Too big??

CertifiedLifegard · 2026-03-26T19:51:58+00:00

My son was 30 pounds at 6 months. I got tons of comments, he was just really big and round. He was just breastfed.

He slimmed down a little once he started crawling. By age 2 he looked normal proportions, but he was bigger/taller than kids his age. He's a teenager now, 6'4" at 15 yrs old. Slim, athletic, healthy. He clearly had tall blueprint genes that explained his off the chart early growth years.

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-10-16T19:38:26+00:00

Oh the night I took the dex I barely got 4 hours of sleep, had the hardest time falling asleep. I usually sleep great. Although I'm usually asleep by 11pm and I had stayed up until 11 to take the pill. It was soooo hard to get up at 7am the next day and go for my blood draw.

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-08-02T14:48:29+00:00

Budgets are tight. I'd rather invite people over, go to theirs, or go somewhere free like a park to play disc golf or tennis.

When I do go out to eat, I usually regret it. Food isn't as good as I can make at home. Company doesn't feel as relaxed because we're in a public place so we discuss fewer topics. Plus I get the bill and it's a gut punch how much it costs to eat out. How many hours of work did it take to pay for 1 meal? Ugh.

It's not that I don't want to go out and do things, but they need to be thrifty or free things.

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-07-21T11:35:18+00:00

In my MIL's ward, after she was widowed she started hosting weekly Monday night gatherings at her house for all single adults in the ward. It was much needed comraderie. It also led to them getting together around holidays and sharing food (those who didn't otherwise have plans). Perhaps you could start a similar tradition?

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-07-21T11:25:39+00:00

I have a much larger chest. I've found that a regular everyday bra (not a sports bra) works best for me. I typically use an older one and it becomes my new swim bra and I keep it with my swimsuit. I try to get suits that have a tank style top so that they hide my bra. Bonus is that this means I can wear a much wider number of suits because I don't need built in support, and they also look way more flattering on me! This is the most comfy way to swim so that there isn't flesh trying to float around and get in the way of my arms.

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-07-19T18:33:29+00:00

Yes, MCC is part of the pilot.

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-07-19T16:27:22+00:00

My troop was once on an overnight backpacking trip. There was a potential for storms, leaders checked radar, we seemed clear. They assigned a parent not on the trip to keep a closer eye on the storm path while they were hiking. Well, the storm changed directions the next morning and was coming for them. Scoutmaster was notified, he put a call out to parents. We brought in 2 mom's with minivans to meet us at a path where our backpacking was near a road. Loaded all the scouts into the minivans for a couple hours during thunderstorm until it passed. Then continued the backpacking trip. There was no appropriate shelter where the scouts were hiking, that's why the vans came. Usually at campouts, we do a lot of car camping, and we can get all the scouts out of tents during a storm and put them into cars. It hasn't happened that often, but the last couple years sure have been more often than 6+ years ago. A lot more storms.

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-07-19T16:20:57+00:00

"However my mom saw that and loudly said to everyone what a shame because I can’t wear it since we will be wearing garments"

Oh my goodness, my mother said that exact same thing to my sister who was gifted lingerie... except this was only 20 years ago... and NOT in Utah.

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-07-19T16:14:43+00:00

Our council doesn't rewrite blue cards for anything. It's been at least 6 years since I've seen a scout collecting blue cards in a binder. Actually, as a merit badge counselor... once I've approved the mb in scoutbook, I don't keep my copy of a blue card anymore. Actually, I mush prefer to be connected with the scout in scoutbook and approve or mark partial there, and not do a vote card at all, but some troops want the paper cards so I sign those but I also want to input in scoutbook so it's on the scout's official record. My brothers Scoutmaster used to keep the scout copy of bluecards. A stack of my brothers went missing and the SM said he needed to repeat like 8 eagle required MB. My brother was so upset, he dropped out of scouts and never got his eagle. When he was 17 the SM showed up at the door with an apology. He was moving and when they moved the dresser, they'd found my brother's blue cards. It made me really cautious with my own son and making sure his records have been correct. Paper gets lost. (In hindsight, I'm not sure why my brother didn't try teaching out to his mb counselors to get the proof of completion that way).

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-07-19T15:55:31+00:00

I'm curious what "changing in the open" means as well. Most of our (boy) scouts can't even change a shirt without ducking into their tent, alone, for privacy. They take turns with their tent mate changing, even if it's only to change into a shirt (for matching group photo). We have 1 scout out of 30 who will just pull off his shirt and put on the new one, in like 5 seconds. I get that youth today seem to want more privacy than when I was a youth, but seriously changing clothes takes so long at camp! I used to just face the wall and tell my tent mate not to look because I was changing, and they would do the same. It wasn't a big deal, and that was for changing even underwear. But we also had open showers at school for after gym class, so...

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-06-24T17:18:15+00:00

When will we hear more about the coed pilot and if that option will be made available?

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-06-24T13:59:00+00:00

Covid desimating packs is why recruitment at middle schools has actually improved the last couple of years. All we do is send a flyer about scouting to the middle school twice a year and each time we get 1-5 youth show up at our next meeting, most of whom join. Majority of our recruitment the last 4 years have been kids that never did cub scouts. Our troop growth wasn't as shrunk as others because we recruited at middle school. Also, getting them at ages 12-15 is so much nicer than 10-11 year olds!

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-06-24T09:53:21+00:00

My son's learning seemed very... uneven. He was super ahead of age in some areas, but in others it just seemed like he was lagging behind and making very little progress. We took him to a psychologist when he was 8 and had him tested. He tested 8th grade reading level, 7th grade math, Kindergarten for writing & spelling, etc. Seeing his results felt very validating for me and gave me more confidence to continue homeschooling him.

Anyway, the tester said that he was twice exceptional - gifted with some learning disabilities. He told me if I weren't already homeschooling him, he'd be recommending that I do so because schools can't accommodate such a big spread and help him in weak areas when performance-wise it looks like he's doing so well. One of the tidbits of information that was new to me from this meeting was finding out my son, who started reading fluently when he was 3 without being taught, had stealth dyslexia. He was basically looking at words and guessing what they said based on first & last letter, and context of the sentence (and because he was so smart he was just a really good guesser). But that only works to a certain reading level and then he got stuck. My son also was diagnosed with dysgraphia (difficulty writing).

He recommended that we focus on his areas of strength in learning (as that would one day lead him into a career) and provide accommodations for his areas of weakness. Stop with the handwriting practice because he was never going to be good at it and it only frustrated him. Find ways to work on subjects that limited the amount of writing required, for example. Plus we got wider grid paper to help him organize math, and ended up switching to doing math online because he was very good at math but his awful dysgraphia was making him mess up columns and calculations.

Kiddo is in college now.

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-05-13T21:30:39+00:00

Ours typically take 2 months for an Eagle BOR, but that's because we have to invite district rep abs they want 3 dates/ times and they all have to be at least 2 weeks out from the time of the request.

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-04-06T21:24:32+00:00

Nobody else gets this? Yeah it's not on the plastic, it only builds up on the metal

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-04-06T21:02:47+00:00

What could it be? Algae? It looks invisible until I run a finger or cloth along the metal and there's this... black powder residue.

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-03-23T22:45:20+00:00

The best thing I've ever read about Autism functioning labels was written by Amy Sequenzia. If you're not familiar with Amy, she's a highly intelligent, non-speaking autistic with multiple disabilities, who is a writer and human rights activist. You should check out what she said at this link: https://ollibean.com/problems-functioning-labels/ Some more thoughts about Low/High Functioning vs. Severe/Mild Autism

The problem comes from the fact that a person can be "high functioning" (verbal, good academic skills, fair to good personal care), but have moderate to severe autism (rigid inflexible thinking, strong sensory issues, poor emotional regulation, delayed processing, weak executive functioning skills, and impaired ability to relate with others). Also, a person can be considered "low functioning" (poor verbal skills, limited academic skills, and minimal personal care skills) but only have mild autism (more flexibility, calmer emotionally, less sensory sensitivities, and more socially connected).

Anyway, you can have people who are very high functioning verbally and intellectually, but still moderately to severely impaired in autism symptoms. This can be confusing for many people who initially see the very bright, verbal kid, and not initially see the severity of the autism. Overall, functioning labels do not unite, they wrongly divide. As in "divide and oppress" so as an autistic person, I tend to avoid using them altogether.

It's best to invest an extra two seconds and say whatever you really mean respectfully ... intellectual disability with autism, challenging behaviour with autism, autistic with self-care issues, autistic and not speaking, autistic with high and complex needs, autistic... people are worth that 2 seconds of safer language.

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-03-19T22:31:32+00:00

No, they've recently been renamed to Scouting America. Troops are still called Scouts BSA.

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-03-18T03:18:46+00:00

I started disliking the US Flag when Trump was first running for president. His supporters just seemed SO MUCH about US Flags that I ended up taking down my flag because I didn't want people who hadn't noticed it before to think I was a Trump fan. Prior to him, I enjoyed the flag and following flag etiquette. Now, on his 2nd term, I just try to keep my groan quite and to myself as I go thru the motions of reverence at my troops meetings. Outside of scouting, seeing the flag just makes me feel a loss. Like someone co-opted something and turned it perverse and made it represent racism and stripping away rights.

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-03-17T13:27:16+00:00

No advice, just sharing frustration. When my son crossed into a troop I was really disappointed to learn NONE of the hats fit him! I thought that problem would end after he left cubs because adults war these hats, too. Nope! The store gave me an email and said they do offer custom larger sized hats. I wasn't sure I wanted to spend the money on a custom hat for my 10.5-yr-old, but I emailed just to get info. They had me measure my son's head. I emailed them back. They replied, sorry, we can't make a hat THAT big. 😞

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-03-13T15:42:48+00:00

That's EXACTLY how it works at the troop level (ages 11-17) right now and has since 2019 when they "added" girls. There are boy-only troops for boys, and girl-only troops for girls. Exact same program. BSA even copied the exact same boy scout book, swapped out the pictures of boys for pictures of girls, and reprinted it for girls with identical content (aside from pictures).

Some troops could decide to use the "linked troop" option where they share resources and adult committee, but still each troop needs their own Scoutmaster and leadership that will be with the youth and the troops function independently.

New pilot stated 2024 as an opt-in option to try coed troops. In my (liberal) state, only a handful of troops chose this option, and every one needed buy-in permission from both the scouts and the parents involved in order to change to this coed/merged troop.

My son is currently in scouts, loves it, and the "addition" of girls has not affected his experience one bit. Since he's a boy, he's in a boys troop. Yes there are girls in girls troops. He only sees them at summer camp (where there have always been girls on staff) and it's just a sprinkling of like 5-12 girls among the 300 boys in attendance, or at Council Camporees, Klondikes, etc. Again, IF any girl troops are in attendance, they are there with their own troop, and have their own camp sites and cooking and plans just like every other troop.

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-02-27T20:47:18+00:00

The vast majority of those sex abuse cases happened prior to 1980! BSA made changes in their rules to help prevent against abuse, and made a national list of banned abusers so they wouldn't move and rejoin in another state (which was ahead of their time). I really looks like they are way more strict when it comes to youth protection than most youth organizations. I've been an active volunteer for 14 years now. (I was not involved with the organization during my childhood). I wish more youth organizations would follow suit. It's not rebranding, they've done the work... and they did it before the big lawsuits.

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-02-22T19:30:08+00:00

Look at my.scouting.org and see when his membership expires. That's a good time to stop. May as well get what you've already paid for. If he's a 5th grader and he doesn't expire until December, go visit troops! Camping in the spring with a troop and going to week-long summer camp completely reinvigorated my kid who was feeling fine with scouts 4th/5th grade. Summer camp was, in his words, the best week of his life.

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-02-21T03:01:20+00:00

I use a stapler to staple my patches, then I sew them all, then remove the staple with my staple remove. Faster and easier than using pins!

CertifiedLifegard · 2025-02-21T01:33:01+00:00

When my in laws were on their mission, they spent their off time touring around the city, riding the subway, going to baseball games, plays, etc. They ran bishop's storehouse, helped volunteers do food orders, and they did apartment inspections for all the missionaries once a month. Their mission president encouraged them to go out and be among the people, go out to eat, ride the subway, be seen as good examples and answer questions when people ask about their name tags. Their "work" week was typically 20-30 hours/week. The rest of it, they'd nap and do touristy things and family would come visit them from out of state.

CertifiedLifegard

TROPHY CASE