Happy Friday! Or at least I hope it is! As long as we’re optimistic, right? Kinda like this plop of poop…..or maybe it’s ice cream…

Sorry, this just makes me laugh; hope you laughed too!

I’m sure most of us parents have at least one pet in the house; usually a cat or dog. If not, I’m slightly envious since I am OCD about hair, and now that Avery’s crawling, I’m vacuuming several times a day. #stayathomeparentproblems

We have one each of a cat, Lou, and a dog, Abby, and they both shed a lot. Of course, Avery doesn’t help the situation as she tend to grab at anything and everything.

Our little angel has mastered the art of ninja crawling where she’ll make her way to the other side of the room immediately after we set her down. No clue how she gets there so fast, but it results in Going Mom and I having to tell her not to get into one thing or another.

We’ll attempt to yell out her name, but instead of “Avery”, it’s a combination of one of our pet’s names and “Avery”.  Some of the common ones are “Ay-very” or “Abv-ery”. Or we’ll just flat out call our daughter Abby or our dog Avery. It’s typically a mix of Avery and Abby, but Lou sometimes finds his name in there too.

We’ve been doing this a lot, and something tells me it won’t end soon. How many other parents do this? It’s a common thing, right?

Just for fun, I found an online word mixer that will generate a unique name from up to 5 different words. If we’re going to mess up yelling our daughter’s name, might as well have fun with it!

Here’s what I got after entering Avery, Abby, and Lou:

That’s enough to have a new name for our pets each day of the month! Call me crazy, but I…..okay, I’m crazy.

Now for the foodie fun facts. I don’t enjoy most packaged desserts as they’re heavy on fat, sugar, and chemicals I wouldn’t consider food. Yeah, yeah, I know these things taste good, but when you know what’s in it and how it affects your body, I lose all desire to have it.

But, thanks to Nature, we have a plethora of naturally sweet options to choose from. One of those things being bananas! I love them with brown spots all over when their sugar content is highest, but have been trying to consume them more often when they are green.

However you enjoy them, bananas are a great option to satisfy your family’s sweet tooth while providing many key nutrients you won’t find in ice cream and cookies. I have a lot of facts to share on bananas, so I’m going to give more than 5 today, and there will be more next week too. Make them fun to eat and your kids will happily gobble them up!

1. You can use the inside of a banana peel to clean and polish leather shoes and silver —just rub with the inside of a peel and then buff with a cloth.
2. Thanks to its oil, rubbing the inside of a banana peel on a mosquito bite (or other bug bite) or on poison ivy will help keep it from itching and getting inflamed.
3. The highest average per capita consumption of bananas in the world is in Uganda, where residents eat an average of 500 pounds of bananas per person every year. In fact, the Ugandan word matooke means both “food” and “banana.”
4. India produces more bananas than any other country on the planet, accounting for about 28 percent of the worldwide crop. (China is number two, with ten percent.)
5. A man in India once ate 81 bananas in a half hour.
6. More songs have been written about bananas than about any other fruit.
7. Bananas are the only fruit that contains the amino acid tryptophan plus vitamin B6. They help your body produce serotonin—a natural substance that alleviates depression.
8. About half of all people who are allergic to latex are often also allergic to bananas.

If you have pets and mix their names with your baby’s, please let me know some of the funny ones in the comments below.

Do you like bananas? Any creative ways you enjoy them if so? You can never go wrong with nut butter and bananas, but I also enjoy mixing mashed banana with eggs and a little stevia and scrambling them for a sweet, protein-packed treat. Great for breakfast or desert!