I don't have frost/cold issues here in San Diego, but my approach would be to leave the bananas on the "tree" as long as possible, period. On "tree" time is good time. On nights where freezing weather was expected (or maybe even high 30's) I would bag the fruit and put a small light bulb inside the bag as a heat source to keep the fruit from freezing, and allow it to stay on the stalk longer. I would prop the stalk so that it would supported and less likely to snap or fold. And I would continue to peel off any rotting or mushy parts of the pseudostem. When all of this becomes untenable, then I would cut them off and let the ripen indoors. I have a bunch of Mona Lisa (fhia-2) that had their stalk folded after about two month hanging, and I just left them as is, and they are now ripening normally. I had a bunch of Kru which had the pseudostem snapped off in November, only 4 weeks after bloomng had finished, and I cut the banana bunch off and left it laying on the ground (for a photo-op the day after they snapped, and then was too lazy to throw them away) and by Feb 1, they were ripe, and quite acceptable. So, the moral of my story is, NEVER give up on your bananas. Nurse them along, coddle them, stick with them, and usually you end up with a reward.

I have the same washer. I won't go into the problems I had only to say that I supposedly needed a new control board and was told it was on backorder for several months. I was having an LF code problem. Anyway, I was fit to be tied as this was a new machine and had never worked correctly when using a hot wash. When I found out about the part being on back order, I called the warranty section at Maytag (used the 1-800-688-9900). Find out if the part has been requested by your repair people, when it is to be shipped and make sure to get the person's name you are talking to. If you call back, ask for that person. You can order the part yourself and have it shipped to the place that will do the repair. Of course you hope that will solve the problem. After a valve, 2 control boards, and another valve (which was I needed), it has worked every since. Fuss, fuss, fuss if they tell you its on backorder. I amazingly got one sent out right away when I told them I would post on a Laundry forum all the problems I had with their Bravos and with the service. I don't have problems with sheets making the machine unbalanced. If you drop them in one at a time around the bottom and don't cover the middle, it works fine.

Sorry you had a period ! wow a whole year and.. so what does that mean really? Do side effects subside as the months go by without a period? And then ..So say the following year or two one starts feeling normal? I can't figure it out .Great post!

Let me preface my comments by stating that I have 3 children, ages 8, 5, 2 (and one on the way). So I am not new to this, but it's all still fresh enough in my memory that I remember it realistically. That's just so you know where I am coming from. And I ask your patience now for what I expect will be a long answer. The answer to your question is yes and no. If you think of discipline in terms of teaching and guiding, yes, you can begin to discipline a 9 mos old in terms of protecting them from danger. If they pull hair, you can distract them and say "no." You can say "no" and remove them from a situation like pulling an electic cord. But they aren't likely to learn any lesson from it. I know people say their babies understand "no" but I do not buy that. A baby might respond temporarily to the tone of the voice, but at that age, I don't believe, from my experience, they understand "no" in any disciplinary terms. In other words, you could substitute any word used in exactly the same tone and context and get the same reaction from the baby. At that age it is about protecting them. Even if you do get a response to no in a physically harmful situation, you still aren't going to get one over manners, i.e. crying and screaming in temper. If you think of discipline in terms of more concrete action=consequence the answer is no. If you think of discipline in terms of knowing what behavior is expected, the answer is no. That is the beginning of self-discipline and that is a couple years off. There are a million reasons why this baby would behave that way. First off, she is a baby. She has no understanding of socially acceptable behavior and won't for a long time. She could be coming down with something, maybe she's teething, or tired. Maybe her nap/sleep schedule is in a period of change making her more tired and cranky that usual. It is also common for babies that age to begin to feel frustration over their lack of mobility or autonomy. She knows what she wants to do, but she is not yet physically capable of doing it. That makes her frustrated and the only means she has to express it is to cry and scream. Some babies express that frustration more intensely than others, kind of like adults. Sometimes there just isn't anything you can do about it short of making life go their way all the time (and we all know how well that would go). We will all have days like that, some of us will have weeks like that. And it has nothing to do with our parenting skills. It's real life. What you do about it has more to do with you than with the baby. If a parent responds to a baby's cries of frustration with a raised, loud voice and frustration of their own, the baby's will only intensify. As a parent, you just have to stay calm. Rule out any cause you can resolve, fix it if you can, and ride it out if you can't. If baby cries because he doesn't really want to be in his car seat right now he'd much rather crawl on the floor, there just isn't anything you can do about it. You gotta do what you gotta do. You can't reason with him. You cannot impose a consequence for the crying. You really only can carry on with what you gotta do, try to offer a distraction, but if that doesn't work, ride it out. They are not old enough for the type of discipline that makes them understand you can't always have your way. They are still of the mentality "I am the center of the universe and as my mother it is your job to make me happy." The scream says "Why aren't you doing your job!" So when that age hits, try to see life through your baby's eyes, try to understand what their cry says to you, it helps keep your expectations within reason. If you can see the baby's view of life, it helps you determine if the fit is over a need or a want, thus the best way to resolve it. And remember that when you have days like that, you are not alone, we all have them, it doesn't make you a bad mother. Not to scare you, but the temper of a 9 mos old doesn't begin to compare to the temper of a 2 yr old. And most professionals do in fact say that the best way to deal with that is to ignore it. On the up side, you will have far more good days than bad. And when it is your child, you move into those temper cries gradually and 1)get used to them and learn to block them out and 2)have time to work into dealing with it slowly and not BAM there it is. When you find yourself having to deal with it, you watch your baby's needs. If you know your baby gets cranky being out of routine, try to avoid that. If you know strange places make him cranky, invite people to your house instead. You can try to make some compromised in your daily life to avoid things that will aggrevate the crankies. But life happens, you can't avoid it all the time and probably really shouldn't. I feel from the way you posted you are seeking information for your own use, not judging your friend. But I still want to say don't judge her parenting by this bad day, or even a rough few weeks. Instead, and I'm sure you're already doing this, be supportive and understanding of this normal phase. I hope from all that rambling you got something helpful. :o)