5 days of food tracking...

That's how many I've gone in a row so far. It's going well. I've stayed on my target every day without too much trouble. I'm using this iphone app called MyFitnessPal which I'm really happy with. Over the years, I have experimented with a LOT of different food tracking software, and I think this is probably about the best I've come across. One of the coolest features is that you can scan the UPCs on packaged foods (even things like bunched cilantro, it turns out-- anything with a barcode!) and it'll pull the info from their database. Awesome.

That means that when I made this Pad Thai for dinner tonight:



It only took about 5 minutes to enter the ingredients for the recipe into the program, as opposed to the, I don't know, half an hour it would've taken if I'd had to type in all of the 30-some ingredients, then choose the right one from a list of similar options, etc. For someone who cooks a lot (me), this sort of time saving feature could be the difference between whether or not I keep using the program or give up food tracking.

Oh, I wanted to briefly note an interesting development re: the Emperor. When I went on maternity leave, we cut back on his preschool hours-- first dropping him down to 2 days, then back up to 3 for a while, and now down just to one (Wednesdays). I had noticed that on days he didn't go to school, he tended to be more open to trying stuff I made for dinner even if it wasn't his favorite. This week? I think he tried dinner every night, despite the fact that I made a lot of (to him) weird stuff. Tonight he tried EVERYTHING in his dinner-- noodles, bean sprouts, tofu, broccoli, peanuts-- and ate a ton.

I don't know if it's that I feed him less during the day (maybe? we do 2 snacks & lunch, just like his school) or just that he's resigned to eating my food when he's with me or what. But it's a pleasant change and I hope it lasts!

He also finally went up a shoe size for the first time in about a year. Here he is modeling his new shoes:



And here's the little one, modeling his cute face: