You are SOOOOO not alone. My oldest is a super duper whiner/ overreactor, and there was one time we completely missed a real injury because we couldn't tell the difference between the pain expressed after the drawer fell on their foot and the general whininess. In no world would I assume a kid complaining/ avoiding walking for a couple of days that seemed to resolve would be a broken bone in the absence of other physical signs.

Okay. I am sorry. I will leave.

Try The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher!

At dinner the other day, a friend’s 8 year old casually asked, “So what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” This post feels kinda like that moment. A major moment of horror, revulsion, and shame disguised as genealogy interest. It shocked me to see something so horrific asked so casually. I’m not trying to scold or criticize you. It just really took me aback and I didn’t know how to respond. My family is from the South. I’m not into genealogy but I know some people in my family are and records have been kept. I don’t know if they owned anyone. I doubt it, because both my mother and father’s sides were very poor. But I don’t know for sure.

When I was sixteen, I dreamed every single night about either the Holocaust or hell. I dreamed about aliens landing in the middle of my school campus, rounding everyone up, and assassinating 75% of us. And there were some that were far too disturbing to talk about on a public forum.

Oh please. That's NOTHING in dream logic. Sounds like your subconscious is super smart.

Prazosin is pretty amazing at dealing with dreams, to be honest. It improved my life quite a lot, and it's not like SSRIs. It's a blood pressure medication. I used to have extremely complex, deeply weird, very disturbing dreams that were terrifying and left me upset for most of the next day and really impacted my sleep. Very first dose pretty much fixed it.

Exactly! I think it’s honestly irresponsible of them.

I’m not sure if I can forgive them. If my kids had seen this when they were little and then had to move, it would have completely devastated them and also made them think we didn’t love them as much as Bluey’s parents love them.

I am angry about six year old Bluey riding in the front seat and the idea of happy endings being that nothing changes. I think a lot of kids struggle with necessary changes…to their families, their friends, their schools. Lots of things in life and maybe especially in childhood are transient. And so to spend all that time and energy on buildup and then to go, “Oh, no, never mind. We just won’t do it,” at the very last moment is going to devastate a lot of little kids when there’s no last minute reprieve from changes in their lives.

I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but it makes me pretty angry! And disappointed in myself for my reaction.

Praying for all of you and holding him in the light!

Also, super ironically, my husband works for the big hospital in town as IT and he's been in a fight with the people who run the urgent cares that are affiliated because "their census is down, so the websites must not be working well." He keeps going to meetings and being like, "I mean, I am not a provider, but the fact that fewer people are sick in April than they were in December seems like both a GOOD thing and also not super surprising."

We got mild colds when we went to the eclipse. My youngest missed a couple days of school, honestly not really because of the cold but she’s a senior and getting her to school at all this year has been rough. She’s just completely over it, and anxious, and school has been an overstimulation train wreck. But the attendance policy requires a dr note for every absence, so we were at the pediatrician last week for a note. I don’t expect to ever stop masking where sick people are, at absolute minimum. But the pediatrician says it’s not really a sick season and they’re not seeing much illness. For what it’s worth. Here.

Well, I asked her, and she is like, "YES!!!! I CANNOT WAIT!" and she is apparently leaving her own foster mama cat and kittens at home with her husband and child, so she thinks this will be a nice substitute. We are close enough that I think she's sincere in her enthusiasm.

The logical alternative is taking them to preschool and having three year olds rotate them, but driving back and forth every night is a pain.