Anyone here right now doing anything differently because of the wildfire smoke and air quality? I'm here with my two young kids (both under six), trying to decide what to do tonight. I can't imagine the air quality in our rental house is much better than it is outside, but I'm hesitant to follow through with our plan to bring them to the beach down at the Bluffs this evening to explore. Any thoughts?
My daughter (5 years old) has had a cough for about 6 weeks now. It gets worse in the morning and with exercise, and she usually doesn't cough overnight. She doesn't have any other symptoms - she's sleeping, she has an appetite, she doesn't have a fever, etc.
We are working with her doctor, but I'm just curious if anyone else has experienced it with their kid and it turned out to be bronchitis or pneumonia. I thought those caused other symptoms like a fever or general feeling of unwellness, so I'm trying to understand how often people have experienced that kind of diagnosis when the only symptoms was coughing.
I brought up alpha gal and the explosion in ticks to my husband, and he keeps (gently) making fun of me for being chronically online. He knew nothing about it. My mental bandwidth is in an all-time low with the 8 million things I have going on, so I need someone who's even more plugged and than me to give me step-by-step advice on what to do to keep my family safe this summer while we play outside.
Generally, I'm thinking tucked in pants and hats and long sleeve shirts. But also should I be spraying them or getting them treated with permethrin? How do I do that? Should I be getting my yard sprayed? Sprayed by what? I'm in the South Shore suburbs off of a very busy road and my yard is not very big and doesn't have a lot of brush. But there are woods on the opposite side of the street.
I'm really just looking for step-by-step instructions from someone who is in our climate and can advise me on what to do.
I'm looking for very literal basic first steps - what I need to buy and a video or channel to look at to figure out how to use the tools and do what I'm trying to do:
I'm relatively handy and love DIY but I don't know how to do anything with wood. I own a miter saw I've never opened and I have a DeWalt hand sander where I clip in a rectangular piece of sandpaper and it vibrates accordingly. That's the extent of my tools.
I want to be able to do basic projects around the house: replace the two steps on our front stoop, build a simple bookshelf with custom specs, create a very simple rope bridge for my kids in the backyard, etc. Where do I start?
What saw do I buy?
What book do I read?
What YouTube channel do I go to?
I'm overwhelmed, and as soon as I start researching, I start encountering terms and concepts that I don't know. I'm admittedly very skittish about using a saw without feeling confident, so I just need help getting started.
My just turned 5-year-old daughter broke her nose last week when a friend accidentally hit her with a baseball bat. She's having surgery this morning, a "reduction," to realign her nose.
We are keeping her home from daycare all week next week to recover, and we are avoiding any physical activities, but the doctor warned us that many people reinjure it and they have to do repeat reductions on kids. Obviously we want to avoid that if at all possible, so I'm creating a giant list of ideas of ways to keep a very active, social kid safe from bumping her face for the next 1-2 weeks.
Please share any ideas you have - activities, toys, games, books, I'm all ears!!