Whimsy Fail?

One of Kinsie's favorite things is playing with songs and making them her own. Old MacDonald is a favorite to play with - Old MacDonald had SOME PANTS. Old MacDonald had a BOWL OF SPAGHETTI! Twinkle Twinkle little CRAYON! A B C D E F BOWL OF SPAGHETTI! (Spaghetti is just fun to say, I think)

Goodnight Moon is part of our bedtime routine. After all the other things - nightly ablutions and kisses to everyone, we climb into bed and I read book after book to the girls. The last one is always Goodnight Moon. Kins has had it memorized for almost 2 years now. Tonight Pips and I were both in ridiculous moods so I was playing with the text a little and Pips was giggling and suggesting ideas (that mostly involved inserting blueberries into the text).

"In the great green room there was a telephone and a red balloon and a picture of the cow jumping over MOUNT EVEREST! And there were three little bears sitting IN THE BATHTUB!"

Kins kept correcting me but I thought it was all in fun. After, at Pip's suggestion, we discussed the quiet old lady who was EATING BLUEBERRIES, Kins burst into tears. "THAT IS NOT RIGHT! THAT IS NOT WHAT SHE IS DOING SHE IS WHISPERING HUSH AND NOT EATING ANYTHING AT ALL LIKE A BLUEBERRY!" She only calmed down again after I promised to never read Goodnight Moon wrong again. In the future I am going to remember that bedtime is not the time to mess with the Kins's carefully constructed world views.

So ... now that I'm blogging again (and here to stay! I hope!), let me tell you about the girls.

[image description: Kins and Pips run in wild circles in a field next to Dominican University.]
Pip Facts:
She just turned two
She has a special pillow and blanket she calls bing-bing and po po, not respectively.
I think her favorite color is blue.
She can count her toes. “Fwee, fwee, fwee, four, fiiiiiiie!”
She adores blueberries
Watch out, she bites.

[image description: Kins looking like a hipster in a black tutu-style skirt with silver hearts, a swirly handpainted-looking (yet mass produced) heart shirt and a headband over her hair hipster style. She looks like a total hipster. Pips the snuggler is all ready for bed in her monster pajamas.]
Kins Facts:
She just turned four
She has a special pillow and blanket called (more literally) her buggy pillow and her letter blanket.
Her favorite color is orange and if you let her she will monologue on her love for orange for ages.
She read her first word not sight-word last week! It was a name - Cora - and she sounded it out and asked me who that was. GENIUS BABY!
She hates to eat anything green but she would live on carrots if I would let her (and I somewhat do)
When Pips bites, Kins sometimes bites back (we're working on this with both of them. Don't worry.)

[image description: Pips and her curls walking down the stairs in the rain.]

Big Bouffant by Kate Hosford and ABC is for Circus by Patrick Hruby

Title: Big Bouffant
Author: Kate Hosford
Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group
Pub Date: 04/01/2011 - APRIL FOOLS DAY!
Reviewed from: Galley from Netgalley

Title: ABC is for Circus
Author: Patrick Hruby
Publisher: Ammo Books
Pub Date: on sale now!
Reviewed from: Galley from Netgalley

Sidenotes: I put all the info at the top because I want to do more of a story dual review than a more regular review - because for me these two books will always be intertwined with tonight. Also I can't find either of these books on Indiebound so I'm linking to Amazon instead of to Indiebound. I'm still a huge fan of the little guy and fully encourage everyone to buy local. But whatever. Also? I'm typing this on my sister's laptop - a MacBook. OMG. There is no home key. And if I press ctrl + shift + arrow to highlight lots of text at once it doesn't let me. Not only does it not let me but it BEEPS at me and makes me all sorts of upset. Also it'll underline words it thinks are spelled wrong but there is no right click button! How am I supposed to right click without the ability to right click? That sounds like some sort of Zen meditation but it is actually a dire problem. And I'm sorry - I'm not even going to try to put pictures on here. I'm super fail with a Mac. I'll get better. But anyway - the books.

I used to talk a lot about my neurosis on this blog but then I found somewhere else to ramble incessantly so they haven't been on here recently and this blog can be a hair more professional. Tonight? The neuroses. What on earth does this have to do with books? Wait - I'll get there.

Pippa is a pretty easy sleeper but Kaylee has always been hard to get to bed. Tonight I'm taking care of my brother's girlfriend's son as well as both of my girls while my whole family is at the Notre Dame game. I only enjoy football in big groups of people I love which this game would have been but since someone had to stay home with the teeny tinys, I would much rather do that. And we all had a lovely night. And Pippa went to bed beautifully. And Aaron went to bed beautifully. And Kaylee lay in bed and whined and cried and called for me. I've learned to give her 15 minutes between goings in to see her. I hate it, it's hard, but the other option is lying in her bed for an hour or so until we both drift off to sleep and I wake up with a crick in my neck and a foot in my nostril. So tough love it is. And tonight it was hard. And I was sitting in my bed feeling sorry for myself and, "oh woe is me my brother's girlfriend is better at raising kids than I am, look her baby went right to sleep even though mine is 10 feet from him making enough noise to wake the dead." You know those nights, right?

And then I hear the pitter patter of little feet and there was Kaylee looking up at me with tear filled eyes, "Mom - the only thing that will ever make me happy ever is one book. One really good book."

We're on vacation and I thought I was being so smart by going to the second hand store (kid's books 15 for $1!) and buying a slew of paperbacks and only packing those. Light, small, and if they get lost or ripped on the journey it isn't such a big deal. The problem? While some of the books I brought are good (Tarzanna is my favorite), none are that perfect book, ya know? And I pulled Kaylee up onto my sister's amazingly tall guest bed and thought about how I would fix this conundrum. And then I remembered that the good folks at NetGalley had given me 2 picture books to review! So I pulled them out and they are both absolute winners, folks. I will be buying both of these for real. My favorite was Big Bouffant. Kaylee's favorite was ABC is for Circus but I think for both of us it was a pretty close tie. And the best part? After I read the books I carried Kaylee back to bed and she went right to sleep. MAGIC BOOKS!

The beginning of Big Bouffant reminds me of The Hair of Zoe Fleefenbacher Goes to School. On Anabelle's first day of school she notices how everyone has one of just a few hair styles so she resolves to do something different and falls in love with her grandmother's bouffant. Her mother is skeptical of doing such an involved and strange hairdo on the girl so she tries to do it herself with ... severely weird results. And then her mother relents and she becomes an absolute hit at school with everyone (including the boys) joining in to see just how high they can get their hair. Holly Clifton-Brown's artwork is gorgeous and fun and made me want to join Anabelle's class. Their teacher was wearing plaid pants with an orange star-filled shirt on the first day - how can you not want to learn from a lady like that? And Kate Hosford's rhyming text was just fun to read to Kaylee. I love it when a book makes her giggle throughout - and with any luck she'll get over her hatred of having her hair brushed (which doesn't go so well with her fear of getting her hair cut) and let me give her a bouffant!

ABC is for Circus is just gorgeous. (Sidenote: since I had to look this book up on Amazon I discovered that the artist has also made this gorgeous puzzle. Kaylee is currently obsessed with both puzzles and princesses so a puzzle of a princess castle done by the artist of one of her favorite new books? I think I know what she's getting for Christmas.) It was full of words that Kaylee didn't know (calliope and kerchief) but now she does. I've found that ABC books are so much more fun now that Kaylee has a pretty firm grasp of not only what the ABCs are but how they work and finding unusual ABC books is always a good vocabulary builder. Also I feel I need to give major props to Patrick Hruby for really only having one word that isn't exactly perfect. Y is for Yellow. Usually a themed ABC book has a handful of letters that you can tell made the author really stretch for a word - but ever word in here is perfect. My favorite was the t for tiger - that was one gorgeous tiger.

Overall four enthusiastic thumbs up from both Kaylee and I and many thanks to everyone involved in these books at all for turning my terrible blues into a happy memory.

What they're reading now

Pippa loves books and for the first time ever she's showing book preference. It warms my librarian heart! The main object of her affections is Baby Dance by Ann Taylor. I love this book - it's to the tune of Hush Little Baby and any book I get to sing makes me happy. And the story is so perfect for our family - the mama is lying on the couch while the daddy is throwing the baby in the air. I don't know how Brandon always has so much energy after dinner but while I'm begging the girls to play board games or do puzzles with me, Brandon can muster the umpf to throw them in the air or play our favorite game of tick-tock. I love this book! Pips also shows a strong preference toward this gorgeous rendition of Pat-a-cake by R. A. Herman. I always have trouble reading this because it's got the traditional chant going along the top and a story of a baker baking along the bottom - it throws me off to read them both at once so I have to read it twice.

Kaylee cried when I left for work today. Did she cry because she was going to miss me? No. She was crying because I was returning Hat by Paul Hoffe. We're going on vacation tomorrow for a week and I wanted all library books returned before then. I'm thinking this one will either be re-checked out immidiately upon return and/or eventually bought for Kinsie. The story is very reminicent of New Socks - one of my absolute favorite books. A boy finds a hat on a park bench and he imagines all the wonderful things he could do with that hat! But then his mother reminds him of whoever the hat belongs to - who would need that hat to do all those wonderful things. It's adorable and great fun and I am sad I didn't know about it for the hat storytime I did 2 weeks ago! It's one of those books that I put on hold for the storytime but came in the day after - so Kaylee got it instead! And she is very grateful.

Linkedy linkedy links, links, links

I'm starting to understand the appeal of the link-round-ups that everyone does. There are lots of things I want to mention but I don't know that I have enough to say about any of them to merit a whole post! So here is my first link-round-up.

So the YA book blogosphere is angry about James Frey. I talked about it to some friends yesterday and was all set to write something long and involved about what an arse James Frey is and how he's taking advantage of writers - demeaning his own profession - and he's showing complete disregard to young adults in general. Then I come around today and see that Maureen Johnson has once again said it first and said it best. A Chair, a fireplace, and a tea cozy also has a lovely take-down of Mr. Frey.

I've been using goodreads so much more lately for organizing my life. I've made a shelf of my favorite story-time books and have spent way too much time looking at the communal storytime shelf. The babies shelf is too full of praenting books and what to expect books to be much use for lapsit so I've started a shelf called lapsit and so far I'm the only one using that shelf so come and join me! I'm going to branch out into more specific genres for chapter books and such soon. Mel made this brilliant List of Picture books for Boys that I'm going to stick on a shelf soon for me to remember (and add too) because that's a question I get alot. What shelves do y'all use on goodreads? What is your favorite librarian-ey way to use goodreads?

I lent my friend Anna one of my favorite books ever and she LOVED IT! Life is wonderful.

I am also over the moon about ALA adding a Stonewall Children's and YA Literature award. People who think that kids of any age are too young to read about characters who are a part of the QUILTBAG community maybe shouldn't let their kids read books where anyone loves or gets married or has any sort of passionate feelings at all. (judgey LP is judgey)

The New York Times has released their list of the Best Picture Books of 2010. I LOVE THIS TIME OF YEAR! From now until Marchish is just list after list of good books and award after award for great books and it all makes me happy. And I'm going to be linking to a lot of lists in the future. Because I love them.

I had Hush, Hush checked out and I'd just barely started it - and the whole thing was making me feel icky so I did some googling to make sure I wasn't the only one aaaaand I am definitely not. So that book when on my goodreads Abandoned shelf. Because sometimes I just don't want to finish something.

When I was in library school, Michael Gorman was still president of the ALA and a common refrain in one of my classes was “WOW Michael Gorman is SUCH A curmudgeon! I love him!” Seriously. I just want to pat him on the head and tell him how adorable he is. That isn’t to say I agree with him about, pretty much, anything - but he is an adorable curmudgeon. This article about libraries reinventing themselves just reinforced that for me.

I've never read any Eva Ibbotson but Laura Amy Schlitz has inspired me. As soon as I'm done with The Amaranth Enchantment, she's up next for audiobooks.

There was one of those memes going around awhile back where you had to write a haiku to the item sitting on your right. I was rather proud of mine:

Boxcar children book
Missing many pages
Goodbye, cruel lib’ry

I've found that weeding is much more fun (and oh, it gets super fun if you're in the right mood) if you take the book that is to be weeded and say, "you ARE the weakest link! Goodbye!"

I'm sure there's more I want to comment on but I'll leave that for another post. In the meanwhile here is a picture my brother took of Kaylee and Pippa last week. They're getting SO BIG and I love them.

A story, by Kinsie Beth EE

The following story was narrated to Brandon by Kaylee yesterday morning while She, Patricia and him lounged in bed

The Story of the Three Four Orange Birds
By Kaylee Elizabeth EE


Once upon a time, there were three orange birds, and they were in their nest and they were very happy. There was a Kid bird a Baby bird and a Daddy bird. But then a Halloween witch came and cast a spell on them, and turned them into toys. She turned the kid bird into a jack-in-the-box and she turned the baby bird into a jack-in-the-box and she turned the daddy bird in to … a jack-in-the-box too! But then, they changed back, because they loved each other sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much. And then the princess named Susan came and helped them climb back into the nest in the top of the tree. And then, the mommy bird came home from work at the library, and she brought the kid bird three library books! and she brought the baby bird one too.
The end ever after.

Cute overload

So ... There is this other song I sing to Kaylee every night. Goodnight by Laurie Berkner. I sang it to her a lot and then I stopped singing it for awhile and that led to a rash of Kaylee getting up in the middle of the night and telling her that the animals were keeping her awake and I had to had to had to come sing to her. This has led to a goodnight ritual where I ask her which animals are keeping her awake then I sing the song to that animal. Tonight after I sang the song to the "cheek deer" (a kind of deer, apparently, that says, " cheek cheek cheek") she asked me which animal was keeping me awake. Since I'm in the middle of my epic rereading of the Harry Potter books the only animal I could think of that would top the cheek deer was the Crumple Horned Snorkak. So Kaylee sang to me, "I'm a little Snorkak and my Mommy loves me. I'm a little Snorkak and my Kaylee loves me. When they tuck me in to say goodnight they say, 'crumple crumple crumple' goodnight. Goodnight, goodnight! Goodnight little Snorkak goodnight. Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight goodnight goodnight."

I want to die from cute.

Why I will never be a childrens' book author

I have this (not so) secret dream of writing picture books. My 3 year old loves princesses and ballerinas as well as dragons and aliens and dinosaurs and robots. It's hard to find many books that combine stereotypically girly motifs with stereotypical boy motifs (stupid mean Patriarchy and the gender binary!). Yes, there are some awesome books out there but for every Do Princesses Wear Hiking Boots there are tons of regularly gendered books. Anyway - I spend a lot of time making up stories for Kaylee at night and someday I'm going to get them all written down - at the very least for my girls but my narcissism likes to tell me that the wider world needs more books about Robot Princesses and such.

Anyway today I found myself in need of a good brain doodle earlier so I started writing out the story of the dinosaur ballerinas.


As you can tell from the T-Rex in a tutu above, I will need an illustrator. An illustrator who isn't me. You know what else I will need? To stay away from my radical feminist dogma when writing a ridiculously awesome story about dinosaur ballerinas. It started out well enough with Prehistoric Prima Donnas Prancing Prettily. Then it became all about body issues and how dance magnifies every little flaw. The Apatosorus has a beautiful and graceful look neck but oh that posture. Stand up straight, Appy! The Tyrannosaurus Rex has beautiful posture but when she tries to hold her arms up in fifth position they were much to stubby for proper grace.

Teacher always comments
On Apatasaurous's graceful neck
"but such posture, Mon Cherie!
Stand up straight, your spine's a wreak!"

Now Tyranosaurous's posture
Makes Madam clap with glee
"But those arms, Mmselle Rex," she glowers,
"Elongate, please!"

It rhymes! Ish.

Don't think the publishers are going to jump on this one!

Family Friday

What am I doing creating another meme just for me that will probably be abandoned after one or two weeks? I was having so much fun with early literacy mondays and then I abandoned them. I have plans for screen-time Saturdays but don't know how far that will go if I even get that far.

The babies themselves and not just their reading choices have not been on my real live blog in far too long and I feel a need to share their brilliance with the whole world so please indulge me. I am a mother and therefore I am a bit narcissistic about my babies. They are brilliant and wonderful and they make me happy beyond all imagining.

Kaylee is three and wonderful. She's got this wild imagination and is always making up stories and demanding that I make up stories to tell her. She loves acting out fairy tales (especially the three little pigs) with her stuffed animals or truing to convince me to be the evil witch in some involved story she's made up about a princess and a dragon and a witch and "cackle mommy! Cackle more! And lock me in the tower! And then the Princess Kaylee ESCAPED from the evil witch and now look sad Mommy!"

Pippa is 16 months old and so affectionate. Her vocabulary is only a few words but she understands so much more. We were going to run errands the other day and I asked her where her shoes were. She brought me one green shoe. I said, "thank you, Pips, but this is only one shoe. We need two." (Here I held up 2 fingers). "can you find me the OTHER shoe?" Pippa nodded and ran off and came back with both of her brown shoes. She held them both up and said, "ooo?" She may have just found the matching pair before the other green one and "ooo" may have just been a random sound but in my head she can count at least to two. Yes? Yes.

What the girls are reading now

Babybug is one of those magazines I have been meaning to subscribe the girls to forever. Now that we've bought a house and will not be randomly moving anymore I have no excuse! I do check them out from the library periodically - It had been while but I was inspired again when my coworker recently wrote on her blog that March 2010 was her baby's favorite Babybug ever so of course I had to check it out. Tragically someone had gotten to it first so I grabbed June 2010.

OH MAH GEE I am in love again! It has reinspired me to subscribe the girls to Babybug (as soon as I stop procrastinating). Kaylee's favorite part was a poem at the end called "Little Bug" that I think would be perfect for use during a 2s storytime* that is like a full body fingerplay. An Action poem! The minute I started reading it Kaylee jumped up and started doing the actions "Up on your toes, / In for a kiss! / Up on your toes, / and I hug you like this." It's absolutely way too much fun.

*2s have to come with their parents or guardians unlike 3s so the 2s have built-in hugging partners

My same wonderful coworker pointed me toward The Cow Loves Cookies by Karma Wilson and Marcellus Hall. It was on our new books cart and she encouraged me to take it home for the girls - one of the best suggestions ever! The Cow Loves Cookies is an absolute hit with both girls. Rhyming text brings you through a farmer's morning as he brings the animals their usual foods all the way through to his snack at the end with the cow. The farmer brings the cookies and the cow brings the milk! The rhyming is rhythmical and made Kins want to dance. The story repeats every animal it's gone through without being repetitive and stands up well to rereadings (which is key in a well-loved picture book). Two enthusiastic thumbs up.

Baby Colors is another New Books cart find that I am beyond tickled about. Baby Colors is one of those rare lift-the-flap board books that will actually stand up to a baby's use. I can't tell you how many flaps have been pulled off or bent wrong in my household but these flaps are just as stury as the rest of the book - and the whole book in general is sturdier than the average board book. The words are basic but Pippa loves the colors and with her language skills just starting to bud it's fun to see her latch on to concepts and try to learn these colors.

And that is ... what they're reading now. (Saying that phrase puts Garth Brooks's song "What She's Doing Now" in my head. "What they're reading now ... is tons of awesome books. Filling up my shelves and emptying the lib'ry. I can hear them giggle each time I open this one and I wonder if they know ... what they're readin' now." Sorry - I am insane.)

In which the librarian quotes herself

At one of the random online sites I can be found, a friend mentioned how great it was that I'm bookish and am passing that along to my girls because it wasn't something that she had had growing up. I hope y'all don't mind if I quote my response and then just continue typing because I have a lot to say and I felt like I was changing the conversation so I'm taking my ramblings over to my blog (because isn't that what a blog is for?

That was something I never had to worry about. Everyone in my family is bookish - from my grandmother who borrows my mother's Janet Evanovich the moment mom buys the newest (and always returns it by saying "this was far too racy for me. When does the next one come out?") down to my 2 year old who used to ask me to read Foucault to her because it was low enough on the shelf and she could reach it (She didn't care what I read her as long as she got to snuggle close to me and listen to my voice and OH MY GOD THAT IS LOVE, Y'ALL!), but now can't sleep until I've read her her Yo Gabba Gabba book and will then try and con me into reading her Barbie and I kinda want to yell "CHILD I LOVE THAT YOU HAVE AN OPINION NOW, BUT IF I HAVE TO READ BARBIE AND THE DIAMOND CASTLE ONE MORE TIME ..."

But seriously, turning my girls on to books is one of the best things I've ever done. I have always refused to be one of those (IMHO) overly pushy parents who demands that their 2 year old learn to multiply. I want my children to enjoy their childhoods. That said, reading is one of the greatest pleasures that I have and I want to pass that along to them all. Because of the huge amounts of books that my book obsessed daughter now demands I read to her, she knew her colors at 20 months. She could identify every letter in the alphabet not long after that. She can count almost to 30 and has started telling me what sounds some letters make. She knows what sounds animals make and (this is a big one in our house) can tell the difference between Superman, Spiderman, and Thor (which, if you think about it, is pretty hard. They're all red and blue and kinda similar to the untrained eye).

I am so grateful to my parents for loving reading so much and passing that along to us kids. I am so grateful to my grandparents for loving reading so much and passing that along to their kids. I am getting overly sappy and should just hit post before I keep typing.

Happy

First off - a public notice: whoever took my phone charger please give it back! I'm asking for your own good. If my mother finds out who you are and discovers that you are the reason I'm not texting her constant updates ... well, I just don't know what will happen to you! So just slip it somewhere I've already looked twelve times and I won't be upset!

I've been getting a lot of requests for details, so here ya go! Pip was the easiest delivery ever. 3 pushes. Well, 4 - but the first one doesn't really count. Everyone told me that my hour and a half with Kaylee was beyond easy and I was inclined to agree ... and then I had Pip. It totally made up for the two and a half weeks of contractions I had!

I feel wonderful. I feel really really wonderful. I probably shouldn't say that because now people might expect me to do stuff and get things done when I'd rather everyone expect me to take it easy and if something gets done it's a happy addition! Right?

The other request everyone wants is a sisters picture. This has been rather difficult to provide because everytime Kaylee sees the camera she wants to PLAY with it so I have to get these pictures on the sly. This is the best I've managed so far - but it has the added bonus of showing my sister Elizabeth the ringlets I've been bragging to her about!


And with that I go to do something ...

Or not. As the case may be.

BEDA excuses

Lookie what I made!



Pippa arrived yesterday at 3. She's 7lbs, 2oz, and practically perfect in every way. Her full name is Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephraim's Daughter Longstocking. We'd call her Pippi, but that name seemed taken (weird, huh?), so we're going with Pippa!

brownies

I just made an 8X8 pan of brownies. I then cut it into four pieces. That means that this here 4x4 brownie in front of me is SIXTEEN SQUARE INCHES of brownie. And when I go and get seconds? Yeah - that'll be THIRTY-TWO square inches of brownie. And I won't feel bad about it. Not one little bit.

And yes - I know that I totally failed at BEDA, but I'm not giving up! I have a half finished blog entry for Friday AND a half finished blog entry for Saturday ... and I'll finish them someday, and there will just be this gaping hole in my blog. It's ok - I'm not going to let myself stress. Because. Good reason, huh?

I took some great pictures today, but for some reason I can't get the computer that I am on to admit that my camera is hooked up to it. It will make the "something just connected!" noise when I turn the camera on and the "something just disconnected!" noise when I turn the camera off, but will it actually admit that it is connected? NO! So pretend there are adorable pictures with these stories. That may make things better.

Kaylee and I figer painted this morning. It was a ton of fun! We used my mother's technique of pouring lotion on a plate which the Kins thought was beyond fun. And we used this random horrible smelling lotion that was given to me by a book seller this around the holidays. And dang, this story really isn't that interesting without the pictures. Trust me. They're adorable?

Oh, blech. The whole blog I had planned out hinged upon my pictures. I'll just put off more substantial blogging until tomorrow.

Bye all.

<3

PS - I have become a Nerdfighter! How cool is that?