[Kid shoes cheap or expensive?]

Shoes aren't handed down so we shop for sales at Nordstrom Rack, Marshalls and at our nearby factory outlet. We manage to get Sketchers, Nike, New Balance for around < $25 per pair in store.

.

Is that adult sizes? I might need to find some of those stores.

[Kid shoes cheap or expensive?]

I have 3 sons in a row. I bought sketchers until they couldn't wear them anymore (around 5.5/6). Nice middle of the road cost.

 

My two older sons have sized out, and we haven't settled on a favorite brand. nike, New Balance, under Armour....they have all lasted about 4-5 months, completely falling apart at the end. I aim for about $50 for their shoes.

 

My daughter is only 4.5. I have a great resale shop for her, and she wears high dollar shoes (Tsukihoshi right now). They do hold up well, but she is also easier on her shoes than the boys, so it's hard to say.

[Regional dialect? Moi?]

I do differentiate between pin and pen.

 

Pin rhymes with in, spin, thin, and win

Pen rhymes with ten, den, men and wren

All those words rhyme. ;)

[Question about hot dogs]

At home, we just eat ketchup, muatard, and onions. My kids put sweet pickle relish on them, too.

 

When I go out, I either get slaw dogs or chili dogs. If I had to choose, I like slaw dogs better.

[What is your favorite meal?]

Mexican shrimp cocktail. I could bathe in that, it's so good.

 

Close second is eggplant parmesan.

 

I do love biscuits and gravy, too. And eggs in a frame. And grits. Those are my favorite breakfasts.

[If you have a chest freezer....where in your house is it?]

Utility room. But it's super tight in there. We enter the house through there, washer/dryer, furnace, and hot water heater. There is a one person wide path to get theough. I have a laundry basket on top of the freezer that I shift to the washer when I am getting something out.

[Floridians - check in here please]

We lost power in Atlanta, going on 23 hours, but we are unseasonably cool, so it's actually very pleasant. I was worried about losing our AC, but we got lucky with the weather.

[My 6.5yo can't differentiate between the short vowel sounds]

Pin and pen do sound the same.  :)

 

For my son, I realized it when he was in kindergarten.  He went to public school, and I was helping him with homework.  He honestly could not tell the difference between hot and hat.  Could not hear the difference.  And it was like that for every vowel sound, in multiple words.  I think that *some* confusion is common, probably developmental.  But by late 6, yes, I would expect a kid to hear the difference between hot and hat, in most cases.

 

[s/o Is there any restaurant that you would drive 3 hours for (one way)? If so, what?]

 

Guess it depends on what you need. If you really need RUSSIAN and it can't be chinese, then you might have to drive farther, lol. But really, who drives that far for russian food? Like if you were in Ft. Wayne, yes you might have to drive 3+ hours to get russian food. It would be awesome, but why would you?

I would say that good Eastern BBQ is as specific a cuisine as Russian food, and yes, we would drive hours out of the way for it.

 

We regularly drive an hour for Oaxacan (sp?) food, we drive 2 hours for a specific bbq style of my childhood, and sometimes we drive 2.5 for calabash/fish camp food.

[S/o What are charter schools like in your area?]

Does your son's school start with a K? If so, I went there!

 

 

That's the one! It's a good fit for him.

[Recommendations for Mild Dyslexic]

I wasted a year in public school, then a year with AAR, before we started Barton.

 

I also wish that we had started from the beginning

[My 6.5yo can't differentiate between the short vowel sounds]

For my son, it was a marker for dyslexia.

[S/o What are charter schools like in your area?]

We are also in Atlanta. My kids were in a charter that was grassroots, people with a vision, type of deal. It is 15 years old this year, though budget has been a problem. every.single.year of its existence. I honestly don't know how it makes it. There is a constant churn of administration and vision. And parents, too, as most figure out by 3rd/4th grade that while they want the school's vision to work, the school is not as good as they want it to be.

 

My county also has quite a few magnets, mostly a holdover from busing. Some of the programs were so popular that when busing ended, they kept the magnets. My oldest is in a high achiever magnet for 4th-6th grades. Completely regular public school, though, in the way it is run.

[Please tell me about your Miele]

I couldn't afford a Mile last time, so I went with a Kenmore, with plans to replace with Mike when I killed it. I had been firmly a one vacuum a year person to that point.

 

It has lasted me 3 years so far, with one repair (of a plastic piece) during that time. It is a good vacuum if Mile is just a but too much. I think mine was $450. It's a canister, bagged, Elite crossover. I like that the vacuum is made for floors, with the carpet piece being an add-on. That seems to work better for me, and it's easy to switch.

[Youtube: any full-length school days recorded?]

My oldest child goes to public school. He leaves at 7, home at 3:30. He loves the hours, I think most of all. It cuts down on free time, which to him feels like torture. And, you know...as an adult, he's not going to have 8+ hours of free time a day, so if that is such torture, I don't know the benefit of training so heavily for him to love it as a kid.

 

Just throwing it out there that maybe the promise of "free time" isn't as motivating as you would think.

 

I have 2 sons (homeschooled) that adore their slow and easy, lots of free time, schedule, but that oldest.... Cut from a different cloth for sure.

[Have you ever bought a house?]

We have. We bought in 2005, lost our shirt in the recession (income dropped like crazy cakes, as well as house value). We could afford the payments, but not the maintenance and payments, so we were spending every dime on the house, but couldn't afford to replace the rotting deck, which had us lying awake at night. We short sold in 2010.

 

At this point, 7 years later, I am just barely able to consider the idea of owning another house. It shook us dramatically.

[Have you ever bought a house]

We were renting, but when we had been married about a year, dh went up to our new town, saw 3 places, signed a lease on one, and bam, there we were.  We didn't have the commitment of purchase, but it probably wouldn't have changed things.  I preferred that to the endless slog of looking at houses and weighing their ups and downs, goods and bads, that we did with our last house (also renting).  I like our house, we've lived here 7 years, and it's been perfect for us.  Still would rather not have spent 5 months looking for it.  I wish that dh would make all my decisions for me quickly like that.  *ducks head because that's a crazy, unpopular way to think*

[Frivolous Jam Poll]

Peach and blackberry are my favorite, but I've pretty much never met jam I didn't like.  I don't think I've ever had rhubarb (anything) before.

[So I wrote this little Facebook post...]

Came across my feed today. So cool!

[I love carbs.....]

If somebody took away the one food that was the basis of two of your daily meals (as traditional in your culture) and provided a major source of your daily calories, it might be hard for you as well. I went from eating two bread based meals for 40 years (without any problems, at stable weight) to suddenly not being able to eat bread anymore. I found it very difficult to completely re-invent my way of eating. There really are not many good substitutes that don't require cooking.

 

No, really, as a fat woman that likes food.... I am telling you that this is unfathomable to me.  If I grew up eating a certain food, I could find a substitute easily.  

 

I do not do well on diets that limit one type of food, because I can *always* find something else I like.  I didn't lose any weight being gluten free, doing low carb/high fat, or doing vegan.  I can always find a substitute, which is a big problem for me.

[How to know if you're 'done'?]

I spent my 20s having babies. I hit 30 with the last one and felt very "done" ... until this year.

 

Insert a surprise pregnancy in my 40s, and now that he's here I'm questioning everything. Suddenly I'm feeling like I am missing one more child. But I can't discern if that's a legitimate feeling or if it's me coming face to face with the end days of my fertility - something I've long taken for granted, or if it's me just having weird issues with {sets} and a need to wrap up my baby-making with a pair and even number. (Yeah, I know. I scare me, too, sometimes.)

 

In honesty, until this last pregnancy I was looking forward to the end of my childbearing years. This has thrown me for a loop. My children are pushing for one more, but I'm pretty certain I'll be entering the grandparent stage within the next five years. That's typical of my family, anyway, and the path my oldest is on. Any grandchild born within the next TEN years will be closer in age to my current baby than his next oldest sibling. So maybe I just ride it out. I don't know.

 

I overthink. And over plan. :svengo:

 

I enjoyed reading Suzanne in ABQ's post. It gives me a glimpse into what could be. The baby isn't even a year old yet but I can already see me parenting very differently in the way she described. My older kids are trying to guilt me into homeschooling this baby, but I see myself "retiring" before this one sees kindy. His next oldest sibling will have graduated high school the year before, and in that year I may start the great American novel ... or find a second career ... or just enjoy not teaching for the first time in 25 years!

 

All that to say: OP, I wish I knew. :D

We have 4. If we have a surprise 5th, we would have to have a 6th, too, because even numbers. I totally get that.

[I love carbs.....]

That was a specific example mentioned by another poster as a satisfying meal w/o carbs. Anything else high fat would similarly not work for me. Some people cannot digest a high fat diet, for example if they don't have a gall bladder. Carbs are easily digestible.

Without carbs, I am just freaking hungry all the time and struggle to consume enough calories. There's only so much nut butter one can stomach.

I think that most people who are cutting carbs do not struggle with getting enough calories.

 

To me, this falls under the, "oh, I just got busy and forgot to eat," category of people. I have never, not one day in my life, struggled to get enough calories to maintain myself and had unintentional weight loss. The idea is just foreign to me.

[Hurricane readiness--do most people blow it off??]

We had an ice storm that shut down Atlanta in 2011. There were a lot of people that did not have 3-4 days of food in the house.

 

I was honestly surprised. My family of origin is hard core preppers, and they make fun of me for my slacker ways. I probably have food for 3-4 weeks in the house, water for 72 hours. Before that storm, I really did think that was standard for non-prepper "regular" people.

[How to know if you're 'done'?]

I had 4 c-sections, and my ob urged us to consider being done. Dh was definitely done at 4, and we had always talked of just having 4. I went along with that plan. If dh had been eager for another, we would have had had another 1 (or 2).

 

But now that the baby is almost 5, I feel like my hands are full, and this is the right number for us. I no longer have any regret over stopping. Took a while, though.

[What to do with lots of tomatoes?]

I freeze without blanching.

 

I also can them, but I do add lemon juice (it's not much, and it doesn't change the flavor), and I do the boiling water bath that the Ball Blue Book recommends.

 

And we eat an enormous amount fresh, too. Spaghetti sauce, uncooked pasta sauce, in omelets, salsa, tomato salads of lots of types, tuna stuffed tomatoes, tomatoes and cottage cheese, tomato soup...so many tomatoes. Our best tomato year, we ate tomatoes for 77 days straight. It was glorious. This year was a decent, not record breaking uear, and we are at the end. We have eaten them every day for 52 daya. My favorite time of year!