Yeah, we're leaning away from letting her for another few years yet. If I could find a good forum with just upper elementary and middle school kids it might be another matter.

Anne, I might call the vet just to be sure, but if he's distracted by the new playmate in a good way, as long as he's actually eating something, I'd just keep an eye on it and maybe bring out the kitty crack food for just him in a closed off room with just you & him. If he likes human attention while eating. I feed Loki and Pumpkin out of the same dish and I swear she must live on air thanks to the Hoover that is Loki, but what they need vs what they eat is...variable.

Thank you, sara. I can't help worrying about the guy. He's eating maybe about a fourth of what he normally eats, but he's not hiding, and he wants to be around the other cat.

Pet him lots, you'll notice any weightloss. Heck buy a cheap digital scale and dig up a cardboard box and you can reassure yourself.(box on scale makes it..almost cat motivated)

He probably is a bit stressed, but given his interest, more like the stress you have on an adventurous vacation. I'm too busy to eat!

Casper (11, 6th grade) has an email account which she does not use and to which I have the password. Some of her friends have their own phones and text; at least one uses Instagram and uploads videos to Youtube and has since 4th grade. I'm holding off for now. She searches for Lunar Chronicles fanart (and has already indignantly told me that Someone Is Wrong On The Internet).

I think we'll take another step forward next year (=middle school) and she'll have use of a flip phone. Probably without texting or a camera. I'm in no hurry. I agree, it would be nice to have a kid-safe fannish forum. I do know some parents who have set their elementary-age kids up with blogs, to give them a voice, but they don't allow comments and do review what is posted. (The ones I know of are about 1) cupcakes and 2) soccer.) You might start there?

she'll have use of a flip phone.

We just joined the smartphone world on Sunday, so I have an old flip phone that is (no lie) held together with hot glue because I dropped it and broke it so many times. It is CLASSY as hell.

...naw, I can't give it up. I like to just look at it, and marvel: [link]

Blogging makes sense in the sense that you can control it better. Both of the twins have emails that they know nothing about and have no password for and Noah has a blog with a sum total of one post. It's too much work for me to help him maintain.

blargh. I am overly tired. And stressed about GS cookies. We have too many boxes of samoas left.

I have a slider phone! I can text!

...and I stilll piss off friends because I neglect it for days or weeks and....

I can technically text on my flip phone but it is a giant pain in the ass.

We are looking at family phone plans - with the idea of moving to 2 smartphones + 1 basic phone as of this summer. Anybody got something they like? Everything is SO EXPENSIVE. We've been on my mother's Verizon Family plan up to now (yes, we are 46 and 42 years old) and paying $40 for the smartphone and $14 for my flip phone, but all the plans we are looking at are much more expensive than that - you pay $40 for a smartphone PLUS another like $25 for data. ARGH.

We are looking at family phone plans - with the idea of moving to 2 smartphones + 1 basic phone as of this summer. Anybody got something they like?

flea, we went with Cricket Wireless,* which is about $70 for 2 phones, which includes 2.5 GB of data/month per phone (and when you go over the data cap, they throttle the data speed, instead of charging you for the overage). They merged with AT&T, so their coverage is pretty extensive. We compared a lot of plans, and theirs is more than adequate for our Luddite needs.

And I have to say, having Swype on the smartphone is pretty sweet.

*We were with Cincinnati Bell Wireless since forever, but since they sold the wireless part, we had to switch by the end of February or lose cell service.