A really cute giveaway link

I don't know about y'all, but I'm a sucker for aprons. I've always wanted one, but never got around to buying one until last year. My friend is giving away aprons on her blog. Adult or child size. They're adorable! Check it out!

Boys and Girls

Now, I know everyone is an individual and slightly different from everyone else, but there are stereotypes for a reason. I've always thought it was funny when people said boys and girls come exactly the same and are conditioned to be different. While this can be true to some extent, have they ever watched little kids?!

Someone recently told me of a study done on small children. Not having read the study, I'm not sure of the age group, but I got the idea that they were somewhere in the crawling/barely walking stage. The researchers would put a blockade between mother and baby. The girls reacted by crying piteously. The boys reacted by trying to crawl through or around the blockade. I thought that was an interesting study.

Today, while I was watching a little boy (just crawling), a toy of his rolled under a chair. He never once looked at me to complain, he just tried and tried to get that toy until finally he was successful! He's done it multiple times in the past few days and never looks to me for help. I thought that fit very well with the study results.

Anyone have any examples that agree/disagree with this?

Book Challenge Checkup

So, how's everybody doing on their book challenge reading? So far, I have 265 points. Don't be disgusted. I like to read. Here's the list of ones I liked:

The Healing Touch series by Hannah Alexander
"Mirror, Mirror" by Judy Baer (as well as a couple of her other books)
The O'Malley series by Dee Henderson
A Prairie Legacy series by Janette Oke
"Dragon Slippers" - Jessica Day George
"Daddy-Long-Legs" and "Dear Enemy" by Jean Webster

Can you tell I'm on a Christian fiction kick so far this year? Not to mention, I should have joined Austen Knows Best in the series challenge. :) I'm obviously more of a fiction reader than a non-fiction reader. However, I have three non-fiction under my belt so far this year. (Impressive , I know.) And I even enjoyed two of them. But I'm going to brag that I made it through "His Excellency: George Washington" by Joseph Ellis. (Not one of the ones I enjoyed.) Acknowledging that Ellis has done MUCH more research on the subject than I have, I still found myself violently disagreeing (okay, not really violently) with his interpretation of many, many things. He never proved himself in the book to be enough of an authority to make some of the claims he did without backing his assertions with lots of evidence. But I did learn more about George Washington. And I'm still trying to decide whether or not I liked "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Lynne Truss. I'm just not a prescriptivist. Hmm... Based on her book, I actually would have used different punctuation in a few of these sentences. But remember, this is my blog. I get to punctuate how I want to. :)

So tell me, how are you doing in your reading? Any good books to suggest? You don't have to give a score, but I always welcome recommendations.

Some good jazz

I'm not a jazz connoisseur (which I didn't even come close to spelling correctly. Oi) or anything, but I think this is some great jazz. Or at least very nice-to-listen-to jazz. (Like I said. Not a connoisseur. Forgive my ignorance.)



The funny thing about this song is I don't always agree with its sentiments. Sometimes this is the answer and sometimes the answer is "It's okay to cry today." But this music makes me smile. A bit reminiscent (which I did spell correctly - hooray! I know. It's not that hard a word) of Glenn Miller to me.