7 Quick Takes Friday: A little cheese with this whine, anyone?

It wasn't my intention to be all whiny and annoying, but I guess that's what happens when you're low on sleep, everyone in the family has had a cold over the past week, and you didn't get to see your Grandma again as a result...

--- 1 ---

Babies definitely grow too fast.  Even when they're still "little" they can get so big, and when they're getting "bigger" mine is learning to mobilize WAY too quickly.  But who can tell an almost 8 month old that she's not allowed to start pulling up?  She is not at all satisfied with this whole slow-motion crawling deal.  That was so 2 weeks ago.

--- 2 ---

I am far too easily distracted from normal, everyday duties.  My husband put laundry in the washer yesterday before he left from work.  It took me until mid-afternoon to realize the huge laundry pile from our Mother's Day weekend trip was no longer sitting by the basement door.  And no worries, I did get it into the dryer before it started to get all mildew-y, but this morning my poor husband was digging around for a work shirt, at which point I had to sleepily apologize for not getting the laundry upstairs.  Yeah, still sitting in the dryer.  Poor guy.

--- 3 ---

There has yet to be invented a facial tissue soft enough for babies' noses.  Or maybe babies are genetically predisposed to fighting a nose-wiping tooth and nail.  Either way, in the end, no one's happy but baby's nose is slightly less snotty.  At least my 2-year old is learning to be cooperative on this front.

--- 4 ---

I am not the chipper early bird I was last time I wrote a Quick-Takes, but I am still up before at least one of my kids.  (Looking back at that post, I'm now wondering what kind of crazy person wrote it - and if she was on drugs.  And what kind they were.)  He's taken to sleep til nearly 9 o'clock most mornings the last couple of weeks.  At least when we're at home.  Sleeping anywhere else requires earlier wake up times in toddler world.  But still, God Bless You, Dr. Weissbluth!  Forgive me for ever doubting you!  Now you just need to come up with a softer facial tissue, or an extinction program for nose-wiping fits.

--- 5 ---

I'm coming to think that "Quick-Takes" is a misnomer.  Nothing is ever quick when you have two munchkins running around.  In fact, this has been interrupted so many times that the munchkinette is already back in bed for nap #1 and the coffee is starting to kick in.

--- 6 ---

Bare-root perennials have a startlingly higher survival rate when you get them into the ground right away.  I know, it's amazing, right?  Why couldn't I understand this last year?

Just for fun, I'm going to use #6 for a little bragging about my formerly delinquent magnolia.  Isn't Miss Jane beautiful this year?

--- 7 ---

Now it's obvious the coffee is kicking in - and I didn't think caffeine affected me.  Haha!  To end on a cheerier note, the sun is out again today, and we're looking at a third day of gardening this week.  It's amazing how much exercise gardening can be - I feel toned already!  Today, we conquer the new compost bin!  Whee!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Research Nerd

Yeah, ok, so... I'm a researcher.  (Whew, glad I got that random confession off my chest!  "Say what?" you're thinking...)

I'm a researcher.  Not in the searching for a way to cure cancer or product test-panel-y sort of way, or even the college paper-writing sort of way, but in the sense that if there is ANY question of how to do something best, or which {insert random product here} works best, or even the perennial favorite of "just how much is this kid of mine supposed to be eating???", I am instantly on the web, scouting out reviews and options and "highly touted" methods.  I think this "research mania" I suffer from is connected to my 8 years of collegiate study in two ways:

1.)  I'm stuck in that financial mentality that once obligated me to "get the most bang for my buck" (aka Ramen syndrome)

and, to a lesser extent,

2.)  Yeah, yeah, those paper thingies assigned in nearly every class EVER.

So, I'm a researcher.
Which is how my family came to be the proud owner of one of these:

Quite possibly the creepiest looking boy doll ever marketed to the paranoid parenting community.

Toilet Training in Less Than a Day (sounds too good to be true, right?) is a book my aunt loaned to me shortly after the birth of our son, along with Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child (which I'm still on board with  ...I think).  I read it, I researched it, and I thought, yeah, this could work!  

Well, I still have no doubt that the methods behind it can work, but someone in the family, be it myself, my son or Potty Scotty himself was not quite ready to undertake the task at hand.  We'll try again in a few months.  In the meantime, every time my son sees the box that Scotty lives in up on the shelf, he asks about him, in that cute little 2 year-old voice and barely decipherable pronunciation.  When asked whether he would like to try potty training again, he immediately responds with a very abrupt "No!"  The thing I need to wrap my mind around is that sometimes, what works for us is going to be what works for us.  No researching, no polling, no worrying that I'm going to somehow scar my child for life because I introduced pears before green beans.  God gave us moms a certain intuition, and if we (I!) would just learn to trust it and act in love, our kids will thank us in the end.  Regardless of which "method" we end up going with (the Ramen syndrome in me desperately hopes Scotty will still be an asset in this endeavor), it's not going to matter exactly when my son is potty trained, and potty trained is potty trained.  He's not going to be 20, wishing to himself that his mother had gone a different route.

Of course, ...for boys, I hear shooting cheerios works pretty well too.