Food, and knitting, and cats, and, you know, stuff.

When the Baby started up with her temper tantrums, several people e-mailed or left coments to warn me about food coloring and food additives (and I appreciated the heads-up on that stuff; my brother was affected by food coloring when we were kids). I took a look at her diet, and was delighted to realize that almost nothing she eats has any kind of food additive in it, and her diet's particularly low in food coloring. There was never any great drive to rid her diet of chemicals, but I knew from nutrition classes in college that in general, the more processed a food is, the less nutritious it is. So I'd been trying to avoid processed foods. I hadn't gone totally crazy about it - she still eats goldfish crackers and tater-tots and things like that - but it seems that almost by accident (okay, and a decent bit of general knowledge of food), I'd avoided all the really yucky kid's foods.

The REAL advantage to all this is, of course, that WE have also started avoiding processed foods. And last night we went to the grocery store and bought two weeks' worth of food for $150. That includes baby cookies and pork chops and bananas and store-made bread.

I suspect that after the Baby is older, and getting into goodness knows what horrifying foods at school, we'll continue this processed-food ban, because it saves so much MONEY. (And nobody NEEDS potato chips, now, do we? Get away from that cake.)

-... -

I'm up to round 39.

It should be on the circular needle by the end of the day (if I keep knitting at this rate), and after that things will speed up again. I hate 'turning corners' (changing doublepoints) when working lace.

As always, I've started dithering about what to knit for the State Fair. The scarf I mentioned Monday, or a doily with a knit-on edging. The doily would likely be faster, and of more use, after.

Still can't decide, but I've got abotu fifty more rows of THIS doily, to make up my mind.

-... -

The idea of leaving a book on my chair, to keep the cat off it, still isn't working.


-... -

I'm seriously considering pre-ordering a copy of Deathly Hallows (the last Harry Potter book, for those of you stranded on desert islands). So far I've resisted doing it, but I just got done re-reading Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince (I ripped through Half-Blood Prince in two days), and I've pieced together some really interesting clues and damn it, I want to know what happens. (Plus I still think Neville has something to do with whacking Voldemort.)

Didn't know I was a Harry Potter fan, did you? I can't resist a well-told story. Regardless.

-... -

After decades of complaining about people underestimating their kids, I fear I've fallen into that category myself. There was an incident Saturday, when I was SURE we were going to have a tantrum and I explained to The Baby what was happening, and she behaved herself. Because the little shit doesn't speak more than ten words and phrases (often useless things like 'wow' and 'I dunno' and 'cool'), I, like a dumbass, assumed she didn't understand. Which is really stupid on my part.

So, after several rounds of explanations and statements of cause and effect ('If you throw that at me, I'll take it away.'), the Baby has been behaving much better. We've still had a few tantrums and whine-fests, but they've been here at home, where we can handle them or ignore them.


Now I'm gonna go knit. Again.