Today is Ana's birthday. She's five. This is incredible.

I mean it, it is literally unbelievable to me. Surely we skipped a few years there!

I'm celebrating by making her take a nap. Once she stopped fidgeting all around she fell asleep REALLY FAST, so that's clearly the right thing to do.

We've been watching old Electric Company clips on YouTube. She can now read snap, clap, tap... and lap, and nap, and map, and rap, and pap, and any other word that ends with -ap. Those people were brilliant. Ana's specific words were "I like this! It makes it easy for me to read the words." Indeed.

Of course, she still has a problem of trying to guess words based on one or two letters, but, being as she's only four five, I'm not even remotely concerned. (And, as always, I suspect she knows much more than she lets on.)

Gotta go, Evangeline is up.

You know, I was fully an adult when I realized that soy sauce was made with soybeans?

(Of course, soy sauce in packets often isn't, but that's beside the point.)

So I can be forgiven for only realizing just now the hidden gem in rising grain (including corn) prices....

Less high fructose corn syrup all over the place!

Seriously, once you get out of the habit of eating lots of foods with that, it tastes really obvious and disgusting. And it sneaks in a lot of places, too.