I hear you.:grouphug: My seven year old is sucking the life out of me as we speak. My 10.5 year old is copping a major 'tude lately. I am taking my adult beverage(s) and going to my room by myself with strict orders to be left alone. Even the dog is being clingy and needy this evening.:glare:

I did as an attorney at a large firm. Everyone female I worked with outearned their husband or boyfriend unless he was an attorney also. I agree with the poster above me though. Both my DH and I are from families where Dad went to work and mom stayed home. My earning status caused lots of hard feelings on both our parts.

I had no idea - thank you for posting!

Yep! DH will usually take the kids up to see his parents for an overnight. Unfortunately it doesn't happen often enough (is once a week too much to ask, LOL).

It never dawned on me to tip. Now I'm afraid to show my face (or any other part of me) at the place I go to.

I bet I'm the only one who owns a piece of the red carpet from the aisle that Diana walked down when she married Prince Charles. The backstory - friends of my parents live in England and apparently after the wedding the carpet was being used to carpet some government buildings. The husband worked at this building and was able to get a piece for both my sister and I.

Every single year from the age of 7 on. :lol:

My boys liked Cynthia Rylant's "High Rise Private Eyes" series. Bunny (a rabbit) and Jack (a raccoon I think) are detectives who solve mysteries like The Case of the Missing Monkey, The Case of the Climbing Cat, The Case of the Puzzling Possum, etc.

I've got a BBA in Finance and International Business, and a JD.

We adopted our boys from Kazakhstan in 2005. The older one was 4 years old and the younger was just under one year. We had a great experience all around. Good luck to you!

I am so sorry for what you are going through. I hate confrontation, too. This sounds so ridiculous, but a trick I learned while in law school (yes, a lawyer who hates confrontation...) is to sit in front of the mirror and practice what you are going to say out loud. Look yourself in the eye and have the conversation with yourself (over and over if necessary). Saying things out loud is different than thinking them through in your mind. I'm one of those people who for days after an argument can think of the perfect thing I should have said - this way you know what you will be saying and those ideas may come beforehand instead of after. Try to be as fact based as possible with little emotion. Can you jot down some bullet points to take with you? Make a list of everything you want to say, pick out the three or four strongest points, and make a little outline of how you want to the conversation to flow. This way, if you get flustered you can get on track easily. Make sure your husband knows what you want discussed so he can help steer the meeting if you start going off message or getting too emotional. Can he "make the case" and you supply the facts? Since her supervisor is going to be there, use the words "bullying," "unsafe environment", "singling out" and "poor sportsmanship" more than once (my cousin, who is an elementary school principal, told me nothing gets their attention and action more than the words "bullying" and "unsafe environment"). Don't tiptoe around it - call it what it is. The coach is bullying and allowing others to bully your daughter and that, I'm sure, flies in the face of what the organization/team/league is supposed to represent. I am not sure of the background story, but I took from your OP that you want to address the bullying moreso than your daughter's health. If I misunderstood, please disregard the rest of this. I would imagine the coaches are going to make it be all about your daughter's health and you need to steer it away from that if you want the meeting to be about their treatment of your daughter. Anticiapte that, and think of some ways you can re-direct the conversation, such as "we are here to discuss the continual mistreatment of my daughter" or "we are not here to discuss her health, we are here to discuss how she is treated during practice" something like that. Repeat as often as necessary. Good luck to you. It is so hard, but the more prepared you are the better you'll do.:grouphug:

Yes - a Clemson baseball hat, a Clemson shirt, a Clemson blanket...

:iagree: This is the only advantage I've noticed about turning 40.

For me (and our area "regular" grocery store is pretty expensive) I can get better deals at Costco on just about everything. The biggest money savers to me are meat (especially beef), organic milk (I get 3 half gallons for the price of 2 at the grocery store), coffee, eggs, string cheese sticks, yogurt (I save about $6 per dozen single serve Chibani yogurt), fruit and vegetables. I think everything I buy at Costco is cheaper than my grocery store. I balk whenever I have to buy the above-mentioned items at the grocery store so these are the things that stick out the most. I get lots of clothes there (mostly tops or capri pants) and they always have great winter coats for the kids.

I did, but only because we watched a video clip of the incident while studying the element in chemistry last year. So thank you WTM and Elemental Science:)

We had something similar happen, and it was so stressful:grouphug:. We were selling our house and had a 5" step from the living room to the family room. During an open house, someone tripped. She sent both us and our realtor a nasty threatening letter within 24 hours, saying that her carpal tunnel syndrome was "re-activated" because she had to stop her fall with her hands, and she didn't know if she would be able to continue working because our house had a "pre-existing dangerous condition." Our homeowners insurance laughed when we told them, saying we had no idea how common this was. They told us that in situations like this it was common for the insurance company to give said person $100 or something like that. Our homeowners insurance dealt with the entire thing, I honestly have no idea what ever came of it. I would let her insurance contact yours and take myself out of it. I would not have your aunt stay at your house again, either. No way. I also would be very leary of paying her anything, wondering what "ailment" would befall her next week as a result of her misstep. I'm so sorry you have to deal with this.

My boys were adopted 6 years ago and I am exactly where you are.

Fruits and vegetables can contain sulfites - could it be a reaction to that? I've had bad reactions that have lasted a few days after eating something with sulfites. The stomach pain and "issues" start within a few minutes and can last for a while. The pain can be horrible. I can no longer eat vegetables or fruit at any restaurant. I hope he feels better soon.

This sounds just awful. :grouphug: I think I would do two things. First, I would tell the coaches that under no circumstances is your DD to be partnered or put in the same lane with this particular child. I would tell them, not ask them, no long drawn out explanations, no discussion of previous issues, perhaps just "due to personal reasons, DD is to have as little contact as possible with xx." Second thing involves your daughter. We had a similar issue here in our neighborhood. We are very close and tight knit group but there are a few boys we refer to in our own home as "The Boo-Hoo Boys." These boys can dish it out, but cannot take it. They cry at the slightest thing. My son would rather die than "tattle" or sometimes even stand up for himself. For example, if 6 boys are on the trampoline and all are jumping around acting like idiots, someone is bound to bump into somebody else. The Boo Hoo Boys, the most rambunctious of the group, will cry and run to their moms tattling "so and so kicked me" with no mention that everyone was kicking or whatever (and 9 times out of 10, "so and so" is my DS. If anyone else did it, they didn't seem to care. These kids are a year older, are all in the same class at school, and my son is the weakest link in the friendship chain). I finally had to tell my son that no matter what, if a Boo-Hoo Boy starts crying and you were anywhere in the vicinity that you are to follow said Boo-Hoo Boy and give your side of the story if necessary. Once your daughter sees this girl jump out of the pool and run to mommy, perhaps your daughter needs to join her to set the record straight. I know it isn't easy for kids to confront adults, but if you are at practices and notice something starting, you can have a signal with your daughter that lets her know she is about to be accused and needs to defend herself. Once she gets out of the pool, you can follow along and rebut whatever the other kid is saying. I hope that makes sense. Once these boys realized my son wouldn't sit there and be a scapegoat, they stopped making him one. I have a feeling the same thing would happen here.

When my husband coached an all-star 11/12 year old little league team one year, he had the parents run a lap around the field if they brought their kid late. Everyone would get a good chuckle, including the parent running. I remember one guy, the managing partner at a huge law firm in DC, running a lap in his business suit...It was all done in fun and no one seemed to mind.

Me! I love professional football. College, not so much.

This is what I try to do. Mine (and it is really only my oldest) has to sit up on his bed and do nothing. Nothing. He can sit there until he is ready to work. If he becomes "ready" and it is convenient for me to resume work, we do. If not, he does it with Dad either that evening (and Dad is in no mood after work, so this is really a bad consequence) or on Saturday. But he sits with nothing to do until his attitude is better. And I also change the "tone" of the work if we've had to go through this. For example, we usually do as much of our math orally as we can. If we've had to stop for bad behavior, we write all of our math problems out. No skipped problems, nothing out loud so it is really extra work. This is only what I do if the behavior is really bad. If it is just low-level moaning or groaning and a warning changes it, we carry on as usual. BUt there are times when you just know it is going to escalate (mine is a button pusher) and that is when I resort to the going to the room thing.

I'm hardly an expert but yes, if the attitude is bad enough I skip the lesson (or the rest of the day). The lesson is then done the next day, and we do a makeup day on Saturday. With Dad. Who doesn't make it nearly as fun and interesting as Mom:D.

My kids have memorized this one. Two separate family friends from England were amazed - said they never heard of this growing up (friends of my parents, in their 60s).

I read to them while we are eating lunch. Keeps them from getting up and walking away...