Over the summer, the city decided to try, once again, to identify "Baby Hope"

Given that this child was found dead over 20 years ago, it was a bit of a long shot, but you have to try, right?

Well, it seems to have paid off! A woman suspecting she might be the preschooler's sister has come forward, and the DNA confirms it. (That link goes to the NYTimes, and it isn't any more informative than this post. If you don't want to hit the ten-per-month limit, don't bother with it.)

Given the situation it seems pretty certain somebody in the family was the one who abused and murdered that poor child, but no charges have been filed yet. I have to say, when I saw the article this summer about the renewed search I didn't expect much to come from it!

The nieces had been spending their allowance at the corner store lately. A lot.

There were two big problems with this, the first being that they were getting entirely too much junk food during the day and the second being that that junk food was all full of food coloring.

I do suspect that the huge moodiness and tantrumminess of the past few weeks (HUGE!) might have been from the food coloring, so Jenn and I decided to just cut it off.

They did make the fair point that it can be hard to get treats without the ickies, so I went yesterday and picked up some candy and chips in bulk that is food coloring free, and we told the girls they can pay for those treats from their allowance instead, at prices comparable to what they'd pay for food-coloring-full equivalents.

I then spent quite a bit of time bagging everything up into single servings. (Did you know a single serving of jelly beans is just ten beans? That seemed chintzy, so the baggies have 15 each. At 5 for 8¢ in the store (I did the math as I bagged) we are making a 1¢ profit if we sell them to the girls for a quarter a bag. Woohoo! Money in the bank, baby!

Then I nibbled the leftovers. Well, the ones that weren't gross grape. Blech.

When you guys eat jelly beans (pretend there's a poll here), do you just pick whatever comes to hand or do you sort them first? And if you do sort them, do you a. eat randomly, b. eat one color at a time or c. try to make them come out even?

On that note, I saw this article today. I had always wondered what sort of awfulness the phrase "natural flavoring" might cover. Wondered, but was too scared/sensible to check....

http://tinyurl.com/kq73u9p