u/Napoleon2727

I have a background in costume history, so I really do understand what it means for clothing to be authentic. But I'm thinking of getting into "living history" type reenacting as more of a fun, social hobby - but which also lets me talk to members of the public and other enthusiasts about everyday life in the past.

I wear glasses. Strong glasses. Big glasses. I cannot wear contact lenses. Without any form of eye correction, I am a danger to myself and others!

In the periods I am looking at (English medieval, Tudor and Civil War*), the kind of large, functional glasses I need were not widespread. I am really not going to be comfortable wearing teeny tiny pince nez all day, for example.

[*ETA: I mean the ENGLISH Civil War, not the American one!]

So I am considering two options:

1. Wearing my everyday, obviously modern glasses. Obviously it will detract from the "look", but at least people can tell they're not part of my costume.
2. Getting some much later reproduction glasses - probably large, round, Victorian wire rim ones with those curved ear-ends - which would blend in a bit more but might give people the wrong impression about either the actual availability of glasses in the early modern period, or about my level of understanding about authenticity in reenactment dress!

If you wear out-of-period glasses with your reenactment costume, can you talk me through how you decided what to wear?

I was diagnosed with IBS (D&C) over a decade ago. I did the FODMAP diet, identified trigger foods, and it has been generally well-controlled since then. Occasional flare-ups, but it's not running my life.

However, over the past few years, I've had a few instances of a very particular, much worse flare-up that I just can't get a handle on, and any GP I've seen has been baffled.

It manifests in what I would call "newborn poo". Poo which is mostly liquid, smelly, gassy, urgent, and - whatever I have eaten - bright mustard coloured. If you've had a newborn baby, it's exactly like that, it really is. 

Can anyone shed any light on what's going on in my body to particularly cause the colour change? I'd really like to "fix it", but medically it's difficult because by the time I've got through the GP system it's over so there's not much point testing or referring.

What do you keep permanently in your car?

We have recently started keeping a change of clothes for every kid permanently in the car. I have also long kept snack bars in the driver's door - for me as much as for the kids! Also a pack of wipes and a few random nappies.

Is there anything else you keep in your car all the time? We go on a lot of day trips so I'm pretty adept at packing a bag for the day, but I'm wondering if I'm missing a trick on anything else to just always have around.

When do children start to get a sense of the passage of time?

My (completely neurotypical) child can tell the time to five minutes on a digital and analogue clock, sometimes wears a watch, we have several analogue and one digital clocks around our house, we sometimes use visual timers... and yet they are ASTONISHED, truly ASTONISHED, that if they are assigned a notionally fifteen minute task to do before they get to do XYZ and spend two hours messing around or staring at the wall, bedtime will arrive and they've not done the task so the time available to do XYZ has evaporated and will never come back.

They have ZERO sense that hours rather than seconds are trickling by. If I stand over them and remind them that time is passing every five seconds, they can get the task done in fifteen minutes, but obviously that is intensely annoying for both of us.

I'm not asking how I can get them to focus or how to teach them to tell the time. I'm asking at what age or developmental stage children acquire the general ability to sense whether a vast or tiny amount of time has passed. Like, the difference between "How long has it been since you had lunch?" and they guess five minutes or five hours.

ETA: this is an older primary school age child, not a toddler.

Is there anyone who has started pregnancy overweight and successfully minimised the amount of weight they gained over the pregnancy?

This would be baby #5 for me. I started off very slim and have kept a bit of weight with each baby and am now officially overweight.

I know that "eat less, move more" still counts in pregnancy, but does anyone have any pregnancy-specific tips for limiting weight gain?

FWIW, I usually suffer from horrendous heartburn despite prescription meds which is ameliorated by eating regularly-sometimes-basically-constantly, and usually have some intense wacky cravings in the third trimester. I usually do zero exercise is pregnancy, sigh.

I've got a long raised bed full of cabbages, brussels sprouts, purple sprouting broccoli and kale, with beetroot in between. The whole thing is now netted against butterflies.

My biggest brassica is a single very enthusiastic brussels sprout which has way outclassed all the others. However, I've spotted today that its leaves are crawling with mealy cabbage aphids. (I'm very confident in my ID.)

What's the best thing to do? The plant itself is doing OK, but all the others are babies in comparison and I suspect won't survive as well. It's netted so the aphid predators aren't getting in, but I know that if I leave the netting off for half a second it will be a seething mass of caterpillars.

I can go and scrape them off, but how diligent would I need to be about getting every single one? What are the alternatives?

This is my first time growing any kind of potato. The soil quality in this spot isn't great - not really "improved" at all.

I chitted the potatoes from 21st Feb then planted them out around 1st April.

I am pretty sure they now have a tinge of blight - but not all of them, only about 1/3. I hadn't even earthed them up yet - they're only just big enough for that. And the worst one is only showing blight on 1/3 of its leaves. Most are not so bad.

What I've read online says to chop the foliage off and bin/burn. Do I then leave the plants in the earth and cross my fingers, or is that just it for them? Can I reasonably expect ANY edible potatoes at all?

I am already starting to dread applying sunscreen to four kids 8 and under all summer. Imagine trying to apply sunscreen to four extremely ticklish cats simultaneously. I hate it, they hate it, we all hate it together.

I mandate hats and often long sleeves to reduce sunscreen application, and we live in the UK so sunscreen season isn't THAT long, but I feel like SURELY there is a way to make this easier. I can also never find the wretched bottle.

Thus far, I do 100% of the applying for four children.

How do you teach your children to do it themselves effectively? What age? How do you handle that many children? (We don't have this problem with getting shoes and coats on, for example.) What's your physical setup like for where you put it on?

We have delicate skin so I am applying vast quantities of factor 50 every five seconds.

ETA: For anyone in the UK, what's the largest container of sunscreen you've been able to buy that's decent value and 50 spf?