Five Favorites (vol. 1)

After being a long-time lurker, I'm finally linking up with Hallie for Five Favorites!  Are you excited?  I am!

1.

HoMedics Sound SPA Relaxation Sound Machine
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When Michael was born I was adamant that we did not need any special noise-making devices.  For the life of me I cannot remember why... I just felt like creating white noise with fans should be sufficient.  Should.  Ha.  This attitude persisted for the first several months of Liam's life as well.  He was in our room, and if we had the bathroom fan turned on all night that seemed to work just fine.  Then we moved him out of our room at 6 months, and for a while I tried to make do with radio static.  Not so great... it was kind of harsh but it worked, except when reception suddenly improved in the middle of the night and I'm sitting there nursing Liam, half asleep, and I realize I'm hearing voices.  Radio voices, not in-my-head-voices, although it took a minute to figure out.  So I finally gave in and ordered a sound machine and I LOVE IT (yes, it is worthy of shouting).

The ocean setting is so incredibly soothing.  I have a tendency to fall asleep when I'm nursing Liam at night (and sometimes at naptime) anyway, and with this it is almost impossible for me to not doze off.  Which is sometimes nice and sometimes a pain--literally, a pain in my neck when I realize I've been sleeping in an awkward sitting position for two hours.  But I love this sound machine as much as--probably even more than--Liam does.

sweet dreams

2.

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The last several times I've tried to paint my nails I've been horribly disappointed in the result.  I've never become particularly skilled at it, but recently it seemed like no matter what I did they did not turn out even remotely smooth.  Then it dawned on me that pretty much all of my nail polish is 8-14 years old.  Hmmm... maybe just because there is some left in the bottle doesn't necessarily mean it is still usable?  So I treated myself to some new nail polish, and I opted for a quick dry type because even when my nails do turn out semi-okay I ruin them almost right away because someone (or sometwo, for that matter) demands my attention before they are completely dry.  I'm pretty darn pleased with the result--it went on smoothly and dried quickly (such high standards, I know).  It seems to chip fairly easily, but for how quickly it dried I can afford to redo them.

Side-note: I was checking the bottle looking for the name of the color before writing this post, and all it said was "24k."  Great, some stupid code/numbering system isn't particularly descriptive.  How can it not have a name?  I distinctly remember there being names for the colors on the display at the store...  So how would I describe it?  Faintly shimmery, kind of a gold tone.  Gold... 24k... okay, I get it.  Obviously I need some more quality time with those ocean waves.

3.

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Impulse buy yesterday while shopping for above nail polish: Mike the Knight DVD for $5.  The show itself is cute (um, a knight, named Mike? obviously Michael needed this--and it is not available on Netflix. lame.) but not spectacular enough to make it into the top 5 by itself.  What is truly my favorite is how excited M got about it.  He carried the DVD carefully for the rest of our shopping/browsing trip, relinquished it reluctantly in the check-out line, and sat absolutely enthralled for the entire thing when we got home.  Then for the rest of the day he told everyone that he watched "Mite the Knight"!  And then told us again!  And again!

The evolution (devolution?) of my thoughts on children's shows is a topic for another post.  Suffice it to say that I'm thankful for a little variety in our life.  I can only watch so much Thomas before my boilers bust...

4.

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Don't judge.

5.

These boys.  Always my favorite.  Cheating?  Maybe.  But one of them (*cough*littleone*cough*) woke me up at 6 this morning and I have been trying to finish this post ever since.  It has been a cheating sort of day.

The end!