[Kids] are the best of times, the worst of times

Donovan Puppyfucker

Isn't the cash in a 529 explicitly for education purposes?
Like, if you kid becomes a tradesperson instead of going to college, that money is basically locked away? They can't just spend it on a house instead?

schuss

Education only and tax free when used for that purpose.
Per Fidelity faq:
The tax advantages of a 529 plan are that earnings grow federal income tax-deferred and withdrawals used for qualified education expenses are free from federal income taxes and, in many cases, state taxes.

He's probably also wanting to lock it into her name, which requires an SSN for most "automated" US investment vehicles. You could do a trust setup, but that means paying a lawyer to setup and maintaining the financials.

Septus

It does seem like not the best idea to put too much into a 529 if the child won't even be in the US after highschool. I thought about doing our Texas specific savings plan for Texas colleges but felt it was too much of a risk that my son wouldn't go to any of them. However, the penalty for using the 529 for non qualified expenses is just the ordinary income tax rate plus a 10% penalty, and only on the earnings, not the corpus, so it's not the end of the world to just pull the money out.

Brody

Yeah, I don't know that there is any point in going for our states 529, cause we don't have a state income tax. My first concern was that Sapling may not go to college, but I guess it can be used for anything education related.

As for why someone might be explicitly looking to do an American "inheritance" fund, it probably has something to do with taxes, I can't imagine the benefit to Ellie being that much different either way.

Figgy

Elbasunu wrote: »

Hey so I've got a vasectomy question, based on the consult I just had. Just going to spoiler it so as not to bother anyone re: pain thresholds:

The doctor was examining me and was like "does this hurt" and I was like "yeah I guess when you do that it hurts, but like not the worst"and then he immediately stopped and was like "oh then we you should probably go to the surgeon center and get full anesthesia instead and pretty much wrote me off for doing the quick surgery in his office. I won't lie, i was not expecting to feel inadequate about this. Is he over reacting? He kept saying "well it's up to you, but i don't want to get you on the table and you change your mind". SHould I seriously consider the full surgery center instead?

I had the local option, and I felt a lot of it. I think one side was less numb than the other, because it was just moderate discomfort until he said, "Ok, now the other side" and I felt it much more than the other.

I didn't even know getting put under was an option. Everyone I know has done it with local anesthetic.

seasleepy

The 18mo: I am so tired, everything is bad, I must sleep imminently, let's power through this book and diaper change I am so tired why why why
(2 minutes after I am out the door): Thank you for coming tonight, Kitty Rattle and Susie the Seahorse, I have prepared 45 minutes of remarks and then we will open the floor to questions, counting, and singing. Ah, no thank you, I don't need a lectern tonight-- I need to be able to move about the space. Don't be concerned, I will project my voice so everyone can hear.

#pipe

@lonelyahava If you don't want her to have a SSN or be declared a US citizen then absolutely don't. I'm pretty sure with one US born parent she can do it herself anytime before she turns 18 if she chooses to. Doing it for her means she's stuck in that weird US only thing where she's expected to file her taxes in the US even if she didn't earn any money there or lived there.

That said, being a dual citizen can open a lot of doors.

Anyways, if your dad wants to invest in her name just get him to open a low fee account in an index fund. Profits will be taxed, but fees will be low and it's almost guaranteed to earn more than just interest.

lonelyahava

#pipe wrote: »

lonelyahava If you don't want her to have a SSN or be declared a US citizen then absolutely don't. I'm pretty sure with one US born parent she can do it herself anytime before she turns 18 if she chooses to. Doing it for her means she's stuck in that weird US only thing where she's expected to file her taxes in the US even if she didn't earn any money there or lived there.

That said, being a dual citizen can open a lot of doors.

Anyways, if your dad wants to invest in her name just get him to open a low fee account in an index fund. Profits will be taxed, but fees will be low and it's almost guaranteed to earn more than just interest.

The bolded is the part that I don't want for her. it's not a choice that I want to make without her consent.

Of course I'm being told that I'm being selfish and that I'm denying her the inheritance that's rightfully hers. But bugger that noise. I'm not the one being selfish. We're both trying to look out for her best interests but we have different definitions of what that means and different ideas on what that looks like.

I'm curious though, what do you see as the benefits of dual citizenship? Because i'm struggling to figure out what they might be. Which i'll admit is probably just me being biased against being a US Citizen at the moment.

#pipe

Freedom of movement mostly. Job opportunities, chances for the family to relocate if you need to, chances she can travel more freely when she's older...

Mojo_Jojo

seasleepy wrote: »

The 18mo: I am so tired, everything is bad, I must sleep imminently, let's power through this book and diaper change I am so tired why why why
(2 minutes after I am out the door): Thank you for coming tonight, Kitty Rattle and Susie the Seahorse, I have prepared 45 minutes of remarks and then we will open the floor to questions, counting, and singing. Ah, no thank you, I don't need a lectern tonight-- I need to be able to move about the space. Don't be concerned, I will project my voice so everyone can hear.

Burpette still does this and she's three and a bit

I think on occasion she goes to sleep after me because she needs her alone time to loudly sing happy birthday

Kalnaur

So, since a birthday party at my sister's place this past weekend, my kiddo has been really trying to say things. Not always full words, but still.

So he also likes to throw his toys behind the couch (it's an L-shaped couch, corner against the wall with a smallish gap), and this drives me a little batty, so yesterday he was running back and forth grabbing blocks and throwing them behind the couch. So while he ran to get another block from near our door, I moved and sat right in the elbow of the couch where he was climbing up to toss things behind the couch, and he runs around from the back side of the couch facing the door area while holding a block and giggling to himself like a maniac.

Then he sees me sitting there in the elbow, stops dead in his tracks, puts his hands (and the block) behind his head, drops the block, looks square at me and says in a high voice, "Hi dadtty." with mischief in his voice and a big ol' "not doin' nuthin'" smile.

And then he ran over and gave me a hug.

Y'all, being a parent is crazy. And fantastic.

As a further note, this is the first time he's ever used "hi" before my title of "dad".

MNC Dover

My friend's wife made this R2-D2 dress for Abigail when she turned 2. Just over a year and a half later and it barely fits as a shirt. When did she get so big?




Also, who taught her these model poses? It's either these poses or sticking her tongue out at the camera. Kids are weird, yo.

Muzzmuzz

So, in the Conspiracy thread in D&D, some posted a fairly realistic 2 hour CGI animation of the Titanic sinking timeline. As an avid Titanic enthusiast, I had it playing on the background while I did stuff, checking in on it every so often.

It was very clinical, but during the final part, where ship snaps and goes under, screams and cries of nonexistent people start playing.

In horror, I watch it with Mini-Muzz, and as the stern sinks under, Mini-Muzz chirps up, “Don’t worry, Suma can save them!”

God bless you sweet child.

Elvenshae

MNC Dover wrote: »

Also, who taught her these model poses? It's either these poses or sticking her tongue out at the camera. Kids are weird, yo.

My oldest son, through I guess exposure to too much Pokemon?, now does the peace-sign / v-for-victory / Chun-Li thing in every posed photo of him.

#pipe

So this past weekend we went to a 2nd birthday party for the son of a highschool friend of my wife's.

The party was at a public park with swings and slides and a bunch of water pad stuff for kids to run around in and cool off.

It was fun! There was a lot of fresh berries and cupcakes and sunshine and it was just generally pleasant.

Until right before we left, when the birthday boy's 6ish year old cousin was playing with a bubble wand a little too close to Bean and blew a large bubble directly into his eye.

He was upset, obviously, and we were comforting him, when the birthday boy's grandma was like "RIGHT. I'm gonna fix this" and she got my wife to hold Bean angled downward whole she poured water from a bottle into his eye. Like holding his eye open and pouring.

he didn't like this.

Anyways all was well after a while. The next day my wife got a text from her friend that said "sorry my mom waterboarded your toddler"

BlazeFire

I mean, the technique isn't wrong for flushing a foreign object from an eyeball but having a bubble pop doesn't require that.

Brody

Trying to get soap out of Saplings hair, I keep trying to get her to lay back so I can just rinse it in the tub, but she acts like I'm about to waterboard her.

Aldo

Brody wrote: »

Trying to get soap out of Saplings hair, I keep trying to get her to lay back so I can just rinse it in the tub, but she acts like I'm about to waterboard her.

Same with my nearly 3 year old and soap. He insists on looking down, so everything runs into his eyes. We have the baby shampoo, so it barely stings. He'll whine and complain, but he absolutely won't look up so as to not get any shampoo into his eyes in the first place.

kime

I've given up on my daughter not acting like I'm poisoning her if just water gets on her face on bath times

davidsdurions

My eldest daughter has finally started just washing and rinsing her own hair. She almost has it figured out, but I still have to get in there and do the final rinse most times. She had all of the above issues forever as well. Things don't look much different on the infant. She does not cooperate with the rinsing of the hair yet either.

Lindsay Lohan

Older kid vent:

So my niece who we helped raise is 19 and let my wife know today she is seeing someone. Here's the issue:
He's 37 (so only 5 years younger than me)
She's moving in with him
His roommate is his ex, who he has twins with

I'm a combination of pissed and disappointed. I wouldn't mind him having kids, it happens, but the age and the ex still living with him is a combo I can't get past. It feels fishy. And honestly, I thought we helped teach her to be smarter than this and I had hoped her dad would voice some of this but he seems fine with it.

I'm sure I'll have to be nice about it, but good gravy do I hope she is being safe. I'm afraid my fun Uncle status might be vanishing

Brody

Aldo wrote: »

Brody wrote: »

Trying to get soap out of Saplings hair, I keep trying to get her to lay back so I can just rinse it in the tub, but she acts like I'm about to waterboard her.

Same with my nearly 3 year old and soap. He insists on looking down, so everything runs into his eyes. We have the baby shampoo, so it barely stings. He'll whine and complain, but he absolutely won't look up so as to not get any shampoo into his eyes in the first place.

I can sometimes get her to tip her head back, but she has a ton of hair, so it takes a lot of effort to get conditioner out of her hair when shes being difficult.

Kalnaur

My kid doesn't like bath time, but he also has this habit clearly opposite of at least a few kids here where now that he's used to getting his hair rinsed out by laying back into the water, he'll try to do it himself without prompting, which means I have to stop my kiddo from just freaking submerging himself in the water.

Sir Platypus

I'm severely annoyed with McDonalds for the Toy Story 4 set all connecting into one RV. My 4 year old nephew got exactly half, with the vehicle being split down the middle. As hilarious as this is, I have spent too much damn money online gathering the remainder.

I'm still annoyed that I couldn't complete Inspector Gadget. I'm considering this therapy. I'm gonna blow this kid's fucking mind.

kime

So you know how sometimes you just don't think of something super obvious? It's the kind of thing you'd never tell anyone you hadn't realized? I assume that occasionally happens to more than just me.

Anyways, I'm telling y'all 'cause you told me about it essentially so you deserve it

So I said this earlier:

kime wrote: »

I've given up on my daughter not acting like I'm poisoning her if just water gets on her face on bath times

It was only in the surrounding posts that duh, if you look up then you can dodge most of the water! Anyways she didn't trust me initially, but got through bathtime with no freaking out due to face-water! Huzzah me! I'm so good at this parenting thing!

I'm just glad I can pretend I thought of this before she figured it out herself :P

Aldo

Lindsay Lohan wrote: »

Older kid vent:

So my niece who we helped raise is 19 and let my wife know today she is seeing someone. Here's the issue:
He's 37 (so only 5 years younger than me)
She's moving in with him
His roommate is his ex, who he has twins with

I'm a combination of pissed and disappointed. I wouldn't mind him having kids, it happens, but the age and the ex still living with him is a combo I can't get past. It feels fishy. And honestly, I thought we helped teach her to be smarter than this and I had hoped her dad would voice some of this but he seems fine with it.

I'm sure I'll have to be nice about it, but good gravy do I hope she is being safe. I'm afraid my fun Uncle status might be vanishing

Yeah, that doesn't sound right at all. Have you tried the tradition of inviting the guy over for dinner? Get the message out that there is a real caring family.

Also, try to keep a lifeline open for your niece. She should know that she might disappoint you, but she can still rely on you.

mrpaku

Lindsay Lohan wrote: »

Older kid vent:

So my niece who we helped raise is 19 and let my wife know today she is seeing someone. Here's the issue:
He's 37 (so only 5 years younger than me)
She's moving in with him
His roommate is his ex, who he has twins with

I'm a combination of pissed and disappointed. I wouldn't mind him having kids, it happens, but the age and the ex still living with him is a combo I can't get past. It feels fishy. And honestly, I thought we helped teach her to be smarter than this and I had hoped her dad would voice some of this but he seems fine with it.

I'm sure I'll have to be nice about it, but good gravy do I hope she is being safe. I'm afraid my fun Uncle status might be vanishing

I can't speak to the specific situation (although I can definitely relate to several parts of it) but I will say that I "jumped ship" at seventeen for a variety of reasons, and if I've had one single person in my life at the time willing to still touch base and look me in the eye and tell me "I don't *get* it, but I'm still *very* much here, and *very* much love you", it would've made all the difference in the world towards keeping my self-esteem in a dark time and helping get back to normal much sooner than actually happened. Especially if she's in the middle of making a very painful mistake (hopefully not, but that is red flags galore, and I believe you are right to be on guard)

Donovan Puppyfucker

Lindsay Lohan wrote: »

Older kid vent:

So my niece who we helped raise is 19 and let my wife know today she is seeing someone. Here's the issue:
He's 37 (so only 5 years younger than me)
She's moving in with him
His roommate is his ex, who he has twins with

I'm a combination of pissed and disappointed. I wouldn't mind him having kids, it happens, but the age and the ex still living with him is a combo I can't get past. It feels fishy. And honestly, I thought we helped teach her to be smarter than this and I had hoped her dad would voice some of this but he seems fine with it.

I'm sure I'll have to be nice about it, but good gravy do I hope she is being safe. I'm afraid my fun Uncle status might be vanishing

Oooft, that reads kinda sketchy, yeah. Just do your best to let her know you love her and are looking out for her.

Lindsay Lohan

Yeah, I'm going to be supportive as best I can. Frankly if things go down hill we're the closest place for her to crash so we want her to know she's welcome. I would love to know if she's mentioned it to her other uncle who I'm guessing will react exactly like I did.

My wife is the more sensible one and like you smart folks said was careful not to push her away. Fortunately it was via text so she couldn't hear me ranting.

In other news, I'm the over protective parent.

Aldo

Lindsay Lohan wrote: »

In other news, I'm the over protective parent.

That's a hilarious statement considering your username.

Donovan Puppyfucker

Aldo wrote: »

Lindsay Lohan wrote: »

In other news, I'm the over protective parent.

That's a hilarious statement considering your username.

C'mon now, Lindsay is such an over-protective parent she tried to kidnap someone else's kids, remember?

Perrsun

SporkAndrew wrote: »

Perrsun wrote: »

Doesn't help at all if he knocks them off my head, because then I'm too nearsighted to be able to find them again.

I've started using my phone camera when my glasses go missing. It might be me being dense and not thinking of it sooner, but I only heard about it as something you could do recently and it's honestly changed everything.

If you can get your phone screen close enough to focus on then you can see anything your phone is pointed at

I even used it once with the live view on my 70D, but that's a bit impractical to carry around and it was only in an emergency. At least I always have my phone in my pocket and the camera app is just a double-click of the power button away

Holy shit this worked. :O

My sight is so bad I have to close one eye because holding anything close enough to focus puts it at eye-crossing proximity... but this is a great backup technique. Thank you.

SharpyVII

Why do babies who are very tired, not just go to sleep? Instead our bean screams his head off for 20 minutes before finally falling asleep!

Why?!?

mrpaku

Overtired. Inability to self soothe. Sometimes bizarrely hungry. Tiny Wonder used to be able to keep screaming in his crib for up to two hours before finally breaking either me and my partner to go and cuddle him for the whole night. He's still not entirely sleep trained after a year, but his last "how *dare* you" scream session only lasted fifteen minutes

Brody

mrpaku wrote: »

Overtired. Inability to self soothe. Sometimes bizarrely hungry. Tiny Wonder used to be able to keep screaming in his crib for up to two hours before finally breaking either me and my partner to go and cuddle him for the whole night. He's still not entirely sleep trained after a year, but his last "how *dare* you" scream session only lasted fifteen minutes

Sapling is sleep trained, we started around 14 months (we wanted to wait a couple months after he surgery at 1), and even at 2, if we don't get her down for her nap/bed time on time, she turns into a terror who wants to wreck everything and will scream incoherently from her bed for a solid 15-20 minutes after we set her in there.

MNC Dover

This thread is a great way to see how kids are different and how parenting experience wildly. Like, we had super luck with both kids taking to crib/solo sleeping as early as 3 months. Yet our daughter is just now coming around to potty training and she’s nearly 4. I’ve talked with other parents who had kids trained at 1.5. Crazy.

#pipe

*Old lady gets on the bus*
"Aw, he's so cute!"
*Other old lady*
"He's my honorary grandson!"
OL1: how old is he?
OL2: I don't know, I just met him 2 stops ago!

schuss

Just got kindergarten teacher assignment.
#shitsgettingreal

TheStig

Come right out of the gate as the super demanding parent with the special child who could do no wrong.

mrpaku

schuss wrote: »

Just got kindergarten teacher assignment.
#shitsgettingreal

We just got Middle Guy registered for preschool. The disappointment when we had to go home and didn't just leave him at the school was palpable, so I guess he's more ready for this than I am