I think self-destruction is one of the primary goals of the toddler, right after not going to sleep and getting to the candy.

I really don't know how our species survived. You'd think all the little cave-babies and toddlers would've choked on rocks (Annabel is fascinated by pebbles) or poisoned themselves by stuffing random leaves in their mouths.

We were all about peanut butter, and I never went to school with a seriously peanut-allergic kid

Apparently there are a lot of peanuts in places you wouldn't expect them (e.g. skin oils), as well as there being cross-allergies to soy. A baby who's on soy formula young is supposed to be at greater risk of a later peanut allergy.

You'd think all the little cave-babies and toddlers would've choked on rocks (Annabel is fascinated by pebbles) or poisoned themselves by stuffing random leaves in their mouths.

You have a baby every year and you raise a quarter of them, if you're lucky.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes, everybody. Those who are older than me may now scoff when I say I am THIRTY and OMG and Whoops that whole "you'll know what you're doing by then" thing wasn't really true. Those younger than me may feel free to comment on the fuddy-duddiness of my hairdo.

I know that I ws exposed to peanuts at an early age, because I remember getting several whole (shelled) peanuts stuck up my nose, when I was no more than three years old. Apparently, I was trying to show off to a neighbor child.

First report: doctors mystified by increases in allergy rates.

I have to wonder how much of the increase is due to increased recognition of what is going on, and more widespread public acceptance of the fact that food allergies can in fact kill you.

I am such a dork, I love academia. I'm not yet sure what this abstract is saying, but I think I love it:

Soc Sci Med. 2004 Feb;58(4):825-36. Related Articles, Links Governing peanuts: the regulation of the social bodies of children and the risks of food allergies.

Rous T, Hunt A.

Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University, Ottawa ON K1S 5B6, Canada.

This paper explores the way in which children with life-threatening food allergies, their parents and their public caregivers have increasingly been made subject to both projects of moral regulation and mechanism of governance aimed at the management of risk. We argue that new regulatory measures in Canada designed to significantly change the food consumption practices among children in elementary schools have three main consequences. First, they structure the relationship between ideologies of individualism and community so as to blur the distinction between the public and private dimensions of school life. Second, such efforts ensure that a discourse, formerly concerned with the problem of health promotion, has been supplanted by new sets of discourses styled by absent experts that focus on the management of risk. Third, such regulatory practices have a particular dual effect that is characteristic of liberal welfare governance. On the one hand, they encourage the individualized development of self-governing subjects, and on the other, they stimulate a heightened moral problematization of 'safe' eating habits within the environment of the elementary school.

heightened moral problematization

Love this.

I think I may be the queen of sloth right now.

From what I remember, the point of the article was to stress that nursing mothers should take care about what kind of Vitamin E oil they used on their nipples. There was some speculation that because a lot of it had been peanut based, that babies were being exposed to too much peanut oil, too soon, before they could tolerate it.

Most peanut allergics don't react to peanut oil unless it's cold-pressed.

My mother ate english muffins with peanut butter for breakfast and apple slices dipped in peanut butter as snacks throughout all 4 of her pregnancies. Only one kid turned out allergic. Sure, there are environmental factors you can avoid, but it's still pretty much a crap-shoot.

OMG. One of my coworkers is explaining American Pie to the rest of them.

The song, not the movie. One of them didn't know the title of the song, and they're treating the "this is about the death of Buddy Holly" like it's news. I'm willing to let "Hotel California is about drugs" slide, but not American Pie! I'm the music-illiterate foreigner here!

Quick, ask them what the lyrics to "Blinded by the Light" really are.

I'll see your "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright" (which is easy, since I've never heard of it) and raise you a "Little Red Corvette."

Well, I still have no idea what LRC is about (aside from your Trojan comment). But I never really concentrated on the lyrics, either.

Sonofabitch is gone.

See, I don't want him off the Katrina case, I want him gone gone. It's possible there are some vengeancey feelings involved.