Instinct, twinkly gate, randomizer

Added to the page on instinct (linked after):

Lisa in Arizona, in 2003, about children choosing foods:

My children are given a full refrigerator and cupboards of food and they pick out lots of things at the grocery store every time we go. They've never been coerced to eat anything and they are the ones that have the healthiest diets in my family. DH (husband) and I grew up with lots of food restrictions and we find comfort in the foods that we snuck as children. I'm slowly "Undieting", but I can see that it is going to take a long time to undo all the years of food teaching that was done to me. Thankfully, my children will never have to do that.

Today, we had a picnic with another wonderful homeschooling family (I'm finally starting to find some). My 2.5 yo daughter was given the option to eat whatever she wanted. She chose 3-4 potato chips for an appetizer, grapes for her main course, and a couple of apple slices for dessert, with only water to quench her thirst. Her choice and she stopped eating the second that she was full and she refused to eat anymore. It brought back memories of not being allowed to have the chips until the "healthy" sandwich was eaten, eating the sandwich and being full, but still downing as many chips as I possibly could just so that I could finally have them (then I'd eat the dessert, too, and I usually didn't even like it). I'll never force my children to eat or not eat certain foods. They were naturally born with the ability to figure out what to eat and when, I'm not going to teach that out of them and I listen to their natural wisdom every day.

-Lisa in AZ

https://sandradodd.com/instinct

There is new art at Just Add Light and Stir. I had been putting a line like ___ to mark that a post had been edited to fit phone screens, and most of those I had turned to links, gradually, but I wanted art instead of a line. Bo King (who also did the logo, and the randomizer, and a bit more of my site art) made a very New-Mexico looking gate and after a few seconds it will twinkle to beckon readers in. It's sweet. I've added a few hundred and have many hundred to go, and will probably never finish.
I keep adding pages to the randomizer as I come across good ones I want to be sure are linked. It's up to 975 links, this week.

Some pages, I leave out for not being good random entry points. Maybe they're frivolous and have no weight. If they're too weighty, they'll be linked from related topics. Deep divers will find them, but shore waders might be spooked.https://sandradodd.com/random

image (a link) by Bo King