading a script more than a book, but this is true to the spirit of the book I feel - finally I think was strongly reminded of Guy Maddin movies and couldn't help but picture the whole book as if it was a movie directed by him as I was reading - I feel that perhaps he should option the book and actually make it into a movie. Aside from that, I didn't finish anything. I couldn't read to the kids as talking set off a coughing fit and I spent a lot of time sleeping hence not reading. I've got a few on the go. Got back to Wild Swans which I started in February but put aside. I'm going to give this one priority. Started reading Tribe by Sebastian Junger for my book club, tried to listen to Howards' End by Forster as my new audiobook but can't seem to get the copy to stop being glitchy so I'm reading the actual book now - this is the next one on The Shelf. Also reading The Lotterys Plus One by Emma Donoghue to the kids, now that I can speak again, and we are all enjoying it.

Well, sounds like it generally isn't a problem or just something to keep an eye on in case any baby ones need to be pulled. I was hoping that was the case but my IRL circle of mothers with older kids have never had this experience so it was hard to tell! Thanks for the reassurance.

In general I've heard that it's better for your kids to lose their teeth later as then their jaws have a chance to grow bigger and they have more room for the incoming adult teeth. Just wondering though if there are any downsides to kids who seem to lose their teeth quite late and very slowly. DS will be 9 1/2 years in less than a month. He has lost 4 teeth so far, with the latest being last week. He lost his first tooth just before he turned 8. He has one 'loose' tooth but they seem to be loose for about 6 months before they come out. He's also lost them in a weird pattern - a lower central incisor, followed by the two upper central incisors and now a lower lateral incisor. His teeth weren't late coming in; they were pretty much bang on average. And he has an extra tooth up top. He doesn't seem to have any adult teeth coming in behind the baby teeth and the dentist has done an x-ray (a year ago? maybe more) and didn't note anything unusual. I guess I'm just trying to gauge whether he's just on the far end of normal and there's nothing to worry about or if there is any reason to follow this a bit more closely. All the other kids his age seem to have lost 10 - 12 teeth so he's a bit self-conscious about it as well.

Our first home is still our home (although we do own a second one). We put down a 25% down payment. I had saved up my half of that amount (and a lot more, but we used that for things like windows, a roof, exterior and interior paint etc - the house needed a lot of work) and DH 'borrowed' his half from his parents (who subsequently gifted it to him when they ended up giving a lot of money to his sister and wanted to keep things fair between the kids). We were both students and working various part time jobs so my parents actually had to cosign the mortgage. We paid it off in 7 years.

With mine, it had ruptured and I was in the hospital for 5 days. Recovery took quite a while (4-6 weeks to feel up to going out and a month more to feel back to normal) and I was on heavy duty antibiotics. Lots of good suggestions above, but I would also mention taking probiotics if she's on antibiotics. I also found that my sense of taste changed dramatically and I could barely handle eating anything for the first month - everything tasted too sweet. It was a bit of a challenge to find food I could eat. I also found that I needed a lot of pillows to get comfortable in bed. About 4 or 5. Worse than being pregnant. I also rotated between bed and couch because I could lie on them in different positions and then my hips/other parts of my body didn't hurt as much as when I was just lying in bed. And I could not wear any pants that were elasticized or tight around the waist - I had my mother go out and buy me some of those fold over waist pants like this and I just didn't fold over the waist.

Chiming in to say that I actually really enjoyed Oryx and Crake and the accompanying two books and in fact, those are about the only books I have actually gone out and bought new after having initially read them as library books in the last 3 years. I read Candide in French in high school but that was a long time ago! I actually think I might give it another go once I finish my current French book. I just caught up on the thread as I took my parents and my kids on a road trip to a nearby city to go to the agricultural fair (my dad really wanted to go for some reason). My kids had a blast - my parents, not so much (they get tired very easily as they are 75+ and I don't think they realized exactly what an ag fair would encompass. It was exactly what I expected so I was able to prep the kids ahead of time which helped them have a good time (that and the fact that there was a pool at the hotel so they went swimming for about 2 1/2 hours a day). However between navigating the needs of my parents and my kids I got very little reading done. I finished listening to Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, which I heard about on here. It wasn't my favourite - I felt like I was being lectured most of the time but it passed the time while I walked to work and back. My choices for audiobooks on the one service we get at our public library are extremely limited. I also read Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt, which was loaned to me by a friend. Set in the in the far suburbs of NYC in the 1980s and focusing on the relationship between a young teen and her gay uncle who dies of AIDS. I never got into this one as I didn't find the character's motivations and actions that relatable or realistic. I like the idea behind the book but as written it didn't do anything for me. And then when I got back from the trip I picked up a couple of holds at the library and one of them was Evicted by Matthew Desmond. Well. I finished this in under 12 hours. This is the kind of book I find riveting. A great blend of sociological narrative and some analysis at the end, along with one possible solution to the way out of the housing crisis in America. Given the other authors (Rebecca Skloots, Jesmyn Ward, Adrian Nicole Leblanc) who have lauded this book, I'm not surprised to have liked it, and there were a few I hadn't heard of so I'm going to look for their works soon. I also started Underground Airlines and am halfway through it but had to return it to the library yesterday as it was recalled. I've put it back on hold though as I'm intrigued by the book even though it's not the typical type of story I read.

Still reading but haven't had much time to keep up with the thread or post. It seems that working, even part-time, uses that portion of my time that I used to devote to online pursuits. Hugs to those who have lost a friend, whose children are not well, who are recovering from surgery, who are depressed, who are cranky, who are in pain whether visible or not. I've finished these 6 books since the last time I posted a few weeks back. Here's the quick summary: 1. I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson – YA novel that was told from alternating perspectives and time frames by teenage twins. I loved the boy’s perspective – his thoughts encapsulated exactly what it is to be a teenager/young person and how you feel everything and think of all events in such artistic/dramatic ways. I didn’t connect with the girl as much. Overall I would recommend it just because of the way the boy thought and his ideas – I think the girl’s story was a bit too pat and typical of teenagers, but perhaps that’s because I didn’t have any of her kinds of experiences. Library book. 2. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster – next book from The Shelf. Here’s the thing about Forster. I loved reading the book because I enjoyed his writing style so much. However, I didn’t enjoy the story. So despite the fact that it is a copy with a nice cover (albeit old and likely to fall apart in the next 50 years), I’m going to give it away. I don’t think I’d ever want to reread it and I don’t feel the need for the kids to read it, but I might try to watch the movie as I’m curious how it corresponds to the book. 3. Nearly Normal by Cea Sunrise Person – sequel (kinda) to her first book that I read earlier this year. Again, easy and quick to read, this filled in some bits that she left out of the first book thinking they were too painful to include and also expanded more on the latter half of her life to date – her marriages and divorces and children. Library book. 4. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi – another library book, this one featured alternating tales of the descendants of two half sisters born in Africa in the 1800s. One half sister married a white man who was in charge of the fort that the British were using for the slave trade, the other half sister was captured and sent to the US as a slave. Each chapter featured an individual person, typically at a specific time in their life, although some covered a broader sweep. I liked that this was not the typical narrative of slavery but took a much broader perspective and introduced you to people with all their warts, rather than being a the typical narrative about slavery and its consequences that I often find. 5. Story Girl by L.M. Montgomery – read to the kids, was my book as a child. This was a pleasant read, we all enjoyed it. It was nice and cozy. 6. The Maximum Security Book Club by Mikita Brottman – picked up ‘by accident’ at the library from the new non-fiction section, which is my weakness. Interesting to see what books she chose to read with the prisoners, how the prisoners reacted to the books (Heart of Darkness, the Metamorphosis, Lolita, Macbeth etc) and how her perspectives and feelings about her role, the prisoners, prison in general changed over time.

My children cannot - can. not. - drag their eyes away from the computer when the bacon is dancing. It is their favourite thing on the internet.

I just put this on hold. Thanks for the warning about when to read it. I finished a couple of books this week but finding progress is slower as we are no longer on a 2 week break from school and I started an out of the house work for pay job. Ugh (to the latter not the former). I'm pretty sure both books I finished are ones I found out about here! I read How To Be Black by Baratunde Thurston which was a pretty quick read and just a really interesting perspective on what it meant for him to grow up being black in a variety of situations. It was funny and easy to read even while it made you think. Also decided to give a romance a try and picked Close to You by Kara Isaac thanks to Kareni's description of it. I was intrigued by the NZ setting and the Hobbit/Tolkien lore. I enjoyed the first half but found then that it just dragged through the second half (how many road blocks can we throw in here) - could have been half the length IMO. It's been a long time since I've tried a romance. I'm willing to try a few more now and again but am still hoping for something more than this one offered. Currently reading Wild Swans (also thanks to a fellow BaWer), I'll Give You the Sun (YA novel), Suites Francaises (in French - slow going - children keep talking to me during our assigned reading time) and The Road Across Canada by Edward McCourt, which is a folksy narrative of the trip McCourt and his wife took on the newly opened Trans-Canada Highway in 1963, despite the fact that the highway was sadly lacking in roadworthiness in some spots.

Buffy Fringe - first three seasons only Sports Night - this was Aaron Sorkin's pre-West Wing show Others I've watched here and there repeat episodes but these I've started at the beginning and gone to the end - or to my version of the end - more than once.

Yep, I'm reading through my second shelf. I usually just start at one end and then go to the other rather than picking and choosing. The theory being that picking and choosing is what causes me to overlook the same books time and again so by forcing myself to read through them in order, they will finally get read. That being said, I've hit a section where I have 4 E.M. Forster books in a row (this is actually a common problem with lots of my shelves - 8 Austen, 10 Orwell, 5 Cather etc) so I am giving myself permission to intersperse each Forster with the next one on the shelf. Partially because I think that I will actually remember the Forsters better if I don't read them all right in a row and partially out of fear of getting bored with one writing style.

I had an interview for a job last week and got the job and then got called for an interview today for a different job. Right now I'm just looking for part time and both of these are ideal, but what's really ideal is that it reassures my husband that despite having 'retired' from my paid position 3 1/2 years ago to be at home with the kids full time, I still have some marketable skills.

I (re)learned several things to do with computers that I had forgotten since I don't do them very often. But I also learned that the staff at our local humane society go out of their way to not be welcoming when you come in with children. It's bizarre but I've taken the kids there on multiple occasions over the years, met all sorts of different volunteers and paid employees and they all give you the cold shoulder when you are there with kids. The other local animal rescues are delighted to see you on the other hand.

Hmm, we read them when kids were ages 5/7 and 6/8 and read the whole series during that time. They didn't find anything scary - some things were sad but nothing they couldn't handle. I think it really depends on the kids.