Friday Fun (Saturday Edition)

My coworker is making monster flip books for a Franny K Stein program and we started discussing the proper number of eyes a monster should had. That led to a discussion of eyes on eyestalks.

I was anti eyestalks because the eyes were not as protected.

Coworker A said that eyes on eyestalks would be lovely because you can look around corners or behind you without having to turn.

I countered that if I had eyes on eyestalks I would constantly be paranoid that my eyes would get caught in elevator drawers. Or I'd move my eyestalk to look in a drawer just as someone slammed it. And really, I'd rather have less eye-mobility than have to worry about fragile eyes and fragile eye-stalks constantly.

Warning: If you come up to my desk and ask if we have any copies of The Neverending Story in, while I am searching in the catalog I will sing to you

"THE NEVERENDING STO-OOOORYYYYY! AA-AAAAAAAAA-AAAAA-AAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAA-A-A-AAAAAAAAAH."

And then when my coworker mocks me I will tell her that she is lucky the patron didn’t ask for The Princess Bride. When she asks me to sing THAT theme song, I will.

“OUR LOVE IS LIKE A STOOOORY BOOK STOO-OOO-RYYYYYY BUT IT’S AS REAL AS THE FEEEEEELINGS I FEEEEEL. OUR LOVE IS LIIIIIIKE A STORYBOOK STOOOOOOOORY BUT IT’S AS REAAAAAAAAAL AS THE FEELINGS IIIIIIII FEEL.”

Fiesta Babies by Carmen Tafolla

If there was any justice in the world I would have had this post done a few days ago for Cinqo de Mayo, but between two babies and buying a new house (!!!), I am an even bigger slacker than usual! But this book is fantastic! Anytime is the right time for Fiesta Babies.

Fiesta Babies is brand new to the library but I had to use it in a book-break* right away and it is being added to my list of no fail awesome books. The text is perfect for storytime - rhyming but not cloying, fun and bouncy, and just the right legnth. The pictures are colorful and vibrant and make you want to jump inside the pictures!

*a book break is kinda like a mini-storytime whenever I notice that the library is full of storytime-age kids. We read one book and maybe do one fingerplay sort of as a teaser for storytimes. It also works super well to clam down rowdy crowds who have started to throw plastic vegetables at each other.

I am especially a sucker for movement in books that can be copied by the kidlets during storytime. It's a book and a stretcher all in one! "K'mon, kids, stand up! 'Fiesta babies dance two by two' - Can you dance too? 'the cha-cha-cha ... and the choo-choo-choo!'" WAY TOO MUCH FUN!

In conclusion - I adore this book and you should check it out for a storytime or two.

I may have just had a conversation with my favorite 4 year old almost entirely in chicken.

(background - at the reference desk we give out hand stamps to anyone who asks for them. You want a chicken on your hand? Here ya go!)

4yo (pointing at the stamps): baaaaawk? bok bok bok ba-bawk baaaaawk!
LP (nodding and picking up the stamp): bok bok bwaaaaaaaawk.
4yo (holding out her hand): ba BAWK bok bok
LP (stamping): bok babawk bok booooook
4yo (waving): bok book babawk bok!

I LOVE MY JOB!

EARLY LITERACY MONDAYS!

It's that time of week again - the weekend is over and work is restarted and we are all too tired to think about early literacy. Right? WRONG! Librarian Pirate is here to help! This week's skill is ...

NARRATIVE SKILLS

Narrative skills are just what they sound like. Learning how a story is put together with a beginning, a middle, and an end. This doesn't mean teaching your child how to tell what the rising action, climax, and falling action of a story are - it's just telling stories so she (or he) can get the basics. When I come home I tend to ask my husband what he did today. Then I ask Kaylee what she did today. I do it in this order so I can sneakily help Kaylee to craft her narrative. eg:
LP: What did you do today, Kaylee?
K: Uhhh ...
LP: What did you have for breakfast!
K: CHEERIOS!
LP: And then what did you do?
K: I played blocks! I played with PIPPA!
LP: That sounds like so much fun! What did you do next?
K: uh ...
LP: Did you go anywhere?
K: YES! Pippa and Daddy go on SCURSION* and I went TOO!
LP: Awesome! Where did you go?
K: We went to the NORTH POLE!**
LP: WOW! What did you do there?
K: We bought toilet paper and HOT DOGS! And I had hot dog, catsup, mac and cheese for lunch. PARTY IN MY TUMMY!

*Excursion. Calling it that instead of errands makes life seem so much more fun
**Not sure why she's been so obsessed with the North Pole lately. It started quite awhile after Christmas, but it makes her happy.

You get the picture! (Or do you want a LONGER account of Kaylee's fascinating day? I'm usually quite enthralled, but I am a bit biased. Now go forth and NARRATE!

Early Literacy Mondays

At my library (and at most libraries) we are big fans of early literacy and we try to promote it as much as possible to the parents that come to our storytimes. Often I have parents say to me that they don't know where to begin or what to do to encourage early literacy in their kids, but I'm finding that incorporating early literacy not only helps my child in later life, but it makes my life easier! So Mondays are the days that everyone is most exhausted, so I'm going to start posting my Early Literacy tips for Lazy Parents today - picking one of the 6 Early Literacy Skills and highlighting one way to incorporate that into your life easily.

PRINT MOTIVATION!

This is the easiest of all the Early Literacy skills to incorporate and (in my opinion) the most important. Print Motivation means loving books and if your child doesn't think that books are fun and exciting, then she (or he) won't want to learn how to read them herself (or himself). To encourage print motivation, pick out books that you think would make your child happy. Bright colors, rhymes, things your child loves. I know Kaylee loves ladybugs so every time I see a new book about ladybugs I bring it home. Pippa and Kaylee both love books with pictures of babies so I pick those out all the time. But Librarian Pirate, you say, Didn't you say that these were tips for LAZY parents? Picking out books takes TIME! True, but you can always call ahead to your local library, ask your librarian for advice on great books for a 3 year old about trucks, and then your library visit is quick and painless! Depending on what services your library offers, you could even put books on hold online or on the phone and just stop by the hold shelf - no need to search anything out. BUT! The real laziness comes in after you've got some great books all picked out.

So it's Monday. I've had a LONG day and I'm tired. I get home from work and my 2 year old is trying to climb up my leg, she's so happy to see my. "PIGGY BACK RIDE, MOMMY! PIGGY BACK RIDE!" So I swing her up onto my back, give her a piggy back ride to the couch (with my last ounce of strength), then we snuggle on the couch and I read her some books picked out specifically to make her happy. I get to rest, we both get to snuggle, and Kaylee's love of books grows. The more I read to the girls, the more they love it and the more they crave that cuddle time. When Kaylee is getting too rambunctious I can sit her down and give her some books to read and I know she'll sit happily for 10/15 minutes enthralled by the pictures and the turning of pages. We even had the following conversation a few months back:

Kaylee: I love my family.
LP: We love you too. Who is in your family, do you know?
K: Yes.
LP: Mommy, Daddy, Pippa - who else?
K: No! Mommy, Daddy, Pippa are not my family!
LP: What?
K (clutching a book to her chest): Books. Books are my family.

Part of me wanted to laugh and be proud and part of me wanted to cry and convince her that I was her family. I settled for being proud and grabbing a family album to "read" to her.

New Storytime Favorites

There was a bit of a kerfuffle on our website yesterday and for about 8 hours it accidentally listed yesterday's 10:30 storytime for today at 10:30. We were hoping that since it was only up there for a short amount of time nobody would have noticed. We were breathing a sigh of relief at 10:29 when nobody had come in asking where the storytime was. They arrived at 10:35. I quickly grabbed 3 books off the new books cart and by the time I got to the family area I was doing an impromptu mini-storytime for 22 kids not including parents! And boy did I pick some winners!

I started with Bears on Chairs by Shirley Parenteau, illustrated by David Walker. Four empty chairs are waiting for bears and one by one they are filled. Then a fifth bear arrives! OH NO! What to do? The art is beautifully soft and evocative. I wanted to snuggle each of the bears (especially the floppy one), and the rhyming text was fun to read. A definite thumbs up.

Can You Make a Scary Face? by Jan Thomas was my ace in the hole. Truth be told it wasn't on the new books cart anymore, it was in sitting in the back on my desk. I had just checked it out to bring it home for my girls, but sometimes a librarian has to share the wealth! Anytime Jan Thomas does something it's bound to be brilliant. Scary Face engaged the kids and has them standing up, sitting down, wiggling around and in general interacting with the book. I know, I know, I'm a sucker for a good fourth-wall breaking book, but this one is at the top of it's class for this kind of thing!

I ended with All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon and Marla Frazee. In retrospect I would never make the transition from Scary Face to All the World. It's a fabulous book but a complete change of pace. It's much easier to go from quiet to boisterous than to go the other way around. That said, I can't wait to use All the World in a storytime! It is a beautiful meditation on a group of people (family? friends? aquaintences? It doesn't exactly say) in a town living their day. The text is short, rhyming, and fun. The art is beautiful (as would be expected from Marla Frazee) and detailed. The text could be talking about anyone, but the details in the art make it special. One family consists of a mother and her brand new baby. She looks like she's studying for school (but she may be just doing her taxes) as the day draws to a close. Another family is a blond, pale mother, a darker father with wild hair, and a boy and a girl who spend the day digging at the beach, climbing the best climbing tree I've ever seen, and eating chili with corn bread that makes my mouth water. As I keep flipping through this book I keep finding more details to love: the puppy in the wagon, the ladies on the bicycle built for two, the VW bus! In short, go find this book.

As long as I'm talking about good new storytime books, here's a few more I've just discovered:

I first found out about The Boy who cried Fabulous (by Leslea Newman, illustrated by Peter Ferguson) through I'm here, I'm queer, what the hell do I read?. As you can tell, I get way too enthusiastic about things so I empathized with Roger right away. Roger spends so much time wandering around exclaiming about the fabulous things he sees that he's always late to school and even later coming home. His parents end up banning the word "fabulous" from his vocabulary when they go out one day and he tries not to exclaim over everything until he has an idea and gives us a subtle, fun vocab lesson! What a marvelous, scrumptuous, elegant, book! I just wanted to run around exclaiming about how "the world's too wondrous to ignore" after reading it.

And then there's Laurie Halse Anderson. When The Hair of Zoe Fleefenbacher Goes to School (illustrations by Ard Hoyt) came in I knew it would be too old for Kaylee, but I brought it home anyway because I wanted to pour over it a bit more. Kaylee pulled it out of my bag and demanded I read it to her and surprise, surprise she sat through the whole thing then demanded I read it again! This is another book where the writing is wonderful but what kept Kaylee entertained was the details in the art. Where are the gerbils now? What is the hair curled around over there? Look at that! Look at this! That said, you can get away with a lot one on one that you could never get away with in a storytime, and when it's your own child (or a child who is very used to you) you can get away with even more. In a storytime setting I would take Zoe and her wild hair to be read to some first graders. In fact, I was just asked to go to read to some next month and this is the first book I'm deciding to bring for sure.

And with that, my lunch break is over. Have a great day!

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.

When you reach me - Rebecca Stead

When You Reach Me
Rebecca Stead
Grade 4 and up
In Stores Now

I have put off blogging about When You Reach Me for far too long. I have to tell you all about this book because it is just SO FANTASTIC, but I have no idea what to say because it is just so fantastic. I'm terrified that someone will read my review, find it lacking, and not pick up this book.

In When You Reach Me, Miranda spends 1979 helping her mother prepare to be on the $20,000 Pyramid, making new friends, mourning the loss of her best friend (who decided out of the blue that he didn't want to hang out with her anymore), and receiving mysterious notes from someone who just might be a time traveler. She obsesses about A Wrinkle in Time, fails to learn how to properly cut bread, and in general rocks.

This is not a book for everyone. You have to be ready to let the book completely absorb you. My coworker listened to it on CD and spent too much time (according to her) wandering in and out of the room and therefore didn't like it. This isn't one of those books. This is a book you have to pay attention to and think about and be patient with. This book draws you in slowly, but once you're hooked you're hooked.

This is a fantasy for people who don't like fantasy, but it is also a gateway to realistic fiction and historical fiction for people who only read fantasy. I'd give it to fans of A Wrinkle in Time, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, or The Wednesday Wars.

Speaking of spoilers ...

Can I just tell you how much I disliked Knowing? It about broke my heart the other day when Meg Cabot of all people blogged about how much she loved it?

(can I reiterate my spoiler alert? Ok - good.)

About halfway through the movie, Brandon says to me, "hey - you know what would be funny? If they don't stop the disaster! If the movie just ends with the world ending!"
I replied "yeah! That would be funny! Worst ending idea EVER!"
and we had a good laugh.

And then they didn't stop the disaster. And the movie just ended with the world ending. And we were all WTF!

So ... just a warning. Don't watch Knowing unless you're ok with the worst ending EVER!

Ash by Malinda Lo

Ok. I have put this off for long enough. I have important things to say*, so I am darn well going to say them! I got an ARC of Ash at ALA a few weeks ago, devoured it immediately, and am just now sitting down to tell you how fantastic it is. Don't hate! I'll regale you with tales of the kidlet's cuteness later in hopes that you will then forgive me.

*important to me, at least. Probably just me.

A word of caution - I will probably allude to how the book ends. I'm really bad about that. For me, though (especially in a book like this that is a retelling of Cinderella so you know somewhat how it turns out) it isn't about where the characters end up. It's how they get there. So read on with this review (and in general, this blog), but know that I am not afraid to let slip details from near the end.

So anyway - if you were going to write a book designed specifically for me it would be this book. Retelling of something from the 398.2s*? Check! Gorgeously seductive but ultimately terrifying faeries? Check! A world that is not heteronormative? Check!

*UGH - YES - I AM THAT NERD! I do think of them as the 398.2s (or sometimes the 398s if I'm feeling lazy) instead of as folk and faerie tales. I'm crazy.

For the most part I don't need to give you a quick summary - it's Cinderella with extra faeries and plus the awesome Huntress. Like I said - I rarely read books for the basic plot structure. my love of a book comes from the details and Ash is full of fantastic ones. The world is a growing and changing world. The old tales of faeries are completely not en vogue anymore, but Ash has grown up in a small town far outside of the capital city that still believes. Tales of the Fae are constantly being told between the characters.

It was in these tales that I began to realize that the world wasn't heteronormative. Do you have any idea how refreshing that is? Through out the tales women fall in love with men and women fall in love with women* and nobody ever says "oh my goodness lookie here that woman just fell in love with another woman and that is SO WEIRD!" When Ash starts to have a crush on the huntress, it seems impossible to her that she should have this crush because of tons of outside influences making it seem crazy (she's not good enough, she's a servant, etc.), but not one of those reasons is ever that to fall for a woman is bad. I love this. I can't tell you how much I love this. I know it's near impossible in realistic fiction for something like this to happen - we just don't live in the sort of world - but in this lush fantasy world that Lo has created, I would like to think that maybe some GLTBIQ teen who picks this up will let him/herself feel like maybe he/she isn't crazy for being the person he/she** is!

*I don't remember any men falling in love with men, but I think that is more because there are so few male characters and less because of any other reason.

**OY! ENGLISH! Can we please get ourselves a third person singular pronoun that is non gender specific for when we're talking about just some random person who could be either? Get on that, will ya?

So ... enough with my random soapboxing about my worldview. You want to know about the book, yes? Well let me tell you I loved it! Again let me remind you that I am a sucker for EXACTLY THIS KIND OF BOOK so I may be a hair biased, but please don't let that stop you from picking this up. It should be in stores September 1 and in your local library pretty soon after.

Kaylee and Pippa are both asleep

Brandon is out with friends. I have the apartment to myself. I could write up my review for Ash! Or When you Reach Me! or The Demon's Lexicon! Or any of a gazillion* books I've read recently ... but then I wouldn't be going to sleep right now, and that would be tragic.

Pippa is just starting to consistently sleep well. I forsee more blogging time in the near future. Watch for it!

*approximation

Tucking Kaylee in, Singing her to sleep, I ask her what song she wants me to sing next.

Kaylee: Pants song
Me: What's the pants song?
Kaylee: PANTS song!
Me: Can you sing it for me?
Kaylee: No
Me: Can you tell me more about it?
Kaylee (after thinking for a moment): Horsie, Flower, Pants, Snaps, Button. Pants song. KAYLEE pants song.

ALA Chicago 2009

Today was the day my library sent me to The ALA Annual 2009 Conference. Can I say ZOMG? because ... ZOMG!

As anyone who has ever met me will attest, I have a crazy crush on Neil Gaiman. I want to go to lunch with him on occasion, eat sushi, drink tea, and discuss deep and important things. Whatever - I'm a crazy fan girl. I'm ok with it. ANYWAY - Neil Gaiman was going to be at ALA today signing books at 9 am. I live an hour away from the conference, so I figured if I left at 7 am, I would definitely be there before the line is cut off (Neil Gaiman is uber popular and I knew the line would be long). I got lost twice on the way to the conference (even using my GPS) and then ended up parking in the wrong parking lot and didn't get there until 8:55. I was one of the last people in line before they completely cut it off! And then I didn't get to the front of the line until almost noon! Good thing a good friend of mine from library school (who tragically moved to LA to be a kick-bootay YA librarian over there) was standing in line with me to keep me company! I got to detail her my plan for meeting my literary hero which consisted basically of me saying hi, and then us suddenly being best friends.

ANYWAY - I finally got to the front of the line and I handed Neil Gaiman my copy of Blueberry Girl (I would have brought Absolute Sandman, but I did not relish the thought of carrying it around all day! I love Blueberry Girl especially, though, because NG wrote it for his pregnant friend years ago and it was recently illustrated and released as a picture book. It came out while I was pregnant with Pippa, and I brought it to the hospital when I gave birth. Blueberry Girl was the first book I read to her. Nowadays, Kaylee loves it too and has bits of it memorized (but she's not as good at it as she is with "Green Room" - her name for Goodnight Moon). Sometimes when Pippa is chillin' on the couch, Kaylee will climb up there with her and "read" Goodnight Moon or Blueberry Girl to Pippa.



I told this story to my new BFF, and he said, "That may possibly be the cutest thing ever." I completely agree and the proud mama in me wanted to whip out the pictures right there and then, but by that time he'd been singing books nonstop for almost 3 hours and was looking rather haggard. Besties know when not to push it.

So after wandering around the Exhibits for awhile, I went to a panel on Censorship and Graphic Novels. The panel was moderated by a lovely man (who's name escapes me at the moment) from The CBLDF and consisted of Neil Gaiman, Terry Moore, and Craig Thompson. It was fascinating and someday I'm going to try and type up Mr. Thompson's hysterical description of being offended.



Then back to the conference floor where I met E. Lockhart (more on that later, but I'm beyond tired and want to finish this up) and got TONS AND TONS of ARCs. See my haul below? (Note, two of those are not ARCs, and one is an ARC but of a book that is already out? One of my favorites, though, so no complaints here!) The only real tragedy is that people like Abby and Jen snapped up all the Catching Fire before I could get there! SO rude of them, don't you think? (;

And when I got home, my husband had made his amazing chicken mole which always makes my night. Now I'm going to go see if I can con him into a backrub (free books are heavy, yo!) and then fall into bed early.

I'm halfway through three different reviews, but in the meanwhile I am SO IN LOVE WITH THIS PICTURE and I wanted to share it!


(Kaylee is SO GREAT!)

WOW - Crazy

Crazy crazy night!

So ... here's what happened:

Kaylee and I were going to run an errand. When I opened the door to the apartment, everything smelled of smoke, and there was a faint beeping noise coming from downstairs. I called my Brandon over to confirm that I wasn't crazy and he walked us downstairs. The beeping was coming from the apartment two floors below us, and smoke was pouring out of the door. Nobody answered when we banged on the door so Brandon called 911 while I pulled the fire alarm and ran upstairs for Pippa.

The fire department here ROCKS! They were here already by the time I was back downstairs, and I ran as fast as I dared! So ... yay for safety! But the being grabbed and then jostled woke Pippa up and she was so surprised that she promptly filled her diaper. Of course I hadn't thought (or had the time) to grab a diaper bag ...

The firemen put the fire out before it spread beyond the apartment it started in, so we're back inside fairly quickly. All's well that ends well, yes?

I am raising an evangelical minister, apparently.

Kaylee was sitting on my lap just now, and then I put her down saying, “I need to go flip the porkchops, sweetheart. I can smell ‘em, and they need to turn before they burn.”

Now she is marching around the living room changing “turn before they burn.”

In which the librarian tried very very hard not to swear delightedly

This is the perfect way to finish BEDA - because it really speaks to the spirit of the event.

So I feel you all need to know that my daughter is a genius. A certifiable genius. I want to add a disclaimer here (because I am neurotic) that I may have put up before. I am not one of those mothers who is completely and utterly anal about how smart my kid is in relation to the rest of the children around. I live and work in an area where parents are sending their children to preschools that promise to have the kidlets multiplying and dividing before kindergarten. I know of parents who get TUTORS for their two year olds. I roll my eyes at this because while I want my daughters to be smart and be the best they can be, there is really no point to it all if they don't enjoy themselves along the way. Life is there to love, not to win! That said: Kaylee is a genius.

My child loves the alphabet. She loves it. From all the Early Literacy information I read to pass on to parents at my storytimes I know that before the age of two it's common for a child to know the alphabet song. At two they often start identifying letters. Late twos often start knowing the sounds that the letters make and early threes might be able to sight read words that they see a lot.

(That is why books like The Monster at the End of This Book are so great! I mean look at this page!

Point to "Monster" as it is being read! Point to "Scared" and all the "Please"es! Kids pick up on this stuff and they learn to recognize the shapes of words!)

ANYWAY (oy with the digressions already! Just tell the story, Susan!) - Kaylee loves the alphabet. She points it out wherever we go. She has those foam letters in the bath and she can identify every one and LOVES to identify every one. I already knew Kaylee was a genius because of that, but yesterday - yesterday takes the cake. We were sitting in front of a chair made by my best friend for Kaylee that has her name on it, and Kaylee pointed to the painted name and said, "KAYLEE!"(Note: This chair had been moved out onto the porch for a few weeks and has just recently been moved back inside - and I know that neither my husband or I have pointed out the name on the chair to her since before it went outside.) I basically died from excitement right there. Then I pointed to the letters one by one and she named them, then I asked her what those letters spelt and she shrugged. Then I asked her what the word was on the chair and again she said "Kaylee!" I asked her how to spell Kaylee and she had no idea ...

So yeah, I know it's "just" sight reading and not real reading, but my daughter - who is not yet two - read her first word yesterday. And I'm going to be insanely proud.

And there ain't nothin' you can do to stop me.


(The Genius en repose being read Goodnight Moon by her father)

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!