Wait - where did I hear that?

In the spirit of productive information sharing, I have a lot of little "tidbits" - strange bits of information that I've picked up from .... well - that's just it - sometimes I don't know, but I do know that it's TRUE. We've all been there..... offering medical "advice" that we're as sure as if we went to medical school is true - and, sure enough, it works - many a mother has diagnosed strep throat, ear infections or appropriately brushed off minor sports injuries because we just "know". We've all offered timely news - financial, political - whatever - and found that someone can second our thoughts and even carry on a conversation about the alleged "facts" - thereby proving that we each heard it "somewhere important". In fact, off the top of my head, I have a few of these "tidbits" rolling around in my brain, begging for me to share.... and.... because it's snowing and me and the little ones haven't left the house in days (or at least it feels that way), I have no one to share with but my blog.

I was reading an old Real Simple magazine the other day and discovered that you can dial 800.FREE.411 from your cell phone, and... save a bunch of $$$. I'm ALWAYS ordering take-out on the way home from basketball pick-up or gymnastics or somewhere - or - trying to find an unknown destination on the way to a birthday party..... I "411 a lot, and this info. helps me (lets' face it, there's a lot of useful info. in Real Simple).

Months ago, while I was still pregnant with my one year old, I was sitting in the doctor' office reading a parents mag of some kind and stumbled onto the following info. - (in a nutshell - I'm definitely not quoting here) - don't sweat it if you have a non-eater who will only ingest chips, sweet stuff like yogurt or, preferably, cookies and the dreaded "chicken nuggets" - instead - hit him/ her with vitamin-packed fish sticks instead. In this house, we now call them "long chicken" and feed them to my picky, vitamin-deprived two year old. After employing this technique for months, I was recently called upon to reveal my source for this reasoning and had to REALLY think - writing it down like this ensures that I would not need to do that again anytime soon - think, that is.

And - because I've used up my allotted "me time" today (I don't dictate that, obviously - my kids do), I'm going to close with a few follow-ups: First, I'm still down on Petit Tresor and would like to encourage people toying with the thought of using them for gifts, employing their services in any other way, etc. (especially as the holidays approach) to..... go straight to your source and cut them out entirely - shop Posh Tots, Burberry, Petit Bateau, Tiffany - straight at the source - unless you like being belittled, ignored or want a really good "bad customer service" story - if so, then, by all means, go to Petit Tresor. And... second.... I found a great gingerbread recipe for my kids to help with .... easy to do, no waiting time on dough... made easy to cut out, successful cookies (no disappointed kids - we were able to decorate cookie people that looked like people and had not spread all over the cookie sheet) - Google Annie's "Gingerbread Links" Page.... some overt religious messages on top, but..... definitely just a cookie and recipe links site.

For those of you who still, despite kids and, as a result, a slow social life, consider yourselves hip and "in the know", I'm saving some word of mouth holiday gift ideas for a holiday week post.... good ones... stay tuned....