Similar situation to us, but even worse, we had a fantastic group of friends in our apartment complex and then everybody moved in a short period of time (including us). Then Covid. Then having a kid. Most of our friends have kids now, and we still keep in touch, but we’re all in different states. We haven’t really found the same kid of group, kids or not, since moving away.

Can’t speak for your friends but early this year I tried to start a monthly “mom brunch”. I made a chat and invited all the mom friends I knew from work and from my toddler’s activities. I gave up after 6 months of nobody or only one or two showing up. I’ve had better success with setting up play dates (going to a playground and just sending everybody a text that they can show up if they’re free). It’s ends up being a little bit of talking and socializing and a lot of watching your kid. But I miss the old social things we used to do. Game nights. Going to dinner. Everything changes when there’s a group of kids. And yes, I knew that going in and I don’t regret anything. Sometimes it just gets lonely.

Mandated reporters are people that are legally required to report abuse or suspected abuse. Teachers, social workers, physicians, etc.

I started on literature.cafe. I used it for awhile but there was an outage so I switched to lemm.ee. After they folded I joined lemmy.zip. I still use my account on literature.cafe, mostly at work because lemmy.zip is blocked for some reason. But literature.cafe doesn’t, or at least didn’t, federate with piefed and some of my communities I follow are there.

I’m super sentimental with stuff like this. I collect magnets from places so I try to grab a few on a vacation from different places we visit. I get a postcard that I put in a photo album with the dates and a short blurb. I get something for my daughter’s scrapbook/smash book. Each year I have a page with her picture and notes from her teachers, then a page of memories. There’s stickers, patches, tickets, wristbands, keychains, and medals in there. I like things that are small but meaningful

Which we do. But it’s not our first choice

Right. They could basically name their price. We want to do stuff the “right” way. There’s just no way.

Our struggle has been the enshittifcation of streaming the games. We don’t live in the market of our hockey team we like to watch. In order to actually get (legally) 95% of the games we would need to subscribe to about 5 different services and still be blacked out for the games against the “local” team, which is 4 hours away from us, unless we also pay for cable/satellite television as well. We used to legitimately pay for the service that the NHL offered where we could get just our team, or all of the games, for one season price. Then they split everything to all the different networks so now we’d need sling, TNT, espn+ (and the highest tier of it), nhl network, prime, Apple TV +, and a cable subscription

We had an allergy kit with mix-ins for our baby. We mixed a little of powdered egg, peanuts, almonds, soy, etc. into her baby food when she started solids. Only introduced like one a week and a little at a time for a few days.

Anxiety. I can’t get out of my head. Thoughts spiral. And when I’m lying in bed with everything quiet it’s hard to shut it all up. Sometimes I can’t fall asleep. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night. I’ll try to thirty minutes to an hour before giving up. Then I’ll sit on my phone or go downstairs and watch tv. Eventually if I get tired enough I’ll go back to sleep. Otherwise I’ll wait until it’s time to get ready for the day.

When I was young we had our kitten pass away because he ate Halloween decoration webs and they got wrapped around his intestines.

Getting places on time

The directions I saw recently were no arousal for two weeks, then ejaculate 20 times over 2 months, then send in the sample. If the sample doesn’t come back clear, then repeat after 2 more months. Insurance does not cover the testing kit.

This happened at a restaurant with a door dash driver. I was breastfeeding in the backseat and she got in my drivers seat. Was super apologetic when she realized. The kicker is that her car, which was next to mine, was a completely different make and model. Just a similar color. I always locked the doors when breastfeeding after that.

We live in Virginia but the museum passport is everywhere (there’s also a separate zoo/aquarium one too). The passport does not work for museums within an hour or so drive of the home museum but it works when we go out of town.

While not free, I find a membership or two to be advantageous. There’s usually member swaps where you can get in another local location for free for a month. When we go on vacations our first stop is always a grocery store, and I usually try to get an extended stay hotel with a kitchen. Saves on eating out because we’ll pack for lunch and make dinner. We have an amusement park pass that works with other locations so parking and admission is included. Our museum membership works for hundreds of other out of state museums so we visit science and children’s museums included. Vacations are still expensive of course but this reduces costs significantly.

Other than that things like parks, beaches, library events. Meet up with friends at someone’s house.

The seatbelts are more so that the non-verbal autistic kids don’t start running down the aisles and pushing buttons while the bus is moving. Also, kids aren’t “regular” or “irregular”….

Our school uses them for pretty much all students with special needs not just mobility issues. It gives them a shorter route, less kids, more adult supervision, and the option for seatbelts.

Most of mine won’t let you without an appointment and no matter how I answer the questions online it tells me I’m ineligible

When my now-husband and I first moved in together we ate out more than we do now and when we did make food we “cheated” a lot. We had some frozen meals and premade stuff. Over the years we have refined a lot of our cooking skills. We go out maybe once or twice a month, delivery in rare circumstances (we’re much more likely to do carry out) and eat at home most nights. Our grocery bill is around $400 a month for 2 adults and 1 preschooler. That gets us breakfast, lunches, and dinners. My husband will probably go out to eat for lunch once a week. Going out to eat is at least $30 if not $60+ for us and that’s not sustainable for every meal.