7 Quick Takes

1. We eat a lot of pasta in our family--spaghetti, linguine, rice-stick, you name it. Especially long noodles are nearly impossible for my 2- and 4-year-old to manage, so I've recently discovered a great tool for swiftly turning wads of tangled strings into bit-sized chunks: a pizza wheel. I mound pasta and sauce on the plate, then with four or five slices at varied angles, it's ready to gobble.

2. Like fish? You should try this recipe for steelhead trout or any other salmon-like fish. It got us out of the sesame-soy or straight-up lemon treatments we'd been stuck on for so long.

3. Yogurt parfaits--another way to use up plentiful summer fruit. For this one we layered fresh blueberries with plain yogurt and mandarin oranges.

4. We're moving and I'm having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that a family of five will require more space than we're accustomed to having. We live in a very pricey part of the country and are trying to ferret out what we absolutely must have in a home and what isn't such a big priority.

Would any of you with three children please make some recommendations as to what we might value most when new baby arrives (i.e. a fenced yard, an extra bedroom, two bathrooms, etc.) and also any features we don't absolutely have to have?

5. Some weird animal behavior is going on around here. I feel like the victim of inter-species pregnancy empathy. OK, we have two cats--both females--who are spayed and perfectly normal by all feline accounts. But lately (since I've become undeniable with child) they can't get enough of me. I can't figure out if the two are related.

I adore our kitties, but I'm usually so weary of being touched and needed all day, I can barely muster the affection required to give them more than a fresh bowl of viddles and a pat on their fuzzy little heads. N's really the one who gives them the snuggle time they need and they usually bypass me and move onto him. But these days, they won't take no for an answer from me.

The big one stands inches from me on the vanity while I brush teeth and dry my hair, leaning into me with clear appreciation at the slightest notion that I might actually touch her. And the little one, who by nature is the more skittish of the two, sleeps curled up as close to my belly as she possibly can be every single night from lights-out to sun-up. What is going on?

6. We struggle to find family movies that are appropriate to share with our 4-year-old, so when we find good ones, I feel compelled to share. We rented a couple of "watch-instantly-on-your TV" short Imax films from Netflix last night and they were really impressive. We especially liked "Beavers: The best Dam Movie You Ever Saw" (love the title). It was somewhat educational, but mostly just entertaining to watch a husband and wife beaver overtake an entire chunk of river. I have new respect for these little vermin.

7. L is currently on her third week of mostly solid thumb-sucking cessation. We're very proud of her accomplishments and all of this hard work earned her a family pizza night late last week. She is proud and so are we.