Ah. I have an aunt (retired school teacher) who was the only person in my family not in favor of my choice to homeschool. I sent her an email saying I understood she had different feelings about homeschooling than I did and that I didn't expect to change her mind, but that I'd made my decision and I hoped she would respect that and that it wouldn't change our relationship and she responded favorably and has been no problem. If she had carried on making negative comments, I'd have told her more firmly that my choice was not up for discussion and that I would appreciate it if she would keep her negative comments to herself so as not to impact our relationship. interested questions or gentle requests for assurances are one thing, but negative attitudes are another.

Yep. And my district mysteriously sent out a letter saying as per the "new" homeschooling law (what?!?!?!) portfolios should include an "instructional activity log" after she made those changes.

Those are the people I'd be deleting. I have zero interest in Facebook "friends" who are looking to criticize my family's choices or leave snippy, rude, argumentative or negative posts on my wall. Nope. No time or patience for that.

I agree. And then add in how the new "homeschooling liaison" decided to change the PDE website to reflect her own interpretation of the home ed law, and it's quite the circus.

Got beta results. Went from about 5000 Saturday to about 6200 Monday. Nowhere near doubling and definitely drastically slowing down. So more confirmation that for all intents and purposes, it's over. :(

I enjoyed the book, it was a quick entertaining read. I have actually not seen the movie but will probably check it out at some point now that I've read the book and see that the movie has at least one good review here! The Good Sister was a bit on the intense side but I enjoyed the book. The author explains at the end her own childhood experiences with her mother's post-partum depression so I guess that was a topic that had a lot of meaning for her. The Devil Wears Prada was an entertaining read, not intense, and Little Children has dark themes but manages to be more humorous (if you like dark humor) than intense, for the most part! I think I forgot to put on my list that I also read The Lost Boy, the sequel to A Child Called It, by David Pelzer. I'd read A Child Called It years ago and came across the sequel not long ago at a used book sale and just got around to reading it. That was definitely intense and hard to read. As you all probably already know, the author went through horrible abuse and neglect in his childhood by his own mother and now as an adult he has written a series of books. In the first, he describes his childhood and the abuse, and in the second, he describes what his teen years were like after being rescued from home and living in the foster care system and still being confronted from time to time with his mother and the rest of his family and having mixed feelings about them. Very sad!

Not really- yesterday and today so far there really isn't even any noticeable spotting when I wipe (and the day before that it was only brownish). It seems to pretty much have stopped, which would be encouraging if not for the cruddy news I got after my hospital ultrasound. I repeated my HCG draw yesterday, but probably won't get those results until I see my OB tomorrow afternoon. Tomorrow she'll tell me the results of my betas and do another ultrasound. If I'm lucky and miracles happen, then maybe she'll give me better news than the ER did but I just don't feel very hopeful. I'm sort of expecting her to tell me it's in a bad spot and not developing and that I need a D&C or shot of methotrexate again or some such, but I just won't know for sure until tomorrow late afternoon.

I am still taking the metformin. So far no change. Minimal brownish to tannish spotting only when I wipe. Nothing else, no pain, still have pg symptoms. Went to repeat hcg draw today but prob won't get results til tomorrow or weds. Still feeling in limbo. I guess if my condition remains the same I will get more answers weds afternoon when OB does the ultrasound.

Current: Little Children. Tom Perrotta's thirty-ish parents of young children are a varied and surprising bunch. There's Todd, the handsome stay-at-home dad dubbed "The Prom King" by the moms of the playground; Sarah, a lapsed feminist with a bisexual past, who seems to have stumbled into a traditional marriage; Richard, Sarah's husband, who has found himself more and more involved with a fantasy life on the internet than with the flesh and blood in his own house; and Mary Ann, who thinks she has it all figured out, down to scheduling a weekly roll in the hay with her husband, every Tuesday at 9pm. They all raise their kids in the kind of sleepy American suburb where nothing ever seems to happen-at least until one eventful summer, when a convicted child molester moves back to town, and two restless parents begin an affair that goes further than either of them could have imagined. Unexpectedly suspenseful, but written with all the fluency and dark humor of Perrotta's previous novels, Little Children exposes the adult dramas unfolding amidst the swingsets and slides of an ordinary American playground. Also completed this week: The Devil Wears Prada. Welcome to the dollhouse, baby! When aspiring journalist Andrea first sets foot in the plush Manhattan offices of Runway she knows nothing. She's never heard of the world's most fashionable magazine, or its feared and fawned-over editor, Miranda Priestly. But she's going to be Miranda's assistant, a job millions of girls would die for. A year later, she knows altogether too much: That it's a sacking offence to wear anything lower than a three-inch heel to work. But that there's always a fresh pair of Manolos for you in the accessories cupboard. That Miranda believes Hermes scarves are disposable, and you must keep a life-time supply on hand at all times. That eight stone is fat. That you can charge cars, manicures, anything at all to the Runway account, but you must never, ever, leave your desk, or let Miranda's coffee get cold. And that at 3 a.m. on a Sunday, when your boyfriend's dumping you because you're always at work, and your best friend's just been arrested, if Miranda phones, you jump. Most of all, Andrea knows that Miranda is a monster who makes Cruella de Vil look like a fluffy bunny. But also that this is her big break, and it's going to be worth it in the end. Isn't it? and The Good Sister, by Drusilla Campbell. Roxanne Callahan has always been her younger sister's caretaker. Now married, her happiness is threatened when beautiful and emotionally unstable Simone, suffering from crippling postpartum depression, commits an unforgivable crime for which Roxanne comes to believe she is partially responsible. In the glare of national media attention brought on her sister, Roxanne fights to hold her marriage together as she is drawn back into the pain of her troubled past and relives the fraught relationship she and Simone shared with their narcissistic mother. At the same time, only she can help Simone's nine year old daughter, Merell, make sense of the family's tragedy. Cathartic, lyrical, and unflinchingly honest, THE GOOD SISTER is a novel of four generations of women struggling to overcome a legacy of violence, lies and secrecy, ultimately finding strength and courage in their love for each other. COMPLETE 1. Envy, by J.R. Ward (Fallen Angels series) 2. Kiss of the Highlander, by Karen Marie Moning (Highlander series) 3. The Ramayana, A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic, by R.K. Narayan (with my daughter for school reading) 4. Dark Highlander, by Karen Marie Moning (Highlander series) 5. The Immortal Highlander, by Karen Marie Moning (Highlander series) 6. Spell of the Highlander, by Karen Marie Moning (Highlander series) 7. 11/22/63, by Stephen King 8. The Traveler, by John Twelve Hawks (Fourth Realm Trilogy, Book 1) 9. Into the Dreaming, by Karen Marie Moning (Highlander series) 10. A Judgement In Stone, by Ruth Rendel 11. The Dark River, by John Twelve Hawks (Fourth Realm Trilogy, Book 2) 12. The Golden City, by John Twelve Hawks (Fourth Realm Trilogy, Book 3) 13. Forbidden Pleasure, by Lora Leigh 14. Relic, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child 15. House Rules, by Jodi Picoult 16. Midwives, by Chris Bohjalian 17. Wind Through the Keyhole, by Stephen King 18. The High Flyer, by Susan Howatch. 19. Daughter of the Blood, by Anne Bishop (The Black Jewels Trilogy, Book 1) 20. Heir to the Shadows, by Anne Bishop (The Black Jewels Trilogy, Book 2) 21. The Host, by Stephenie Meyer 22. Queen of the Darkness, by Anne Bishop (The Black Jewels Trilogy, Book 3) 23. The Invisible Ring, by Anne Bishop (The Black Jewels series) 24. Fifty Shades of Grey, by E.L. James 25. Fifty Shades Darker, by E.L. James 26. Fifty Shades Freed, by E.L. James 27. Dreams Made Flesh, by Anne Bishop (The Black Jewels series) 28. Tangled Webs, by Anne Bishop (The Black Jewels series) 29. Goodnight Nobody, by Jennifer Weiner 30. Kiss the Dead, by Laurell K. Hamilton (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series) 31. The Shadow Queen, by Anne Bishop (The Black Jewels series) 32. The Read-Aloud Handbook, by Jim Trelease 33. Ahab's Wife, by Sena Jeter Naslund 34. Shalador's Queen, by Anne Bishop (The Black Jewels series) 35. Sebastian, by Anne Bishop (Ephemera, Book 1) 36. The Devil Wears Prada, by Lauren Weisberger 37. The Good Sister, by Drusilla Campbell CURRENT 38. The Neverending Story, by Michael Ende, translated by Ralph Manheim, aloud to my son. 39. Smiles to Go, by Jerry Spinelli, aloud with my daughter. 40. Little Children, by Tom Perrotta

I'm still pregnant but the ER doc said it's in the wrong place and it's unlikely it can grow there and likely I'm in the process of m/c so it's just hard to be hopeful even though I haven't actually lost it yet. My next ultrasound is scheduled for Weds at my doctor's office. So just waiting it out and I'll see what happens by then. As for the age, well, the older you get the more likely you are to have losses and that seems to be holding true in my case. :( I do feel lucky that these last couple of pregnancies were conceived quickly at my age (first try and then second try) thanks to metformin, but it's staying pregnant that really counts. I wish I could manage that!

Thanks, all. I'm just feeling completely sorry for myself this morning. Still no spotting, pain, anything. I wonder if the oral progesterone supplements my dr told me not to stop are just delaying the process, which I'd really rather get over with if it must happen. Today on Facebook one of my friends who just had her fifth baby posted that she's pretty sure mastitis is the worst thing in the world. I thought, no, facing your third miscarriage in a row, especially when you're already 39, is worse, but of course I didn't say that and then felt like a jerk for thinking it. I walked outside and tried not to look toward my SIL's house who I'm pretty sure is still pregnant and still a drug addict, drove on a dreary rainy day past the hospital where I didn't get good news yesterday and probably won't be delivering a baby at in the spring, over to the lab where I was told to go do my betas again today- only to find that apparently the lab is closed on sundays! So now I'm back at home and back to just waiting for something to happen. This limbo is no fun at all. :(

The spotting (which never did get red again yet and stayed brownish) just got lighter and lighter yesterday as the day went on, and there was like none this morning. Still no cramping or pain. BooKs still sore. I was still tired enough yesterday to take an afternoon nap AND fall asleep early in the middle of a family movie. And all these symptoms from a pregnancy the ER doc says I can't sustain and my OB says "possibly" but I think she just likes to keep you as positive as possible until it's actually over. I'd love to be positive. But I can't deal with false hope, it just makes the emotional turmoil afterward worse. I just keep feeling like I'm holding my breath waiting for the worst to happen, and wishing I could just get it over with already instead of dragging it out like this. I hit six weeks today and should be celebrating hitting yet another weekly milestone and instead I just feel hollow inside. I really don't know if I can ever do this again and don't know if I will keep trying after this. Three losses in a row is just too many. And I had been feeling good about this one. :(

I know- they were 370 on 8/24 so if they doubled every two days from there it would have been at least 5,920 today. Between that and the spotting and the ultrasound results- I just don't feel any hope. They did page my OB to ask if I should stay on the progesterone and she said yes and that she's seen this before and I might not m/c but I think that's just false hope. She said she was "hopeful" and "optimistic" last time too after the too small gestational sac but everything I read indicated bad news and I lost it the next day.

He just came in. Not good news. He said there was a small yolk sac but that it is not in the right spot in the uterus but in the endometrial canal just below the uterus and above the cervix and that this does likely mean it is moving down in the process of a miscarriage that hasn't completed yet and that it is unlikely it could develop normally where it is now. Though he says it is not an ectopic. My betas did rise from yesterday- the were like 3,000 yesterday and 5,000 today (I think they should have been at least 6,000 today if they had kept doubling every time) *and he wants me to repeat them tomorrow, but at this point it just seems like I'm waiting for a m/c to complete. :( It'll be my third loss in a row.

I really don't think that went well to be honest. She was like "just so you know even if everything's fine the dr has to be the one to tell you." I said, "I know it might be too early but if you do notice a heartbeat would you be able to point that out?" and she said yeah. So after a while, she said, "there's really nothing to show you." I said, "is there a sac?" She said, "there's a sac but really nothing showing in it." I didn't press for more details because I know she's not allowed to talk to me about it but she didn't even mention seeing a fetal pole or anything. So now I'm thinking it's a blighted ovum or something. I don't know. Just waiting for dr to come talk to me.

I am already on 200 mg a day orally. Well, they just drew like six vials of blood and now I'm waiting for my ultrasound!

Saw dr- he's going to get me yesterday's beta results and repeat test again now to see if still going up, he's going to give me Rhogam, and he's going to send me for ultrasound to see how everything looks.

Decided to come to ER just to be proactive. I figure I may need Rhogam (RH negative), that they can give me my beta results from yesterday (used hospital lab), and that maybe I can get them to do a scan to rule anything in or out and if I'm lucky help ease my mind. Or at least let me know whether I should be freaking or not. Waiting to be called.

Thank you, everyone. So I had updated that it was reddish again before I went to bed. Got up around 6 AM and was paranoid I was going to find blood on the pad, but nothing there. When I wiped, brown spotting. Still unsure what to think. I am already taking progesterone (orally). I haven't been doing anything particularly strenuous. My dr did not see me yesterday and just sent me to the lab and then had me rest and wait to see what happens. It's now a holiday weekend so I'm sure they won't be in until Tuesday. My appt and ultrasound are scheduled for Wednesday. I guess my plan for today is continue to rest as much as possible and hope there's no fresh or worse bleeding today. I guess depending on how it goes today I may have to call the dr to see if I'm supposed to go get a shot of Rhogam since I am RH Negative.

And back to reddish again. Just, ugh. :(

I am really freaking out. :( So I had that spotting around 4 weeks that seemed to end up being some implantation spotting. It was always light in color and a small amount and only when I wiped. It stopped after a few days and I went at least a week and a half with no spotting or problems. Got good results with my HCG levels, have had some mild pregnancy symptoms, was counting down the days til my ultrasound (this coming weds) and everything seemed good. This afternoon a little after 3, I went to the bathroom, and when I wiped I was shocked and scared to see a decent amount of dark pink/reddish on the paper. I freaked out and called my dr office. They said there is nothing they can do this early (I'll be 6 weeks on Sunday), that if I develop heavy bleeding or pain I would have to call or go to ER over weekend, but that it could also be nothing and can be common/normal. She suggested I drink lots of fluids and rest with my feet elevated. I asked if there was anything they could do to check if anything was wrong and she said I could go to the lab to check my betas again. So I did, though who knows when I'll get results or what will happen by then. A little after 5, I went to the bathroom again. Nothing on the pad. When I wiped, still some spotting, but not as much as before, and this time it was more of a light brownish color. Went back to lying down and resting. Around 6:30 used bathroom again. Still nothing on pad. Wiped and just a faint pale pinkish/tannish stain on paper. Hoping this means it's going away and that it's nothing- I've experienced spotting with normal pregnancies before. But at 39 coming off of two previous losses, I am SO scared. I'm paranoid it's going to come back, get worse, turn into another miscarriage. I'm just trying to lay in bed, rest, read, and hope. All I can do is wait this out and see what happens the rest of the night/weekend. This is so difficult.

We save them for crafts and collages which has come in handy several times for school. Once, my daughter made a "Life, Liberty, & The Pursuit of Happiness" word collage from magazines for social studies. More recently she did the SOTW activity that involved making a "mosaic calendar" using images from magazines. She could pick any theme she wanted and went with desserts. She had so much fun doing that, she may want to do more calendar pages for other months using different themes. And my son did an Alphabet Collage for wrapping up Kindergarten (finding capital letters of the alphabet and pasting them into his main lesson book). Other times, for fun, we do an idea I read about in Family Fun Magazine once- give the child a picture torn out from a magazine and encourage them to mount it on a larger piece of paper and then draw the UNSEEN parts of the picture, what they think would be all around that picture. Fun stuff. :)

I am taking Metformin. In June I had an early m/c after seeing on ultrasound the gestational sac was much smaller than it should have been, but I do not think that was related to Metformin. In fact, I've read that if you STOP Metformin after becoming pregnant (especially in 1st trimester) it can lead to a loss. I am now pregnant again (very early on, I will only be 6 weeks on Sunday) and still taking Metformin. Hoping this one will go well. (I had an ectopic last summer, too, but I was not on Metformin at that time).

I homeschool two of my children. Alexa, almost 12, who I pulled out of public school because of the cupcake haters (just kidding) and began homeschooling in March of 2009. Ben, almost 7, who has never been to any public preschool/public school (I homeschooled him for K last year and we're doing 1st grade this year). My older daughter, Melissa, is 20 years old and she's been in school (either private or public) her whole life, in special needs/special ed/life skills type classes. She is still in such a school. This is her last year since she will turn 21 this year and can only go until the year she turns 21.

Hm. With my almost 12 y/o, I don't ask her questions, we just enjoy our stories. If she has questions she'll ask as we go, and sometimes later we talk about what parts we liked. Sometimes there will be a topic that leads to further conversation. With my almost 7 y/o, I don't ask him questions per se after a read aloud, but will sometimes ask conversational questions as we read, like, "What do you think of that? Would you do that? Would you like it if that happened to you? That's pretty silly, huh? Why do you think s/he did that?" Not a lot, but here and there at parts that seem appropriate. He, too, will sometimes ask questions as we go. But I never really drill them after a book to see if they can answer questions, pass a quiz, or whatever. We try to just enjoy reading for the sake of reading as I think that fosters more of an overall enjoyment of reading.