We lost the very first try and it was devastating for my wife.

We got pregnant again on the very first month she was viable after and that popped out our first kid.

Something about right after a miscarriage you are more likely to get pregnant but I don't think there's scientific proof.

We did find that chicken soup helped her body immensely. It's that Chinese medicine belief of "bo" but there's some merit to it.

I always get this mixed bag of emotions when I reflect back on how we view pregnancy. When we were young, we didn't know shxt about it. Then we get a little older, and we try so, so hard to prevent it from happening. And then when it doesn't happen when we finally want it to happen, we go out of our way to try and make it happen. And then there are all sorts of emotional roller coaster that accompany the process...

What a life journey we are in...

For some reason I thought you have a kid already. My kids are super young, 4.5 and 17 months. The shop I go to for my M3, they keep telling me to take the kids with me to track day, I'm like... dude, your kids are way older than mine.

I do! Little guy is 12 months old.

I meant that for all we've gone through to get him and to raise him so far, it's a whole other world vs what you were talking about. So far for us it's just been basic survival and making sure he gets the best of the basics. Eating, sleeping, interaction, getting him outdoors time. Not a ton of intellectual-level detail to consider yet.

We did debate a long time about the right balance of sacrifices - in my career, and with the house purchase itself - to get into the right neighborhood at the right time, for the school catchments we wanted in Toronto, etc. But what you're describing sounds so much more real since you're right on top of it and living it.

The challenge changes every 3 months or so imo. They grow in and out of phases and paradigms, and it's up to you to recognize it and shift your reactions and behaviours accordingly. I say it like it's nothing but I'm guilty of not being able to make the right changes at the right times for the older one many times, especially since he's highly sensitive and is a handful sometimes.

For example, from since Jan or so until really 2 weeks ago, he refused to sleep. His sleeping schedule was fucked so much so that he was getting around 8hrs a day and he was crashing hard by 4pm. He was super tired but tried his utmost to stay up even though he's in bed. Nothing we do could fix it and we were at our wit's end. Between this we were dealing with over stimulation as well. We slowly reduced TV time down to 15mins in the morning and 15mins before dinner. Then we cut it out altogether 2 weeks ago.

A few days after we cut TV, with promises that once he started sleeping properly, we'll reinstate TV privileges after he sleeps well for 7 days, he started to sleep better. It's been 10 days and he started to get some TV back on Friday. Last night there was some regression, today he fell asleep quickly. We'll monitor for the next few days to see if he can keep watching TV.

Believe us we tried a billion other things in between as we suspect, test, and see no results, and move on to the next thing. Wife is guilty of trying and giving up on things too quickly for sure, while I'm guilty of just getting frustrated and being grumpy at him all day long.

lol, our challenge right now is the 4 year old is learning all these terrible things from daycare.

Started with her rolling her eyes at us every time we asked her to do something, to grunting, sighing. Saying things like "I don't care". lol FML.

We also lost our first and it was a shit show - we didn't get a heartbeat at 8 weeks and weren't expecting that at the ultrasound. Then we had to wait for it to naturally pass and when it did it went really badly (at home) and we had to call 911 for an ambulance after which we spent a few days in the hospital.

The thing we learned though was how many women had miscarriages - the paramedic had one, the first nurse had one etc. All those people came out and shared their story with us for something I was completely oblivious about all my life.

Then there were all the insensitive questions/comments you get from the older crowd (parents, aunts etc) about what we did wrong...

EvoFire, regarding your school dilemma:

I'm glad you made a list of pros/cons. The major issue I see is tuition, as you mentioned you might not be able to commit to many years of tuition. Also, make sure you ask yourself/your wife if you really want to spend time volunteering during and outside of school hours.

In my case, even though I went to a private school myself, I decided very early that I wouldn't send my kids to a private school. I don't have the money nor time available to go that route. Instead, we decided between the local neighbourhood school, or the French Immersion (FI) school (Quilchena Elementary, about 15 mins away by car, but along the way to work). We were lucky to get a spot in FI, so that's the path my kids ended up on. I'm also very fortunate to be in a position where my wife chooses to be a stay-at-home mom so she can take the kids to/from school or to their activities and essentially keep the house running while I work.

Deciding where to send your kids to school is never an easy decision. There is no right or wrong answer. Many things are also out of your control.

Miscarriages occur way more often than you know.
A friend of mine opened up to us only after we had our first kid, that they'd had 8 miscarriages before they had their kid.

So we made the decision to move forward to sending the eldest to Corpus Christi to start kindergarten. There's a bunch of admin and paperwork stuff we'll have to deal with coming up. The understanding is I'll need to attend RCIA with them once a week for a year. It's basically a crash course to Christianity for those who are not of the faith.

We weighed everything and had a long discussion about it over the weekend and Monday. We are not of the faith, but we aren't against it. We actually think it would be helpful for us with topics that the eldest asks us and we really don't have great answers to. He's been very obsessed with death in the last 6 months and it's been a constant bother and he's been emotional about it, so the hopes is this might help.

The other consideration has been the structured learning and academics. The history for us was, his infant/toddler daycare was very structured and he did very well there. Then we moved him to a more open ended daycare and it took a long time for him to figure things out. We believe structure at school has been more beneficial than not, but at the same time we also feel like the environment at CC would have been more beneficial gr3 and up and it's not a great setup for a 5-7 yr old. Unfortunately you can't have both and transferring in at gr3 or 4 doesn't seem like a great choice. If he really struggles at Kindergarten at least we can pull him out and put him back in public school.

It's still very much a struggle and sending him to CC has won by a slim margin for now. We'll see how he actually responds to going there.

Like I said before. Turn up your religion. Going through the RCIA course to the fullest means your getting baptised. If you don't want to be volun-told to help the school, you may be able to pay your way out of it. A co-worker recently got volun-told to help out at an event. After the event, she decided to never work them again and just pay the fee cuz she got worked so hard, she couldn't move and attend work the next day. I've also heard they've stopped allowing people to step in for you to volunteer, it must be parent of the child, no grandparents, no friends, etc.

So I just got back from a week at Disneyland with my 5 year old and while things are still fresh in my memory are there any questions about Disneyland that you have that I might be able to answer? AMA!

Did you eat at the on-site restaurants much? I've only checked the hotel ones so far but it seems like the kids menu is basically the same at all of them.

We did all our lunches and some dinners on-site at the fast casual places and most of it was decent food at reasonable prices (sub-$15 for an entree). My favourites were Flo's V8 diner in Cars Land which had a fried chicken dish that was quite good (better than KFC) and the hot dogs at Award Weiners in Hollywood Lot. The chili pasta at Alien Pizza Planet (Tomorrowland) was weird but if you like adventure it's not terrible. There were decent healthy options at all locations.

The kids meals were pretty decent - they always came with some fruit (usually a mandarin orange), milk, and a little yogurt smoothie. The kids hot dog at Award Weiners was hilariously small though - the kids meals are generally sized for smaller kids so if your kids is more than 8 you may want the adult serving. Some of the food stands sell kids "Energy packs" which are some combo of fruit, goldfish crackers, and milk - very handy when the kid needs a break - only $7 for it.

We ate once in Downtown Disney at the Naples Ristrorante and it was comparable to a good Italian place here. Pizza, pasta, and an appetiser did run us over $100CAD though. Easy walk from the park - 5 mins.

I found all the restaurants to be very accommodating for parents - they're used to it and know they need to handle different demands.

Finally, other than charging me $4.95 for a full of ice medium pop (effin' robbery!) the rest of the food onsite was pretty reasonable whether it was a churro (very good) or the dipped ice cream bar (huge but way too melty, stick with the Purdy's bar here).

Are you allowed to bring in food? Or do you have to consume their food?

Did you do the fast pass thing?

You can bring food and drink in - I don't believe there's really a limit for this either but I also didn't see many people eating what looked like their own food probably b/c people spend such long days at the park that there's little time to prep your own food and there's really no grocery stores nearby either.

I did the fast pass thing - it's called Lightning Lane now and is part of Genie+. Runs $30/day per person and we used it 3 out of our 4 days - we skipped it on day 3 and regretted it as it caused us to skip rides that we wanted but which had lines that were really long so we got it for day 4. The rule of thumb is that if you get Genie+ you can basically hit a ride every 60 mins (like 8-10 rides/day and if you don't expect it be more like 2 hours (4-5 rides/day). If you're focused on rides then it's a must as it'll save you so much time. If you're there for the shows and exhibits then skip it.

There is a special tier of Lightning Lane for the Star Wars and Cars rides and I paid $29/pp and $18/pp to ride those - both were fantastic rides though (just don't think of the exchange rate on those tickets).

Do they still do stuff like sell Disneyland passes through Costco here or down there?? I remember that being a thing before, but maybe it's disappeared over time and I'm just dating myself lol

In the states yes - you can even book entire vacation packages via Costco for Disney. In Canada I think it pops up once in a while.

Costco Canada was just doing Disney World packages the last time I checked.

Now that you've gone, any thoughts on whether you would've gone sooner, later instead? Or did the kid at 5 years old turn out to be a good time to take the family?

I think it was about the perfect time for us as she's been ditching her last nap the past 4-5 months so we didn't need to take a midday break and she could power through the afternoon. She can also follow instructions better now which is important when you need them to stay close to you because of the huge crowds - she had the patience to wait in line for an hour without too much entertainment.

She's also at the intellectual stage where she really remembers things - when we drive by community centres she knows what classes she took and calls it out ("This where I took the dance class") and she's asks good (and new) questions ("How much money did you take out?"). It means she got a lot out of meeting the characters (mostly Princesses) and could remember and understand what was happening ("The parade is about to happen!")

Physically she's small and she just passed the 40" threshold that would have blocked her from a bunch of rides so that also worked out really well. 46" is the next major threshold.

All that said, at this age you are just chaperones on the trip and it can be hard to spend all that money and not get a lot of time for yourself (going on the rides you want). I think my wife came into it thinking she'd get to enjoy herself more than she did - it was only this week that she acknowledged that we had a great time, I think she was a bit frustrated how she didn't get to go on her own rides till mostly the last day.

The biggest change I would have made was that we would have had a more diverse day 1 so that we could learn my kid's preferences first - like what kinds of rides she liked more (interactive? dark/light? scary? physical? outside?). We thought she'd love the Fantasyland stuff which wasn't really the case so she got a bit upset early on.

Edit: I think girls benefit more from going at this age than boys - maybe I'm being sexist but the Princess stuff plays bests for kids around 3-8y and there were ZERO boys waiting to meet with Elsa, Anna, Ariel or any other Princess. The stuff that's more associated with boys like the Avengers, Star Wars, or Cars Land suit slightly older kids (my daughter loved Cars Land though - I'm happy that she takes after dad here).

Damn dude, great insight. Just forwarded this to my wife.

edit: what about the rental car selection? would you have done anything differently there? :D

They had a Maserati Grecale at the airport (John Wayne) when I was leaving - I would have loved to give that thing a spin. Really great selection at National though (seems in the US it's kinda the norm in bigger locations) and the extra cost was minor - I just checked and it's $8 extra per day ($86 to $94) for a 3 series or A4 over a Jetta/Corolla and $15 extra for a X3/Q5 at John Wayne. Total no brainer.

The dental saga continues.

We found on our son on Saturday night that he has a periodontal abscess on the tooth that he lost two years ago. When Children's removed the tooth, a piece of the root fractured and remained inside the gum. It's since become infected and there's a huge boil on the gum.

We got an emergency appointment with our pediatric dentist this morning, and fuck me... There's some cavities that we've put off dealing with and they recommend getting at least two of them fixed since it's quite deep already. The total bill is $5k. Insurance covers $3k so we are out of pocket $1995. How the fuck do anyone have kids without making at least 6 figures. How does anyone afford kids getting hurt.

Sorry to hear that this has happened.

I've never heard of this type of expense for something like a toddler. I unfortunately have had multiple grafts over the years and typically, most insurance plans cover periodontics at 80% or higher, provided that the pre-authorization is in order. When you combine benefits (80%+ for each) with your partner, you should almost never have to pay out of pocket for dental care for kids, unless you're pursuing major restorative work or orthodontics. $5K seems pretty excessive for something like this that doesn't sound like it's major restorative work.