I voted 3- but I only HAVE 3 so far. And the reason I picked 3 was that my son was a VERY demanding baby- like he wanted to be held and nursed pretty much constantly and cried whenever I put him down, never napped, took forever to sleep through the night (like, he was still waking up MULTIPLE times a night up until he was at least 15 months old), and so on. My daughter was only 5 and saying things like "you used to hold ME on your lap..." it was very exhausting for quite a while there! But now that they're older, it's pretty easy going most of the time and I'm looking forward to (hoping to!) add number 4 at some point in the near future. :D

Yes, I would. I would suggest things like: 1) Find a hobby that you can ALL do together and enjoy as a family. Getting outside- fresh air and exercise- is a good thing. How about hiking or nature walks or geocaching or some such. 2) Start playing cooperative (not competitive) games together as a family. There are cooperative board games but you could probably find ones that are more like activities- oh, here's one site that says "trust building activities"... http://wilderdom.com/games/TrustActivities.html This is a GREAT family board game that encourages communication, sharing thoughts and feelings, and so on: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000QX9Y9O/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=5005236567&ref=pd_sl_46xrnvcv4s_e Maybe also look up roleplaying activities that kids can do either to demonstrate how they SHOULD have handled something, or to demonstrate how their actions made another person feel. 3) Start having perhaps a "family conference" regularly where only one person is allowed to talk at a time and can share their thoughts and feelings about the day honestly- let them start sharing with each other in a moderated non-threatening environment what they liked doing with each other that day, how somebody else hurt them that day, etc. 4) Bribe them. Start a family coin jar where every time somebody does something particularly NICE- gives someone else a sincere compliment, gives in to somebody else, offers a sincere apology, demonstrates an ability to get along well, whatever works for you- coins go in there that can eventually be used for some sort of fun family outing that they would all enjoy and look forward to, an overnight at a hotel with a pool, an amusement park, whatever works for you guys. Alternatively, coins can also be REMOVED from the jar when they are being cruel to each other. 5) If all else fails (or even regardless) you might want to consider family counseling of some sort. Either way, yes, I do believe in your case this needs to be prioritized over schoolwork, especially if you live in an area with relaxed homeschool laws. Good luck! :grouphug:

It's never really bothered me if they do it in front of me. If it's just a joke or two, I ignore it for the most part. If they start getting carried away, I'll say "Alright, that's enough." And they'll stop. This includes my 10 y/o daughter who finds "potty humor" quite funny, herself, AND my 5 y/o son.

At the point I'm ready to start 1st grade with my son, it will be two months before his 7th birthday.

Activities like that are optional here. I want them to enjoy their extracurricular activities. They are going for them, not for me. If they really don't want to go- they don't go.

Well, I would prefer not to have a separate thread for children's read alouds. This thread is for the "52 books in 52 weeks challenge" and my daughter and I are doing that together. So I post to this thread what we read. They aren't like little kid's picture books or anything. I think if another thread was started just for that, there may not be enough of us doing it to be worthwhile, and it would just be inconvenient to have to track more than one thread. (Which I'd have to do because I do also refer to books I'm reading on my own in this thread). I hate to think that it's bothering people that I'm posting the books I'm reading with my daughter. But if it is I guess I can stop doing it and just stick to my blog for listing those books. And P.S. I don't feel any need for people to label their books as Christian or religious or whatever either, even though I'm not Christian (or religious). Usually I can tell by the title or description given, and if not, if a title sounded interesting enough that I wanted to search for it, I'd be able to tell if it was content I was interested in prior to purchasing it or reserving it at my library, I would think.

Is that what it's called? How neat. Yes, we did see the moon looking like that last night and commented on how it looked like it was "laying down and going to sleep." :D

I hate to break it to you, but my daughter is 10 and she still finds potty humor amusing. (My husband is 36 and so does he).

Being as I consider the Pearls dangerous and twisted child abusers, YES I would be upset if another parent decided to give my children books or material that promoted such views. Even if they didn't already know my views for sure, but most especially if they did. My children would never be allowed over at that house again.

That was the first thing that popped into my head too! lol. Love the pics!

I will have to come back and look at those links later (I promise I will!) Meanwhile, here's my first contribution from a joke I came across somewhere or other and loved enough to save to my computer: Kids these days When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning .. uphill BOTH ways .. through year 'round blizzards. Carrying their younger siblings on their backs ... to their one-room schoolhouse, where they maintained a Straight-A average, despite their full- time, after-school job at the local textile mill .... where they worked for 35 cents an hour just to help keep their family from starving to death! And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way I was going to lay a bunch of cr*p like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it! But now that I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a dam Utopia! And I hate to say it, but you kids today- you don't know how good you've got it! I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the dam library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!! There was no email! We had to actually write somebody a letter. With a Pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there! There were no MP3'sor Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the dam record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ'd usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! And talk of about hardship? You couldn't just download porn! You had to steal it from your brother or bribe some homeless dude to buy you a copy of "Hustler" at the 7-11! Those were your options! We didn't have fancy cr*p like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it! And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister! We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like "Space Invaders" and "Asteroids" and the graphics sucked @sss! Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! ... Just like LIFE! When you went to the movie theater, there no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with a hat sat in front of you and you couldn't see, too bad! Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no onscreen menu and no remote control! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were scr*wed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your @sss and walk over to the TV to change the channel and there was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little b*stards! When we were on the phone with our friends and our parents walked in, we were stuck to the wall with a cord, a 7 foot cord that ran to the phone - not the phone base, the actual phone. We barely had enough length to sit on the floor and still be able to twirl the phone cord in our fingers. If you suddenly had to go to the bathroom - guess what we had to do..... hang up and talk to them later. And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove or go build a frigging fire... imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid JiffyPopthing and shake it over the stove forever like an idiot. That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled. You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980!

Well, my daughter is 10 and my son is only 5 and I have no intention of getting rid of any of her things until either A) he's done using them, too or B) I decide without question that I don't intend to use it for him at all. I would never sell it figuring "I'll rebuy it later." If I already have it, and if I'm planning to use it, I'm holding on to it.

I use livejournal. Link in sig. :)

lol...that was my one of my very first symptoms when I was pregnant with my son, too. One morning, I woke up, thought about going to make my morning coffee, and the very THOUGHT of it made me feel nauseous. For the next 15 weeks straight, I couldn't stand the idea (let alone the smell) of coffee. After 15 or 16 weeks had passed and I no longer felt queasy every day, I started having occasional cups of coffee again.

I read "Room" after someone here (I forget who) recommended it, and yeah, it was a haunting story! Good book though! I like Anna Quindlen's books, too.

Alexa (10 y/o dd) and I finished "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" this morning and we are starting "The Girl With The Silver Eyes" by Willo Davis Roberts. This was a book I'd read when I was like in fourth grade and I loved it so much, I never forgot the title- I'd go so far as to say it was one of the books that really fostered a lifelong love of learning for me! So when I saw it a while back at a used book sale, I snatched it up, and today my daughter and I are finally going to start reading it. I can't wait to see if it is half as good as I remember it being lol. I'm also reading "Doomed Queen Anne" by Carolyn Meyer (YA book from the "Young Royals" series) and still working my way through "Deconstructing Penguins."

Thanks... I will try to avoid ibuprofen from this point on. Sometimes just relaxing with a heating pad for a while works. I do go to a chiropractor once in a while, not regularly. I guess I could try the rest/heat and go see a chiro if it gets bad rather than taking meds!

Most couples we know are both "normal." But there are one or two couples we know where I would agree with you!

My one "vice" is a cup of coffee -just one!- a day. Would you recommend giving it up while TTC? I don't drink anything else with caffeine really... no soda, no tea- other than the one cup of coffee a day, I drink mostly water and once in a while a glass of apple or orange juice, or milk. Also, I take ibuprofen pretty regularly because of sciatica. Tylenol doesn't really help, I take the ibuprofen because it's an anti-inflammatory. Do I recall correctly that ibuprofen is okay in pregnancy up until the last trimester anyway and so would be okay to take as needed while TTC? Thanks for your input. :)

Robin, you've made me want to check out some of Dekker's books!

You can see if it's offered free on livemocha.com?

Yeah but my daughter loves anticipating the mail each month and being the one to run out and get it and having something to look forward to and so on lol.

lol sorry about that- I put all my reviews with a "date out of order" thing going back to the time PRIOR to the actual start of my blog...so even though something's dated in 2008 or 2009 I actually typed it in recent months heh. I wish I could totally hide the date on livejournal entries but I haven't figured out a way to do that! Yes I got the package where I just pay per month and we'll get 23 countries total. So far we have only received the first two months worth.

Beats me- I know you said you won't be talked down from your decision but you might want to just take a PEEK at livemocha.com- it's free. lol.

Nothing, other than perhaps playing Timez Attack.