I give her all full fat dairy products (we all eat them) and try to give calorie and nutrition dense foods. I put butter in her oatmeal and bribe her to eat bacon. She's just a little bird eater. She does love sugar and I try to use that strategically but I know letting her fill up on empty sugar calories cannot possibly be good.

Is being thin a symptom? So many people defend being overweight but thin/ "underweight" people can be healthy too. And how would the nutritionist know if she has a health concern? I will take her. I'm just thinking. I made her well-child appointment to see if she seems to be doing ok and the Dr gave her a good look over, tested her iron and blood at my request and she's quite healthy unless there is something insidious going on in her body which I have no reason to believe. She's been at the way low end of normal for most of her life. I am at the high end of normal. DD more takes after her dad's body type and eating pattern (I eat more than him almost always).

Yeah they already told me to give her Pediasure Grow and Gain which is expensive and full of sugar but I bought some anyway.

I wish I didn't have to worry about CPS but it seems like the combination of being low income, homeschooling and dd being underweight is enough to get me on their radar.

So my 5 yo dd had her well child checkup and apparently she's slightly underweight. She's in the 3rd percentile and they want kids in at least the 5th percentile he says. Do I really need to drag her to the nutritionist? She is soft and fleshy and doesn't look unhealthy at all. She's just thin and small! Aside from being a chunky breast fed baby she's always been like this. She's not a big eater but is relatively heathy and normal. The nutritionist referral seems unnecessary but I dont want to neglect it if it really matters.

Only you and your DH can decide. But from what you shared, I would probably try. Pregnancy is never guaranteed. For us/ me, it's a weak financial situation, ability to cope with constant vomiting the first half of pregnancy, ability to cope with mothering duties, homeschool duties, and complete lack of any extended family support system that makes up the decision process. We are ok with being done but it's not "Weee! We're free!" kind of done. It's mixed feelings and bittersweet for me. Another baby is a nice idea but reality can be very harsh and I feel like we'd pretty much be asking for trouble with another, however kinda sad that is.

A family making $20k a year has a total of $1666 per month so if they spent $2000/ month on food they'd be spending over 100% of their income on food. But I know what you mean. The actual dollar amount people spend on food is informative but this just tells us basically how rich or poor one is.

About 35%. Our income is below average so I guess that's why the percentage is relatively high. It is what it is. That's life in the poor lane. And I use an app called Spending Tracker pretty meticulously so I know this is correct.

The house we rent is not much more than that amount. However it is not what anyone would consider nice (through in stray dogs, trash everywhere on the street and people smoking weed and drinking brown bag adult beverages). Sometimes you get what you pay for.

If anyone has a young dd you may have seen the My Little Pony episodes about the "Cutie mark Crusaders". So I guess that's one example of it being used in current popular culture without anyone seeming to care much.

Say no more. Lol. In my experience of DFW so far, the difference between the north of Dallas and south of Dallas is truly amazing.

Yeah, I might contact someone in higher authority at the city since animal control is no much help so far.

I'm trying to be prepared for attacks and bites to myself or my children. One of the dogs is a largish lab looking dog and the other is a young pit bull looking dog.

Do not quote, please. I might delete bc of personal-ish info. Dallas, Texas (the city that I live in a small suburb of) has a stray dog problem. It came into the local spotlight last month when a woman was mauled to death by a pack of stray dogs :eek: :( (http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2016/05/how-can-a-city-think-its-world-class-when-it-has-a-third-world-dog-problem.html/) Ever since we moved her 3 years ago I was amazed at how common it is to see stray dogs. Never in my life (mostly on the west coast) had I seen so many. And it seems to be getting worse over time. At this point the street we live on has 2 stray/ homeless dogs that hang out together. I have called animal control and they are not very helpful. They claimed they tried to catch and couldn't so now they stopped trying I guess. It is obvious to me that this is a problem that is wrapped up in issues of poverty. People acquire a dog for a number of reasons, one of which is protection from the things you encounter in a low income area. They can't or won't take care of the dog properly, it escapes or they set it free and then they get a new dog and the whole thing starts over again. These run down neighborhoods seem to be a low priority for the city too. I guess this is sort of a JAWM because I don't like dogs in general and now I have to live with loose dogs roaming my street eating trash etc. I have small children. Does this occur in anyone else's area???? Also how do I protect myself (I would move today if we could but we can't because stupid money) while we have to be here? I do have pepper spray but I'm not sure how much good that does us.

And yes, Google "usda grocery spending 2016". It's a pdf. It shows what the expected grocery spending is for family sizes and budgets. Your spending is good to normal.

It is not shocking at all. It's a pretty expected figure. People are coy about how much they spend on groceries for some reason. A lot of people probably don't keep track of their spending either and guessing is usually way off. Let's not shame each other and let's try to be realistic. $1200 a month for 6 people is $6.50 per person per day, and about $1 per meal per person (ETA: correction, it's actually $2 per person per meal per day... I did the math before I had my coffee. Still impressive though)! That's amazing, in a good way, if you ask me. Who are these people spending so little acting like it's so easy?

One of the best tools in my belt for saving on groceries is salvage grocery stores. Otherwise known as "bent and dent" stores. They sell items they get dirt cheap from various sources, mostly regular grocery stores that have overstock, beat up packages, and almost or slightly expired. Most people don't know these places even exist (or they're scared of them). They don't advertise bc they don't have the $ to. Its worth seeing if there's one in your area, they can be a gold mine. I've been going to these type of stores for years. Some are better than others. One local one near me has probably half its stock in organic natural items. Often they're in run down neighborhoods.

When I try to sit down and read book to the older 2, they are good at sitting still and listening usually... it's just the toddler, he screeches and grabs at the book. He has his favorite board books like Dr Seuss but sometimes the older kids need something more. So as far as audiobooks... what do people use? I tried Libravox, which is free, and they have a lot of narrators that speak with accents or unclear speech that is hard to understand for my kids. I looked in to Audible which is probably very good but I was confused about the membership fees and if I'm understanding it right it's ridiculously expensive for what you actually get. I did check my local library's audiobook selection and it's very sparse. Do the Scholastic story videos count? We've seen those before and my kids will sometimes tolerate them.

That reminds me... is there any woman whose born children here that can go the whole night without getting up to pee? I cannot. And surely this isn't helping. If I only pee once in the middle of the night it's a good night.

I've been low carb for a year now so very minimal sugar. I don't think I could go on without my coffee. I have a cup of regular in the morning and drink decaf after that. Sleep probably has room for improvement. I seem to be one of those people who can't make due with even an hour less sleep than I need. My kids go to bed too late and my toddler wakes up too early and I'm too tired to try to get them to change so I can sleep more. Sometimes I wonder about things lik my methamphetamine use years ago. I've heard it can permanently damage your energy resources.

Ok so this is a spin-off from my other thread. In an attempt to improve or at least understand why I'm often so low energy, it might help my homeschool endeavors. In the morning I wake up and work myself into alertness with coffee. Then I try to get as much done as I can (I'm a SAHM - kids ages listed in my siggy) until the early afternoon, at which point the only way I can describe it is that it's as if someone shot me with a tranquilizer gun like animals you see on wildlife tv shows. It feels like my brain just stops working for a few hours. If I can get a nap it does help but many days this is impossible because of toddler. During this time each day, it feels as those making normal decisions is too much to ask. I am irritable, have poor judgement and am basically useless. Is this normal or not? I do plan to see a doctor... haven't in a while but I'm kind of in between insurances right now and just wanted to see if anyone has any thoughts or simular experience.

Both DH and I are ok with not having more babies considering everything... so I think remembering that the toddler will grow less wild and crazy soon is a good thing to keep in mind. I want to enjoy his toddler-ness too and not be sitting impatiently waiting for him to grow up. So he screams and tries to trash anything in his reach when I attempt to accomplish something with the older kids. I guess this is within the range of normal for a 2 year old. If I seem like I keep struggling with the same type of thing, it's true. Some days are better than others. I am hesitant with how much I should share but I guess I just want encouragement from time to time. Maybe one day I will never have times of being distraught and unsure about homeschooling but maybe not.

Thank you so much. I really need to hear "that is normal" sometimes. Or even "you're doing fine considering everything". Homeschooling can feel like such a huge, life overtaking choice even when the kids are all fairly little. It feels like all the "normal" kids are in school 6 hours a day and I have to prove that we're doing something so impressive in those 6 hours besides being at school and we're just not. But maybe it's just a different ballgame altogether.

Thank you, everyone. I realize my perception may be skewed. I don't know. People tell me I'm doing a good job but I don't necessarily believe them. When I say the schools are inferior, I mean lots of kids who are out of control. That's what I've heard from teachers who I've met around here. Yes, the schools get poor ratings, and no I haven't seen what it's like first hand but that's my understanding. I've heard the kids in these schools have lots of behavioral issues. My own experience with public school was awful and my concern about sex, drugs, gangs, bullying etc is real. For what it's worth I'll try to briefly describe how my days are: I want to say for one thing I do deal with depression and low energy but I don't flop around the house crying in my bath robe with dark bags under my eyes all day. I get dressed in real clothes every day, tidy up as much as I can, gently push my kids into a daily routine (things like teeth brushing, bed making, breakfast, vitamins) and try to be kind, caring and smile for them. Since our neighborhood is not nice we go to a park almost daily. I try to teach them along with whatever we're doing each day and answer their many questions that come up. My son is fascinated with railroad crossings and I make an effort to go one minute out of my way when we're out so we can cross the tracks hoping the train will come by. I read with them occasionally. My goal is to do it daily. Sometimes it happens, sometimes not. They play Starfall and learning games a few times a week. I or DH sit down and do our boxed curriculum with them (5 and 7 year old) a couple times a week. We randomly do things like M&M math when I feel up to it (it's a booklet where you count, divide, categorize M&Ms... as you can imagine, they are pretty eager to do that one). There is a large portion of the day that the older 2 spend in pretend-play mode, both together and separately . They seem to really enjoy it and be good at it. There's some days where there's a lot of youtube kids (it has content filtering) happening on the ipad and some of it is mindless stuff that I can't really justify like watching a lady play with Shopkins etc. Baths and meals take up a portion of the days. Me trying to maintain order with dishes and laundry takes up a portion of the day. Sometimes I turn on upbeat music that I like and we dance or blow off steam as much as we can indoors. Most days my energy crashes pretty badly in the early afternoon and I take a nap and/ or lay down for 2 hours or more. The kids are always safe and if I have to choose between laying down and tending to their needs I will always help them. But there are times where it seems like there's nothing but kids shows on Netflix and youtube, me laying down because I can't do anything else and the house being trashed. What makes things extra hard is that we have basically nothing in terms of extended family support. It's a depressing combination of geographic distance, difficult, fractured relationships and not being like-minded (hostility towards homeschool etc) as well as trying to have a decent life for DH, myself and our kids on a single income household that is probably lower than anyone we know.

I feel like that is what I am asking myself right now. We live in a school district where it is easy to make homeschool look appealing. The best this area has to offer is "well I guess it could be worse" in terms of schools to choose from. I want very much to homeschool. I am on board with all the reasons why it's a good idea. At the same time, I find myself overwhelmed with a toddler tornado, tired and depressed a lot of the time, expending all my energy just to do life basics like keeping the kids clean and fed, and living in a cramped home in a low-income neighborhood to name a few things. So I guess back to the question... if you had to choose between sending your kids to a very sub-par brick and mortar school, or keep them home when you can almost never bring yourself to do real actual table work with the kids what would you choose?