My kids go to school a couple blocks from there. Last week, they had active shooter drills.

Our kids are 9 & 7. They have to Nintendo Switch for Christmas (which we parents also play sometimes). No games over E10. We actually banned YouTube after they started to get into watching gaming videos. It seemed to stir up a lot of unsavory stuff. YouTube really wasn’t a problem before. 

We got the Variety Kit for my 9-yo’s birthday. We haven’t built everything yet, but he’s loving it. We keep the finished pieces in a big plastic bin, which goes in a smallish walk in closet (AKA the toy closet) off our family room. We gave the job of forwarding through the instructions to the little brother. 

Thanks for this. My eldest is a boy and his best friends have been girls. It squicks me out when people ask about is girlfriend or remark that he’s got a cute girl friend. Meanwhile, he's chosen someone with a mutal love of Pokemon or building things or drawing. Romantic relationships will happen soon enough. Why rush…

I let mine graze on precut and washed veggies while I make dinner. Sometimes they don't eat many veggies at dinner, but it balances out.

I had a housemate in college that we did that to. It wasn’t a bin, we just started to chuck his stuff down the basement stairs because so much of it was in the way. I read about a mom that put her kids stuff in a trash bag and then they had to do chores to earn it back.  Whatever works. 

Two kids and we love our Outback. Two things to consider. The safety features on these things are ridiculously good and that has a good effect on your insurance bill as well as your peace of mind. If you can’t find a stick, consider an automatic anyway. Once the sleep deprivation kicks in and you are constantly…

No. Our new thing with shoes is that we steal them. 

You should try being a woman and trying to find any pants that fit your phone. The struggle is real.

I hope this works out. I have a really complicated relationship with my kids YouTube activity. On the one hand, kid one did some amazing oragami by following YouTube videos. On the other, he’d find a SuperMario video, and minutes later it seemed there was all kind of swearing going on. I’ve heard a lot of horror…

I work full time. My husband has a bunch of smaller gigs/jobs that almost add up to a full time job. When the kids were wee, he was mostly home during the day, but out most evenings and a lot on the weekend. We had a neighborhood preschool/drop-in parents morning out that would watch the kids from 9-1. It was…

I’ll go a step further of bras. Go to a bra boutique. Especially is you have a larger cup size. Nordstrom is the best department store for larger cups but a specialty store blows their selection away. The last time I was in Nordstrom, I had 6-8 choices. More like 50-50 in a specialty store. This sounds like too many…

I just found soft insulated lunch boxes at Aldi for about $3-4. I bought a half dozen. Because that’s a couple more than my kids lost last year. Wish me luck.

I have a foldable Totes duggle bag that I carry as a backup. Some of my suitcases are also expandable.

I estimate that our old house was 2400-2600 sqft. Our new one is about 1000 sqft less and over all we are happier. Less to clean. Less space to accumulate. There are things I miss about the old house and things I like better about the new one. Sometimes it’s less about space than layout. Like my old kitchen was…

I once set a new bottle of spray sunscreen with my kid for a field trip. It came home empty. Apparently he shared with the whole class. And I guess it wasn’t against the rules here, or they didn’t think it worth enforcing, because no one complained.

We have some lawn, but one of the kids’ favorite activities is digging in the pea gravel area, which we set up for them to dig in. So much cleaner than digging in dirt or sand. They don’t seem to mind kneeling of it and so forth. You might be able to do some xeriscaping with pea gravel with kids.

Ziplocks are a must. Our carsick-prone kid is now 7 and we’ve had very little cleanup for a couple years.

Kinsley makes it sound like Trump deserves a fucking participation trophy.

I’ve sung with a number of big choirs. Someone once asked me if we had anyone that wouldn’t perform something for religious reasons and I said I didn’t know of any. Jewish choristers will happily perform masses and Christians the Chitcester Psalms. They will regale you with the historical and musical significance of…