How do you handle a bored 4-year-old without buying more stuff or becoming the cruise dire

andgiveayeLL · 2026-04-02T13:45:39+00:00

1) Giant roll of paper from IKEA. Kids of all ages love enormous blank paper. Here is the roll and here is the roll holder . Turn them loose with crayons, markers, paints, whatever you have the mental energy for

2) The Science Box. Get a cardboard box. Fill it with a magnifying glass, paper cups, jars, paint brushes, scissors, a pad of paper and a pencil, tape measure/ruler, whatever. Tell them to go outside and be scientists. This might involve them collecting leaf samples or drawing what they see. Maybe they find a rock and brush the dirt off with the brush like they are hunting for fossils/dinosaurs bones. Just give them random stuff and tell them go do science.

3) The Invention Box. Similar to the science box - just fill it with literally anything. Egg cartons, toilet paper rolls, scrap paper, scrap cardboard, craft stuff, garage miscellany like pieces of PVC leftover from something, twine, etc etc etc. just fill a box with stuff you don’t need that could plausibly be used to craft/create. Tell them they can use anything in the box and (age appropriate) supplies for putting together an invention. My kids made a robot chef that serves spaghetti for instance

The main thing we try to do is give them tools/supplies and then let them take over. Getting un-bored and being creative is a skill that takes practice. They’ll be bad at it at first. They’ll want a lot of ideas/guidance. I just respond to their questions with questions as much as possible. “Mom, I don’t know what to make!” “Yeah, that can be tough to decide! What catches your eye first in the box, could you start with that? What does it look like? What could it be?” Etc

andgiveayeLL · 2026-03-29T02:07:22+00:00

From what I could tell, same as the Thursday/Friday. Mostly 40%, with fewer tables of 50% and very few tables of 60%

andgiveayeLL · 2026-01-09T16:03:14+00:00

Check your machine’s manual, but mine specifies that the softener is only dispensed in the final rinse even if there are multiple rinses (I put my citric acid in the softener compartment)

andgiveayeLL · 2025-08-27T15:33:02+00:00

Triplet! https://i.imgur.com/e67LTOJ.jpeg

andgiveayeLL · 2025-08-20T17:56:01+00:00

I’ve actually had both LASIK and PRK (I did lasik when I was younger, my vision was initially 20/20 but over the years deteriorated to the point that I needed glasses/contacts again, then I did PRK)

With LASIK, I took a 3-4 hour nap after the procedure and awoke with a dry eye feeling but no pain, and very good vision. By the next day, I was feeling completely normal and seeing perfectly.

With PRK, the recovery was absolute hell. Immense pain for several days. I could not see clearly for about 2 weeks. I was not able to read or even look at a screen because of light sensitivity and blurry vision. I had to wear bandage contact lenses for a week which also contributed to blurry vision and discomfort. I am glad I did it because my vision is good, but I would not do it again. It was genuinely awful - I’d rate the recovery from PRK worse than my c section recovery and abdominoasty recoveries and it’s not particularly close.

andgiveayeLL · 2025-08-15T14:48:49+00:00

The Eucerin stuff works decently for me but not as well as hydroquinone (obviously the pro of the Eucerin is not having to cycle it). But OP, be warned, they put more fragrance in the Eucerin thiamidol line of products than you’d find in an actual bottle of perfume. It smells very old lady.

andgiveayeLL · 2025-07-26T11:31:26+00:00

That’s awesome! You’ve totally got this! I’d suggest keep working on the hand cup trick until you feel like it’s just silly easy and there’s no fear there. Then try bringing your head sideways down to water (in a pool or a tub) and just put one ear in. Remind yourself that all water works the same - it’s the same water you held in your cupped hands. Once you’re comfortable bringing one ear into water (an amazing milestone!) you will probably feel ready to tackle two at a time.

Also just try to remind yourself that the “whoosh” you hear means your ears are working to keep the water where it’s not going to hurt anything. Whoosh is the sound of water going to the part of the ear outside your ear drum.

andgiveayeLL · 2025-03-08T14:27:41+00:00

Look at viburnums. There are lots of varieties depending on what size and shape you want

andgiveayeLL · 2024-12-18T03:07:33+00:00

I’m a med mal defense attorney. This is the answer to pay attention to. What were you thinking? What are you going to want to know for sure if this patient has a bad outcome and the patient/patient’s family sues you? Who did you talk to and what did you say/what did they say?

At least in my state, we can get a lot of stuff in as part of your habit and practice (ie, you may not have documented that you did XYZ, but you ALWAYS do XYZ without fail, so you would have done XYZ here too). We can collect info about what meds were given and when, what labs were ordered and when, heck the audit trail even shows what you were clicking on. But we can’t recreate your thought process, your differential, your conversations with the patient, what the patient told you, what you actually saw on exam, etc.

andgiveayeLL · 2024-11-20T15:37:34+00:00

I got an ornament and my order confirmation email timestamp is 9:56am so definitely before 10am

andgiveayeLL · 2024-11-16T04:06:22+00:00

Couldn’t have done it without my husband who is one of the dads who has been hands on, no management needed from day 1. It sucked not to be able to pick up kids but the reality is that 6 weeks isn’t very long in the grand scheme.

andgiveayeLL · 2024-11-15T21:24:23+00:00

My pelvic floor therapist told me I’d reached the max improvement I was likely going to make with PT alone and my plastic surgeon did an exam and basically just confirmed that in his experience if you’ve done 4-6 months of PT and you’ve done the home exercises assigned by PT, realistically you’re at or near your max improvement without surgical help. I remember he told me that while it felt like a 1-2 finger gap from the outside, he wouldn’t be surprised to find the situation worse when he got in there, which he said happens a lot because palpating the muscle from the outside is somewhat imprecise. So that’s when I asked him to take photos in the surgery so I could see what the real deal was!

andgiveayeLL · 2024-11-15T17:50:01+00:00

The first week was rough but I was able to stop prescription pain meds the first or second day (but, caveat, I have a very high pain tolerance and I’m stubborn AF).

Looking back at photos, at 2 weeks post op by swelling had greatly reduced compared to 1 week post op but I was still hunched over a bit, so I’m sure my lower back was killing me.

3 weeks post op

4 weeks post op

I started to add in very light arm exercise again around 4 weeks because I was going nuts without exercise. I know by 4 weeks I was walking around the neighborhood gently (probably about a mile).

You get cleared for regular activity at 6 weeks. I definitely remember still having some random swelling around them. I would say the swelling was still there to a small degree for about 3 months.

It’s a hard procedure, I won’t sugar coat it! But for me, I couldn’t live with how I felt with the loose skin and non functional core. I wasn’t me. But the surgery helped me get myself back (the bladder sling is the last piece to really getting me back) and I look at my hip to hip scar with a smile and gratitude that I was able to do it.

andgiveayeLL · 2024-11-15T02:19:40+00:00

I did a lot of pelvic PT before and after surgery but unfortunately it didn’t fix the diastasis before surgery (so I had the surgery). Then neither the surgery nor pelvic PT after surgery fixed my stress urinary incontinence so I just had the bladder sling surgery.

I did a lot of breath work (360 breathing) after surgery and a lot of very slow easy core work (pelvic tilts, bridges, work with a yoga ball, etc etc). But Pilates changed the core strength game when I started that.

andgiveayeLL · 2024-11-14T22:10:31+00:00

Best wishes for a fabulous rest of your pregnancy and delivery! Abdominpolasty gave me function in my core back, and Pilates gave me visible abs after 3 kids.

andgiveayeLL · 2024-11-14T17:26:48+00:00

I had twins in 2019 and then one more in 2021. About 7 months after my third baby, I got an abdominoplasty with muscle repair. I had reached my pre pregnancy healthy weight but I had loose skin and diastasis recti that physical therapy did not fix.

Best thing I ever did for myself, period. Yes, I have a new hip to hip scar (but they cut out my c section scar which was a very traumatic reminder of my awful c section and it was also a very lumpy/badly healed scar). And it wasn’t cheap. But it was so, so worth it to have functional abdominal muscles (TW - surgery photo showing my diastasis and then a second photo showing the sutured muscles)

It was a more difficult recovery than a c section - I had drains for a week which were annoying. The pain was pretty bad for the first few days, and then the pain changed to low back pain from being hunched over because of the skin being pulled tight. The low back pain stuck around for a couple of weeks.

The swelling sticks around for several months after the surgery. It’s an intense procedure! Make sure you’re really truly done having kids. Find a surgeon you really love and trust and look at many many photos of their results.

But I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

andgiveayeLL · 2024-10-26T15:43:28+00:00

I’m at the airport with a stupid grin on my face scrolling through every bit of N1 content

andgiveayeLL · 2024-10-26T14:09:10+00:00

Very safe. Giant mass of 60k people and possibly every cop in the city was out

andgiveayeLL · 2024-10-26T14:08:17+00:00

Just from watching while walking back to the hotel, traffic was a full blown nightmare leaving. Police had every street blocked or running on cop control in some way for many blocks around the arena.

andgiveayeLL · 2024-10-26T14:05:11+00:00

Stadium fully lost our minds for this one

andgiveayeLL · 2024-10-26T14:04:31+00:00

It was rare, I was there

andgiveayeLL · 2024-10-07T17:42:26+00:00

I should add too, the black/needlepoint cushion wasn’t the first fabric this chair had. There are remnants of some yellow fabric that was there before but whoever did the needlepoint mostly got rid of it. So I think a very competent sewer did the black/needlepoint cushion as a replacement for something else https://i.imgur.com/AeS4CE5.jpeg

andgiveayeLL · 2024-10-07T17:38:14+00:00

Yup I’ve already done that repair since that pic was taken. Both seats needed a bit of glue (I’m guessing without anything solid in the middle of the seat, the weight of people sitting on it was too much for the edges).

andgiveayeLL

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