incidentally human milk contains 10x the glutamate of cow milk.
I had a bit of a lousy day due to renewed Neighbor Troubles. I went into it on Facebook and I don't want to go into it further here.
The Husband went to T&T (an Asian supermarket) and got a number of good things (douhua!), but one that's really cheered me up is some juice from a brand called Happy Planet. Just looking at the carton kind of cheers me up a little. He got the strawberry-banana blend and the taste is very cheery too. I'm hoping to make a smoothie with it for breakfast tomorrow.
The end is near for nursing with Pippa. She asked to nurse this morning, but didn't nurse otherwise all day, including, for the first time, not nursing at all at bedtime. It's been months since she fell asleep nursing at bedtime, but this was the first time she didn't nurse as part of winding down. We read some books in her crib, then she wanted to rearrange the blankets, and then she just settled down and went to sleep.
This is bittersweet to me. Part of me is disappointed that we don't seem to be likely to make it to the golden two-year mark. Part of me is relieved that we won't have to negotiate tandem nursing. Part of me is pleased that my baby is becoming a little girl. Part of me is sad that my little girl won't be a baby much longer.
I guess that's all natural.
Lately the weather has been so beautiful but I haven't really been able to get out in it. Some of the early blooming ornamental cherries have started. I was thinking about maybe setting up a hanami (flower viewing) party for Palm Sunday afternoon. I could make some bento. I could borrow a relative's sushi making stuff, or just make hand rolls. I'm on a sushi kick. I want to try making temaki sometime this week. I have this residual anti-nori feeling, based on my first childhood experience with them, at the house of a Korean-American friend who ate them straight out of the jar, and offered me one. It was too intense, too salty, and too different to kid-me's taste buds. So even though I've eaten and enjoyed many nori-containing dishes since, I still have a residual anti-seaweed feeling. I'd like to get over it.
As an aside, while looking for something else, I found out that the secret to Kewpie Mayo's mysterious savory-sweet character is... MSG.
Somehow this makes it seems less magical. MSG is like the crib sheet of cooking.
---
I read House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones finally. It started a bit slow in that the main character Charmain doesn't really seem to have any ambitions at all. Like, I'm not an ambitious person myself, and even I thought she was rather blank on this point. She wants a librarian job, but as she seems to be under the impression that what a librarian does is sit and read books all day, she would have been in for a bit of a shock had not, well, the plot of the novel (getting volunteered to watch her wizard distant relative's house) happened to her. It's 99% reaction and 1% action I guess. I think it was hard to identify with her passivity because it wasn't even the sort of Fanny Price passivity that thinks things without acting on them. She came across a bit insensate.
It was mostly a very enjoyable light read, however it does contain (mostly off-page) body horror, which I was not expecting. [Spoiler (click to open)]The nasty beastie of the book reproduces by laying eggs via stinger inside humans (and other creatures), which turns out about as well as Alien would have you expect for the hapless host. Both on-page victims get rescued by magical surgery. In the back story, it's mentioned that someone died from it though. Oh, another reason why I had a hard time with Charmain is that she vacillates so strangely in her reactions to the lubbocks and lubbockins. Yes, when she first encounters one, she thinks they "just" tear apart and eat people, but good gravy, isn't that enough? Why does she recover so quickly from her near escape, yet get SO freaked out by just reading about lubbocks in a book, and then yet again be basically fine (more disgusted than horrified) when watching the lubbock (through a window, granted) injecting someone with eggs, then get super freaked out with the eye color thing?
The other thing I didn't like about the book was that one character had a lisp. I don't mind lisps in real life, but for some reason I absolutely hate reading phonetically-spelled lisps. "Heighth thcare me thilly," etc. [Spoiler (click to open)]The character is putting it on, and it's SUPPOSED to be irritating, but it's a bit too effective.
I did enjoy all the food descriptions though. I want some buttery crumpets now.
The Husband went to T&T (an Asian supermarket) and got a number of good things (douhua!), but one that's really cheered me up is some juice from a brand called Happy Planet. Just looking at the carton kind of cheers me up a little. He got the strawberry-banana blend and the taste is very cheery too. I'm hoping to make a smoothie with it for breakfast tomorrow.
The end is near for nursing with Pippa. She asked to nurse this morning, but didn't nurse otherwise all day, including, for the first time, not nursing at all at bedtime. It's been months since she fell asleep nursing at bedtime, but this was the first time she didn't nurse as part of winding down. We read some books in her crib, then she wanted to rearrange the blankets, and then she just settled down and went to sleep.
This is bittersweet to me. Part of me is disappointed that we don't seem to be likely to make it to the golden two-year mark. Part of me is relieved that we won't have to negotiate tandem nursing. Part of me is pleased that my baby is becoming a little girl. Part of me is sad that my little girl won't be a baby much longer.
I guess that's all natural.
Lately the weather has been so beautiful but I haven't really been able to get out in it. Some of the early blooming ornamental cherries have started. I was thinking about maybe setting up a hanami (flower viewing) party for Palm Sunday afternoon. I could make some bento. I could borrow a relative's sushi making stuff, or just make hand rolls. I'm on a sushi kick. I want to try making temaki sometime this week. I have this residual anti-nori feeling, based on my first childhood experience with them, at the house of a Korean-American friend who ate them straight out of the jar, and offered me one. It was too intense, too salty, and too different to kid-me's taste buds. So even though I've eaten and enjoyed many nori-containing dishes since, I still have a residual anti-seaweed feeling. I'd like to get over it.
As an aside, while looking for something else, I found out that the secret to Kewpie Mayo's mysterious savory-sweet character is... MSG.
Somehow this makes it seems less magical. MSG is like the crib sheet of cooking.
---
I read House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones finally. It started a bit slow in that the main character Charmain doesn't really seem to have any ambitions at all. Like, I'm not an ambitious person myself, and even I thought she was rather blank on this point. She wants a librarian job, but as she seems to be under the impression that what a librarian does is sit and read books all day, she would have been in for a bit of a shock had not, well, the plot of the novel (getting volunteered to watch her wizard distant relative's house) happened to her. It's 99% reaction and 1% action I guess. I think it was hard to identify with her passivity because it wasn't even the sort of Fanny Price passivity that thinks things without acting on them. She came across a bit insensate.
It was mostly a very enjoyable light read, however it does contain (mostly off-page) body horror, which I was not expecting. [Spoiler (click to open)]The nasty beastie of the book reproduces by laying eggs via stinger inside humans (and other creatures), which turns out about as well as Alien would have you expect for the hapless host. Both on-page victims get rescued by magical surgery. In the back story, it's mentioned that someone died from it though. Oh, another reason why I had a hard time with Charmain is that she vacillates so strangely in her reactions to the lubbocks and lubbockins. Yes, when she first encounters one, she thinks they "just" tear apart and eat people, but good gravy, isn't that enough? Why does she recover so quickly from her near escape, yet get SO freaked out by just reading about lubbocks in a book, and then yet again be basically fine (more disgusted than horrified) when watching the lubbock (through a window, granted) injecting someone with eggs, then get super freaked out with the eye color thing?
The other thing I didn't like about the book was that one character had a lisp. I don't mind lisps in real life, but for some reason I absolutely hate reading phonetically-spelled lisps. "Heighth thcare me thilly," etc. [Spoiler (click to open)]The character is putting it on, and it's SUPPOSED to be irritating, but it's a bit too effective.
I did enjoy all the food descriptions though. I want some buttery crumpets now.