Super Freakonomics

I finally finished Super Freakonomics. This book and its original - Freakonomics, contain a series of economic discussion questioning everyday behavior and social phenomena. The chapters seem somewhat disjointed and some topics are far less interesting than others, but they chose mainly controversial topics that have caused me to  question my own perspectives on several issues.

The authors begin discussing the statistical chances of being injured while walking drunk. A section of the first chapter is devoted to the declining IQ of schoolteachers. Although I recoiled at this initially, the logic and data maintains. Decades ago, teaching was the primary choice of females entering the workforce, and only the brightest qualified for those positions. Today, bright women may choose careers in business, law, medicine, education, along with so many others. The pool of bright women is diluted and the quality of education has declined at the same rate. Sadly, the only chance of returning to education becoming a select field is to increase teacher salaries and make that career option competitive with other equally demanding career fields.

Another notable section discusses the car seat industry denying the release of information comparing car seats to regular seat belts for young children (not infants/toddlers). The authors have independent research conducted and find that much simpler solutions could be built into cars, but the car seat lobby will not let that happen anytime soon.

I will not dissect each chapter, but the authors continue with discussing prostitution rates, terrorism, global warming/cooling, organ donation, and problems in the medical community. Through all of these areas, the authors dispel myths while sharing feasible options and explanations of how so many of these problems can be solved.

Some of my favorite classes in college were behavioral research, sociology, and statistics. I absolutely love to look at data and reevaluate situations and opinions for fallacies and statistical error. I may do a separate post on Freakonomics after I reread it to refresh my memory, but I would not hesitate to recommend the pair. Both of these books strive to find and explain "things you always thought you knew but didn't," with a rich bibliography and reference section in each if and when you find the need to conduct some fact checking of your own.

Wooden Toys

I am in love with wooden toys. I know they get a bad rap for paint peeling and some containing lead paint, but for the most part, they are great. Ben has wooden puzzles, a set of wood blocks, wooden stacking rings, and his newest - a wooden hammer and pegs ($3 at a thrift store!) He also has one of those wooden activity centers like in doctors offices. Maybe it's the simplicity of these toys without any batteries or flashing lights.  Or the appeal may be my own nostalgia, picturing my own grandkids someday playing with these toys, but either way, they are my favorite.

Spring Break

Spring break hasn't meant the same since college. I love that by teaching, I am able to continue to relax and refresh for one week each spring. But in college, I used this week to travel the country. In my four years of college, I visited Oregon, Arkansas, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, and Illinois. My friends and I mostly took road trips, particularly in the years I drove a conversion van. This makes my visit to Bolivar to see grandpa a little less exciting, but so much about my life has changed that sleep and laundry are far greater priorities for this week.

Ben and I both enjoy the extra time in pajamas. He has started mimicking behavior, and was feeding his dog a play bottle this morning.

He also had some awesome bed head, to go with his hip pajamas.

One Year Photos

We returned to JC Penny's for Ben's one year photos. I don't love them as much as his Christmas pictures, but they weren't bad for the price. I love the bright green on the white background. It seemed very springy. I also squeezed him into his Converse All-Star shoes, although they are a little small now. None of the pictures really showed his shoes anyway.

He was being a total ham during the photo session. We didn't bring any props except for his Build-A-Bear from Grammy and Poppy. It fit better with the darker background and overalls.

 was on such a great posting roll, then Ben was sick, then I was sick. We are now on spring break and I am hoping we will be able to get out of the house more, weather permitting.

Baby Signs

First, I can't believe I haven't yet posted that Ben no longer needs his helmet! This has been as much a relief for us as for him. The helmet was getting stinky and becoming a huge pain to deal with, and we are thrilled that all of that is over with. He doesn't go back to the neurosurgeon until next year, and he will probably need another CT scan when he's three.

We are working on a few baby signs. So far, he claps, waves hi, and raises his arms for "all done" and sometimes even says something that sort of sounds like "all done." He can say mom, dad, dog, uh-oh, and no. I am working on teaching him the signs for drink, food, and more, but the hardest part is being consistent. I think it will come more quickly when we are home together this summer (in two and a half short months from now.)

I am so eager for summer. These cold, dark, rainy days are tiring. I still don't feel caught up from daylight savings time and missing half a week of work last week. I do have a few more book reviews to write, mostly in thanks to the poor weather.

Outside Playhouse

As if Ben doesn't have enough, I came across this outdoor playhouse and it was a heck of a deal. I regularly frequent Children's Orchard, a used children's clothing store in Springfield. It's a chain, and I linked the title to their national website. They offer cash or store credit for used children's clothing, toys and equipment. This fits perfectly with my values of frugality, reusing, and not keeping what we don't need - even in storage.

On a regular basis, I try to bring in boxes of Ben's clothes as he outgrows them. I keep a running credit with the store and have come across great deals on a stroller, dress clothes for Ben, nursing clothes, and I even bought my Maya Wrap there.

At my most recent visit, I came across a mint condition playhouse, as pictured above. Within ten minutes of them bringing it out and assembling it, I bought it and they had to take it apart all over again. It included the printout of the same item new - priced at $250. The store priced it at $100 and I had $75 store credit, making it a $25 purchase. How could I resist?

The employees knew it wouldn't last long because it had been kept indoors only (until know) and is in such great shape. Ben is still nervous about crawling outside for some reason, but he'll cruise around cautiously, favoring the doorbell which makes different noises each time he presses it.

The slide is another one of Ben's awesome birthday gifts, and it seems to fit next to the house in his outdoor play area. We still haven't decided if his setup would be more practical near the clothesline or the garden, each on opposite sides of our house, but both requiring our time and attention. I'll probably ask Josh to drag it around to each side of the house at least a couple of times before I decide.

The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry

In a rare move, I picked up a book of pure fiction. The Lace Reader was assigned to me by my book club - an eclectic group of mothers, people in education, architecture, law, and business. And if any of those ladies haven't finished the book yet, I promise not to reveal any spoilers.

The Lace Reader tells of Towner Whitney, a young woman from an upper-class family in Salem, Massachusetts. In spite of moving to California as an adult, she is drawn back into her confusing and estranged relationship with the women of her family. All of these women are "readers" of varying degrees, that is to say the read other's minds and fortunes with the aid of holding up a piece of lace and looking through it for images.

Just as The Thunderbolt Kid made me want to visit Des Moines, The Lace Reader made me want to visit Salem, Massachusetts - even more than Iowa (go figure). The descriptions of historical homes and streets, docks and harbors are seriously affecting my decisions about future vacations.

Throughout the novel is passages from "The Lace Reader," a guide on how to make and read lace. Descriptions of bone bobbins, lace pillows, and the ceremony of cutting off the lace is described in vivid detail in these introductions to each chapter.

The storyline is intriguing if not rambling. A murder mystery, love affair, religious cult, domestic abuse, and family drama, all intertwined, make for a book that is difficult to stop reading, even during the slow parts. Without saying too much more, the ending makes the journey worthwhile.

Restocking the Flock

A couple of weeks ago we suffered from a chickenocide. Although my spell check doesn't recognize the word my father-in-law should be credited with, our flock has suffered great loss. We awoke to dead chickens all over our yard and pasture, and only four remaining hens, stunned but unharmed. The small door to the coop was open, but the large door was locked. we are still not sure if it was a small dog or a opossum that killed and dragged our chickens across acres of land without actually eating or carrying them off.

One chicken was scared by the invader enough to jump the wooden fence into our backyard, where our own dogs picked up. We have a dog door leading from the backyard to our laundry room, and the next day I entered the laundry room to find a dead chicken and two proud dogs waiting for me. I then prepared to pack my bags and leave for Springfield for good. We already own a house there after all. It was almost too much.

However, after a night of reflection, we cleaned up the yard and began the search for suitable additions to the flock. As always, we found what we were looking for on Craigslist and Josh drove to Seymore for twenty three pullets and two roosters. He purchased a few different breeds, but mainly production reds this time around. We lost two in the first week, from the chickens crowding and trampling in transport and in the coop over the first day or two. The rest seem hearty and brave enough. 

The four big hens and the one duck are still laying and all of these changes didn't seem to affect their stride one bit.

A Touch of Pneumonia

For those who know me personally, it may seem strange for me to be posting pictures of Ben playing and having fun, knowing he is home sick this week. 

I wrote all of this week's blog entries on Sunday evening. That is my new method of keeping up with the blog. I'm writing several entries at once, when I have the chance to sit down and concentrate, then they will be scheduled to post each evening during the week. I'm hoping this will help me stay with posting at least every other day or so, as things start to pick up around the farm this spring.

Ben woke up the next day with a fever and has had one since. We took him to the doctor Monday, Wednesday and again today, and he has the very earliest stages of pneumonia. His fever spiked to 105 degrees on Wednesday, and he was prescribed strong antibiotics to fight a throat infection and the pneumonia both. Josh and I have shared taking off from work all week, and he is doing better each day. He is having long crying jags that we aren't used to, and he has been getting up throughout the night - furthering our leanings toward having an only child. I already forgot the constant mind static I feel when I haven't had a good night's sleep. Today's picture is his actual state - mostly sleeping when not angry or eating. I'm sure he will feel better in another few days.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson

Des Moines, Iowa in the 1950s may not sound like the most intriguing setting for a book. However, this is the hometown and era of Bill Bryson, upon which he reflects in his memoir - The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.


I'm somewhat of a slow reader, and I always have more than one book going at once. This book took me a little over a month to finish, and the first half was far more intriguing than the second. I blogged about this book in late January here, The concept of photographing a year of food is fascinating. I would love for this moment to be recreated by researchers for the average American family today, but I can only imagine how disheartening it would be for nutritionists everywhere.


Bryson portrays the 1950s as happy and plastic. Cheerful yet almost too good to be true. His recollection is from  the skewed vision of his childhood. The streets of Des Moines, the department stores and historical homes, and sweet neighborhoods and grocery stores made me want to visit Des Moines, for no other reason than to find these places from the book.

However, the last half of the book features less humorous anecdotes and more emphasis on his teenage years, trying to find his dad's stash of men's magazines and cigarettes. He closes with a depressing look at Des Moines today, with most of the nostalgia from the first half of the book now bulldozed for the sake of Wal-Mart and a Travel Lodge.

The funny stories from the first half of his book have motivated me to try reading another of his - A Walk In The Woods, about his trek on the Appalachian Trail. I'll be sure to post about that one too.

Other upcoming book posts include The Lace Reader (recently finished reading for the first time), Super Freakonomics (just started reading that one, but I'll be sure to write a refresher about how much I loved the first book - Freakonomics), My Life as a Guinea Pig (still in the middle of), and another entry combining a few of the Malcom Gladwell books I've read over the past few months. I would have written about those earlier, but I'm still not sure what I think about them just yet.

Spring Preparation

We got a bit of a late start, but we have already purchased and received our seeds and began garden preparation. Last year we had six raised beds that were 6' x 6' each. We then tried square foot gardening in each of them. This proved to be difficult because of how hard it was to weed and harvest the middle, from standing outside of the boxes. so this year we took all of those boxes down but one and plowed over a much larger area to plant in rows.

The smaller garden near the house

We plowed the garden with a tractor that has been in Josh's family for quite some time. His father brought it to us last week and Josh could not be more thrilled. It's too tall to store in our barn due to the opening and layout of our barn, so he erected a carport next to the barn. The less exciting part of that day was picking rocks out of the garden. A rite of passage for any southern Missouri gardener, I believe.

The big garden

We are still deciding between renting or buying a tiller to pull behind the tractor to finish readying the garden. After that, we are going to divide the soil into wide rows for planting. Our seeds are either harvested from last year's crops, (mine and my grandfather's), or purchased from Baker Creek. I'm a little late starting some of them indoors, but I hope to get that going soon too.

Last year I mentioned several books that were used as garden resources when we were getting started (Square Foot Gardening and Carrots Love Tomatoes). This year, we are keeping the close container / square foot garden that's next to the house for lettuce, herbs, and a couple of tomato plants that we will be able to reach easily, but for the big garden, we are using Storey's Basic Country Skills as our primary resource.

Our little weed picker

Ben's Birthday Party

The weekend following Ben's birthday, we had a small family gathering to celebrate. We didn't have a theme or matching hats, but we did have good weather, farm animals and time to walk the trail and spend time outside with our nearest and dearest.

Because everyone's Saturdays are so busy, we decided to have a birthday brunch and serve breakfast food. It made good use of our eggs and was quick and easy to prepare. After presents we had homemade cupcakes, but Ben got the special birthday cake as seen in the picture.

Ben got his first real pair of cowboy boots from PFI, given to him by my parents' neighbors. He was pretty excited about them. He later discovered they are perfect containers for his wooden blocks too.

He received too many wonderful gifts for me to post a picture of him playing with each, but the tricycle above was another big hit. I love that it straps him in for now, but most of it comes apart and will leave him with a stand alone tricycle when he's old enough. We've already taken this one all over the farm and down to the pond and back. It's quite a workout to push that uphill through the weeds.

I hope no one felt left out, but I really enjoyed keeping his birthday a small family affair. The breakfast idea was a big hit, because everyone had the rest of the day to themselves and we had time to recuperate and clean up before going to a church event that evening. i'm still not entirely sure where we are going to put everything he got, though.

First Time Coloring

As suggested by our Parents as Teacher's person, we have started letting Ben practice coloring. He's a big fan for brief increments of time, followed by attempts to eat the crayons and paper.

I love the Crayola big pad of paper, and he actually did much better when the paper was held vertically, but I couldn't do that and hold the camera at the same time. After he had this paper pretty well covered, I cut it up and made it into thank you notes for his birthday presents. The "washable" part of these crayons proved to be true, as he enjoyed coloring his shirt as much as he enjoyed coloring the paper.

After a day of appointments, Ben has graduated from helmet therapy. These pictures are actually from a few days ago. His head isn't quite where they hoped it would be, but the surgeon said that we can expect no further change and the doctors are all pleased with the growth and shape of Ben's head. Considering his age and all he's gone through, everyone is impressed with how great he looks. We will continue to have annual checkups for the next couple of years, but the prognosis is good.

At the later appointment, his pediatrician postponed his vaccinations again because his ears are clear but he has a red throat and low grade fever. We're going back in another two weeks and hoping for health.

Catching My Breath

Whew, what a hectic few weeks we've had. I have plenty to write about - Ben's birthday party, spring farm preparation, a new outside playhouse for Ben, a new (to us) tractor, new chickens, first time coloring, and two books I just finished reading. I'm sure I could come up with even more, but I'm wanting to divide everything up to write shorter and (hopefully) more frequently.

Earlier this week, I had my first article published! Earlier, I posted my article submission here, about nursing through infant surgery. It made it into this month's La Leche League's New Beginnings (pages 10-11). I am so excited about being published. I've written an education article that was published locally a few years ago (about teaching reader's theater in the classroom), but this is the first major publication I've had. I absolutely love writing and hope to continue through this blog and maybe through other outlets as well.

Tomorrow, Ben has several appointments with his surgeons, doctor, helmet people. We will hopefully find out if he is finished with helmet therapy. I know we are certainly ready for it to be over with. It smells terrible and Ben has gone from being fine with it and used to sleeping in it, to dreading each time it has to go back on. I'll be sure to post how the day goes again tomorrow.

And, thanks for all of the comments and emails about Ben's playhouse. It was quite the project and I still haven't finished everything I would like to add and adjust with it, but Ben certainly enjoys crawling in and around it.

Pictures are from us spending time outside, taking advantage of this wonderful weather. Ben spent most of his time carefully studying bits of leaves and sticks, when not playing in his playhouse.

Happy Birthday Ben!

Today Ben is one year old. He celebrated by skipping daycare and spending the day with grammy. He joined Josh for lunch and had dinner with grandma Sherry and grandpa Steve. Between all of that, I gave him his first haircut (just a little off the back) then quickly finished up his birthday present that I have been working on since a little after Christmas - Ben's Barn! It's a felt playhouse that fits over a card table.

The front is made to look like a barn door and he has a lamp on one side and a mailbox on the other. The mailbox opens and has letters that he can put through the opening. I made the lettering by printing the words "Ben's Barn" and then using that as a pattern to trace onto the felt.

One side has a vegetable garden with corn, radishes, onions inside pockets made to look like soil. Some of the vegetables have jingle bells sewn into them and others have crinkly plastic or other textured fabrics on the inside. The stems are bendy and made by sewing pipe cleaners into felt tubes. The corn is woven white and yellow corn, just like the corn we grew in our garden last summer.

The other side has an apple tree and a corral which holds his stuffed cow. The apples come off with velcro, and I may make pears or oranges to stick on there some day.

The back is our pond with velcro fish, a dragonfly, and cattails.

The inside is much less complicated, mostly covered in book pockets. 

I also used clear plastic sheeting to make picture frame pockets around the top of each wall.

And curtains for each of the side windows. The tiebacks are also tied around the legs of the card table to keep everything in place a little better.

And he has a fireplace in back. I still need to sew around each of the windows and trim the bottom a little. He absolutely loved playing with his barn. He crawled in and out through the door several times, then pulled all of the books out of the pockets, the apples off the tree, then crawled back in and out a few more times, trying to see if he could get his head through the mail slot. 

Felt is so forgiving and it is very much like using construction paper. Nothing was turned and top-stitched and everything but the lettering was cut freehand without doing much of any measuring. I sketched out my plans and I must give credit to my blog-spiration here. You will see many of her ideas repeated throughout my playhouse project, (mailbox, mesh in the windows to keep your kid from climbing through them, tree and garden ideas, etc.) and I am so grateful for her blog and sharing her creativity with the rest of us. She includes a lot more details about how to make each section and templates that make it possible to completely repeat her process.

I custom fit this to our small card table. I believe she used her dining room table, and somewhere she mentions that with felt, it is a little tricky to manage that much fabric when you are in the final stages of putting everything together. Because I did the inside and outside, I had a tough time managing the weight of the final project when I was sewing the finishing touches. I still need to go back and fix a couple of things and it's going to be tricky to keep the fabric from breaking the needle or pulling in the wrong direction.

I didn't use any patterns or templates, so I don't have any of that to share on here, but I think the best part about the barn is that I used features of our own farm and home. Ben's barn was the single biggest crafty/sewing project I have ever attempted and I think it was a big hit.

This is from his first haircut. I figured while I had the good scissors out I might as well cut a few of the long places in the back. I already don't like how old his haircut makes him look.

Toothbrush

We started brushing Ben's seven teeth this week. He doesn't mind it as much as I expected.

Our helmet appointment was this afternoon and his head hasn't progressed any further over the past two appointments. He's very close to being within the "normal" range for his head size and proportions, but I'm not sure he's going to get there. Helmet therapy is so uncommon for children of his age, and their bone structure is not as mailable aside from surgery. We go to Dr. Sami again in March and we will hopefully "graduate" from helmet therapy. I am so ready to be done with it.

Almost 1

Ben will be one a week from tomorrow! I realize how cliché it sounds, but his first year has gone by all too quickly. I tried so desperately to live in the moment and keep track of the most momentous events by writing them down. There are still moments too precious to capture here, like the connection we've had through nursing, or his excitement in initiating peek-a-boo for the first time.

Ben started daycare last week and will be going three days per week for the rest of the school year. He enjoys playing with the other children, but is still getting used to the new routine and the separation from familiar adults. He has been in the care of us or family exclusively until now. Considering that, he's doing quite well with this transition. The daycare workers have commented that he definitely lets everyone know if he needs something. I think that's a trait that Josh and I may have equally contributed to his personality.

Taxes Finished

Every year I have had to file taxes, I do my own. This makes my tenth year of being a taxpaying citizen, and my tenth year of filing with TurboTax online. I think most of the online programs are pretty comparable, but Josh ran the numbers through H&R Block and I used TurboTax and we ended up with a bigger refund through TurboTax. That doesn't really make sense, but I think it includes more deduction categories or something. Josh commented that this is such a good example of why the tax code needs to be simplified.

It took me about five hours this year because I had to total a mountain of medical bills and receipts. Our out of pocket medical expenses ended up being $6,892 for the year. That's not even including the three thousand we put on the flex spending account card. Unbelievable. We have health insurance. I really don't understand how people without health insurance can handle medical catastrophe without filing medical bankruptcy. I went through every bank statement for the year and highlighted the medical expenses, Josh's work expenses, and anything I spent on my classroom and it was fascinating to see what was left.

I didn't realize how our country's recession has affected us until I thought about last year compared to the previous year. Having a child has also changed our spending habits dramatically. I'm already trying to be optimistic about this year. Without major medical expenses, and with both of us working regular, salaried jobs that have taxes withheld, I think everything should go smoothly.

I am still adamant about cutting costs where possible. We may not need to buy shampoo or toiletries for another year with the amount I bought with my couponing binge. However, if we run out, there is no way I will shop without a coupon. We also purchased a Sam's club membership with intentions of buying in bulk to save. On diapers alone, we will make back our membership fee this year.

Ben is so, so close to taking his first steps. He stands for quite a while, and can walk all over the house if you hold one of his hands or if he's pushing his train.

A Year of Food

This picture is from Life Magazine in 1951 and is an example of what the average blue collar family ate in one year. The amounts are based on Department of Agriculture statistics. The man in the picture worked for the Du Pont plant in Cleveland for $1.96 per hour. His family spent $25 per week on food.

This is the annual grocery list:

• Evaporated milk, 56 cans
• Cheese, 20 lb
• Butter, 56 lb
• Margarine, 21 lb
• Milk, 698 qts
• Peaches, 3 bu
• Grapes, 2 boxes
• Eggs, 131 doz
• Apples, 2 crates
• Oranges, 2 crates
• Cantaloupes, 1 crate
• Lemons, 1 crate
• Watermelons, 2
• Plums, 1 box
• Bananas, 1 stalk
• Peaches, 20 cans
• Cherries, 11 cans
• Frozen corn, 2 cases
• Frozen orange juice, 48 cans
• Shortening, 72 lb
• Flour, 450 lb
• Dried fruit, 8 pkg
• Sugar, 350 lb
• Pears, 15 cans
• Bread, 180 loaves
• Tomatoes, 15 baskets
• Potatoes, 690 lb
• Beans, 3 baskets
• Radishes, 1 basket
• Squash, 1 basket
• Cucumbers, 1 basket
• Beets, 3 baskets
• Ice cream, 8 ½ gal
• Lettuce, 2 crates
• Cauliflower, 1 crate
• Cabbage, 1 crate
• Carrots, 1 crate
• Celery, 1 crate
• Peas, 1 bu
• Onions, 1 sack
• Orange juice,11 cans
• Spinach, 22 cans
• Sauerkraut, 12 cans
• Cereal, 48 pkg
• Coffee, 39 lb
• Tea, 12 lb
• Ham, 144 lb
• Pork loins, 132 lb
• Saddle lamb, 15 lb
• Saddle veal, 30 lb
• Carp, 25 lb
• Salmon, 20 lb
• Chickens, 31
• Turkeys, 2
• Beef, 300 lb

This two and a half tons of food is such a clear example of hour our food choices have changed over the past sixty years. I first saw this photo in Bill Bryson's memoir The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, a comical reflection of his childhood in the 1950s. He features this picture on the first two pages of the book and refers to it as an example of how plentiful and happy most Americans were during the 1950s. From there, I researched the photograph further and found the actual list, particularly the amount of fresh produce and basic supplies and materials, fascinating. I would be interested to catalog and document the groceries we purchase for a year. I'm not sure if I would be as proud to share that list all of the time. It certainly would not include three baskets of beets, 15 pounds of saddle lamb, or 72 pounds of shortening. I still love the idea of going back to basics.

Ben has started to move into the next box of hand me downs (size 12 months), and I'm so excited about all of the new cute things he has to wear. Josh picked out this outfit for church this morning. It was a pretty big hit, but I can't believe how old he looks.

Food Rules

Michael Pollan's latest book, Food Rules, is a very quik read, and refueled my interest in nutritional anthropology and making better choices about my food. Michael Pollan wrote The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food, both of which I recommend for everyone to read. He also contributed a great deal to Food Inc., one of the best food documentaries I've seen. For those of you smirking at the idea of comparing that to all the food documentaries I've seen, I would recommend the following: Supersize Me, Food Fight, King Corn, Fast Food Nation, and The Future of Food. I know this may seem so far out there, but I honestly believe that our food choices, how, where and what we eat, can be one of the biggest shifts that Americans can make in order to solve obesity, the health care and welfare crisis, and even the increasing problems children are having in school (ADHD, behavior problems, anxiety, and poor social and emotional coping skills, etc.)

Back to the book at hand, Pollan outlines very basic rules to follow that would accomplish all of these changes. But I will be the first to admit that food choice habits are so hard to break. Some of my favorite rules are:
#2 - Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
#7 - Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third grader could not pronounce.
#13 - Eat only foods that will eventually rot.
#22 - Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.
#46 - Stop eating before you're full.
This continues on through 64 rules, each with a short explanation. This short book is a good compliment to his two longer texts which have the same general theme with much, much greater detail. I feel so strongly about this issue and I truly believe that changing what we eat can change our nation.

In related news, we just placed our seed order with Baker Creek Seeds and we have some big plans for the garden this year!



Ben is up to seven teeth, and he can stand on his own for a few seconds. He hasn't tried to take any steps yet, but he will walk all over the house on his own while pushing his train. Thanks to Tiffany for the cute monkey tags shirt!