and she reads

And then 2 years passed.... Ok, maybe not quite, but pretty close!

You are kind of like a person now? You want to be involved in our conversations. And you have conversations! We drive home and we can talk about how our days were. An actual conversation:

Me: "What did you do at daycare?"
You: "I play Riley" (a friend of yours)
Me: "What else did you do?"
You: "You work at liberry!"

So, the conversations include a lot of non-sequiturs, but they are actual conversations!

You are so fun right now. So hard and so fun and so hard and so fun. From minute to minute and day to day it's a constant up and down. This weekend for instance was quite difficult. Every transition (diaper changes, nap time, bed time, brushing teeth, getting in the car) was difficult and often caused you to become massively upset. But then Monday was lovely. You were fun and cooperative and just so nice! Usually it's just moments throughout the day that are difficult. And it's hard to change as quickly as you do, to not just assume that you are super crabby all day. Your emotions are so close to the surface that a small upset becomes a big upset very quickly.

And the patience. In the list of Eliza's top 10 phrases, "No, I do it," is near the top. You want to put on your shoes, climb up on the chair, spread peanut butter on your bread, get your water from the other room. It seems like half of the point of parenting is just to help you become more independent, so obviously these things are good, but they take soooo lonnnnng. I am stretching my patience every day. It's wonderful and it really does work much better for everyone in the long run. Forcing the issue often just starts a battle and the battle is not worth it.

I'll try not to wait 2 years before writing again.

Oh, my 7 month old. Today you are 7 months old. I missed a lot of writing about you.

You would not take naps longer than 45 minutes from when you were 2 months old to about 6 months old. It drove me crazy in ways that are hard to remember because it is hard to understand how naps could make a person that crazy. A two month old still needs attention almost all of the time when she is awake. And you were far from sleeping through the night. Until you were about 13 or 14 weeks old and I went back to work and you went to daycare it was you and me all day. I was probably getting 6 or less hours of sleep every night and there was no napping for me during the day because almost exactly the time I could finally settle and close my eyes you would wake up from your nap. This was worse than just not trying to nap (which didn't stop me from hoping and trying anyway). When you were awake you were generally fine, just needy in the way that I assume most babies are needy when they are so young. Needy in a way that is hard to understand now that you happily sit and play with toys without too much parental assistance. I struggled for awhile with trying to get you to nap longer. I don't think I accepted it so much as was forced to give up.

In some ways it was easier when I went back to work but daycare was very rough for you the first month or so. You got RSV and bronchiolitis (both of which you handled quite well but it was still rough). You got hand foot and mouth disease. You had a phlegmy cough for what seemed to be a month straight. There was a week where you would barely eat and wouldn't sleep entire days at daycare. All of this hurt me so much. I felt like I was causing you to have to go through this (I still feel that way a little bit). I cried at work multiple times - sometimes on my own, sometimes in front of coworkers. It felt like my fault for going back to work. I am not against daycare but leaving such a tiny confusing baby with a bunch of strangers felt like such a stupid horrible thing to have to do.

(I needed/need to work. I love my job and my coworkers are amazing. I am so happy where I am and for good or bad being able to work I think makes me a better mom to you. I have loved you since you were born but once I was back at work I got to really feel it because I was not so overwhelmed and bogged down in the day to day, hour to hour of caring for you. I missed you. And I enjoy you so much on weekends or evenings now.)

Your daycare teachers were kind and I'm sure they did their best with you but they (or we?) were not great at communicating. Your teachers would fill out a report card about you every day and there were 4 moods that could be circled: Crying, Fussy, Alright or Happy. Almost every day, crying, fussy or nothing were circled. I swear you were there a month before you got an alright and 2 months before a happy. It is so much better now. We started to see slow differences about a month or a month and a half after you started. One teacher said you were her favorite and that if you were fussing all she had to do was talk to you and you would be fine again. And now you seem so entirely happy when I feed you at lunch or pick you up after work. You are almost always being held or playing contentedly with toys.

You've moved up to a new room now (a week ago) and they all love to comment on your legs and feet. When you are excited, happy, upset, your legs kick and move whether you are lying down, sitting up or being held. And especially when you are happy, your feet twirl in little circles. It is one of the best moments of my day to pick you up at daycare and have you smile big at me and start kicking your feet.

You have big beautiful toothless smiles. And when you are very happy, your whole body smiles.

You were and are such a happy baby. So observant and focused. It has been amazing watching your motor skills catch up to your attention. You easily pick things up and manipulate them now. You love "talking" whenever you have things in your mouth - your hands or toys. You will babble a little but often just make loud yelling noises.

You like to play peekaboo. It is one of the few things that makes you laugh (you are happy but you make us work pretty hard for a giggle). I put a blanket over your face and you pull it off and seem so incredibly happy to see me. And then we do it again and again.

Your dad has been doing bedtime with you almost every night for months now. He was the one who got you to fall asleep on your own. Your bedtime is 7 and almost every night after bottle, pjs, and story, he sets you down in your crib with a pacifier and lovey and you grumble for 10 minutes (almost exactly) and then fall asleep. It is amazing. I feel surprised by it almost every time it happens.

You are wonderful and I am doing my best to enjoy all of my minutes with you.

Things I want to remember at 6 weeks:

How sometimes when you are upset by something, you let out a sad cry and then make the saddest frowning face - almost a caricature of a frown, like one of those drama masks. It makes me giggle.

How when you are sleeping unswaddled, you sometimes throw your hands up above your head. You stretch out slowly,  and then go right back to sleeping.

How you look when you are swaddled. We call you our baby burrito - just an adorable face poking out of your tight blanket. My snugglebug.

How sometimes right after you eat, you get squirmy and fidgety and then all of the sudden quiet down and almost freeze into sleep. Like somebody flipped an off switch.

How you make grunty noises and baby elephant noises in your sleep. I'm ready for this phase to be over but I still want to remember that it existed. Last night, you made a noise that sounded exactly like laughter, a little chuckle. Somehow both your dad and I were awake enough to hear it and it was wonderful. I'm so excited for your smiles and your laughter.

How your dad will sing you to sleep with songs that we love (Book of Love, Such Great Heights, Apartment Story). He is amazing and so good with you.

Things are getting easier.

You are a month old tomorrow. Mostly things are amazing and wonderful and I am so glad you are here and healthy and seem as happy as someone who is not smiling yet can seem. Please keep that in mind because I sense that the rest of this may not reflect that accurately.

You rarely cry and are easy to soothe right now. Those are both wonderful traits and I am grateful for both of them but in that way that you know other people are worse off and you can tell yourself that but it doesn't really make it easier for you.

You really seem to hate sleeping. As in you just keeps your eyes open constantly for as long as you  possibly can. Not crying or anything - just wide awake. This doesn't become a problem until you get overtired and it is completely impossible to get you to sleep even tho you've been awake for (in one case) 6 hours. Yes, I googled it. That is quite unusual for a 2 week old.

.....

Coming back to look at this when you are now 7 months old. Things are so different. It was so hard then. You weren't colicy or cyring much but you were often so determined not to sleep. And it felt like it would be that way forever. The hardest part for me was still coming tho. Short naps - the bane of my existence. More on that later I think.

You're here!

Hi baby,

We're still waiting for you. I'm almost 42 weeks pregnant and doing well. I've been able to stay pretty positive. The hardest time for me was actually when I thought we were going to induce at or right before 41 weeks. I was just so nervous about that decision. Luckily our doctor thought it was safe to wait a little longer for you. And I'm glad because (without getting into details) my body seems to be more ready this week than it was last week. So, even if labor doesn't start on its own, I'm guessing things will go more smoothly.

I wanted to tell you how amazing your dad is. His excitement has been a really helpful counterpoint to any nervousness I have lately. I am so excited to meet you too, but I sometimes get bogged down in practicalities. Your dad has described waiting for you as being like Christmas Eve and told me that he thinks his heart will explode when he gets to hold you. Writing those things just made me cry - granted I cry pretty easily right now, but it's been incredible seeing how excited he is to meet you.

Your Mom

Hi baby,

My due date is about a week away now. I was doing so good at just thinking, "end of October" rather than a specific date but it's much harder as it gets closer. I have had a few moments of "I am going to be pregnant forever", but for the most part I'm still managing to stay reasonably peaceful and accepting of what may come.

So we are about as ready as we can be for you. You really like kicking and moving in there. I love hearing your heartbeat every week now. I still have a hard time believing that there is going to be another person in our house, in our life. I am so very much looking forward to seeing what you are like.

If I'm anxious about anything it is my mood after you are born. I don't do so well with hormones sometimes and I know that that combined with lack of sleep is going to be rough. Your dad has pointed out how much everyone likes to tell parents-to-be how hard it all is. How we won't get any sleep, and you'll probably have colic, and there will be poop everywhere. Your dad and I are pretty practical people however. So, while I'm sure we can't imagine the exact amounts of sleeplessness, crying and poop, I don't think we will exactly be surprised by most of those things. What people should tell us is all of the amazing moments that I know we will have. I have a good feeling that despite all of the tough stuff, getting to hold you will make it worth it.

Oh yea, and so far (not to jinx it, I hope) my belly button did not pop out. Thank goodness.

Your Mom

Hello Baby Girl,

I feel the need to write to you or to write to myself - just to remember what this all feels like.

- I am spending way too much time looking at baby items and checking to make sure everything I have on our registry is exactly the right thing to have on our registry and thinking for too much time about which bottles and breastpump and diapers and onesies will be the absolute best bottles and breastpump and diapers and onesies. Online shopping is my version of nesting.

- Actual nesting is coming soon. The nursery is getting ready to be ready. We have your crib set up (although it is still mattress-less.) and shelves and a recliner. And I have ideas for how I want everything to be. I want to wait until after the baby shower to purchase a lot of items tho. So for now, the nursery sits oddly half-way done.

- I feel you moving all the time. Squirming and kicking and sometimes trying to bash into my organs. Your dad (whoa!) found a picture in one of the many informational books/pamphlets we have collected of how everything (organs and such) fit in there before and after a person is pregnant. I just want to get in and rearrange things to make more space for you and for all of my organs. Like, maybe if I could just shift this kidney a little to the left... and move my lungs up a little.... nope, it will all work as well as it can but I am expecting a little discomfort for both of us.

- I'm enjoying this whole thing more than I expected. I've had a relatively drama and discomfort-free pregnancy (lets hope that continues) and I feel like I will miss having you around when you are out in the world. (Obviously you will still be around, but not so close). Of course I am very much looking forward to you being out in the world - I can't even begin to imagine what it will be like. To see you!

- I am anticipating that it will be hard - for all of us. It must not be very pleasant for you to suddenly have to adjust to things like breathing and being able to fully move your arms. As if someone just flung me out into space and I could technically survive but found that I now had a completely foreign method of breathing and moving and eating.

- I worry less than I expected about things that should worry me. I know you will get out one way or another, whether that involves me being drugged to high heaven or you beatifically entering the world while I prove my drug-free womanly strength. Yes, I will probably be more worried about labor as it gets closer but I would like to keep my calm while I can.

- I worry more about absolutely silly things like whether or not my belly button will pop out - to the point where I got slightly... hysterical about the idea of it. Does it matter if that (horrible dreadful thing) happens? No, of course not. And I obviously know that, but I still haven't quite reconciled myself with the idea.

- I feel so much love towards you already. I didn't really thing it would work that way - that I would love you when it seemed like you would just be a weird little alien being in my stomach. But yes, 67 days before you are due to come into this world (as my Target registry so helpfully tells me) I feel like you are a person in there and I love you.

Your Mom.

I've been reading some incredibly silly romance. They are the book equivalent of cotton candy - enjoyable, fluffy, but you wouldn't want to read too many in a row. (Couldn't quite get that metaphor to work - also lots of people are anti-cotton candy which is just crazy - oh! but also goes along with the romance novel thing.)

I just finished Every Day by Dan Levithan. It was a teen book about a person who wakes up in a different body every day and how the person fell in love with a girl. It was not a very satisfying book but it really couldn't be without somehow "solving" the problem of the body changing thing. I liked it tho, and read through it very quickly.

I should be getting some interesting non-fiction in soon - How Music Works which is kind of a scientific look at music and The Signal and the Noise which is about statistics and predictions - something that interests me. I don't always read books about it tho because I end up hearing the same things over and over. This one is by Nate Silver who was very popular during the last election with his complex predictions.

I'm at 77 books this year. Or maybe a little more by now.

Also, going to try this amazon widget thing for books I mention and see how that goes.

Pre-apocalyptic books and movies have been haunting me lately. Those of the a-meteor-is-going-to-hit-Earth variety seem especially prominent. Is 4 a trend? Melancholia and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World for movies and The Age of Miracles and The Last Policeman for books. 

Should I see if I enjoy writing again? I go through journaling/writing spurts in my life it seems. How odd that I wrote frequently on a blog from 17 to about 19. How sad that it has since disappeared. I would have liked to check myself out. It wasn't that long ago in a lot of ways but in other ways it was forever. I graduated high school, started college. Moved to a different city (one of only 2 such moves in my lifetime) and met my husband. No wonder I wrote frequently - life was busy.

Lets see if I can remember everything I read recently. I've been zooming through books again lately.

This was so good. I've been neglecting non-fiction for awhile and thought it might be time to try something to get back in. I feel like I learned a lot about the war in Iraq but at the same time the whole book was so anecdotal that I didn't feel as though it was just a ton of information spewed at me. It was so sad though. He even tried to give it a nicer ending but it still just feels so hopeless there.

What's this? More Neil Gaiman? Can't believe I hadn't read these before. They seem like something my dad would have given me. This one is about the super boring son of a god, who finds out his father was a god just after his father dies. He also finds out he has a brother, who happened to get the god genes. Hijinx ensue. And I have another Neil Gaiman on my bookshelf...

My children's book for this post. Another historical fiction novel. This one is about a Japanese girl in California who gets sent to an internment camp. Apparently some of the camps during WWII were on Indian Reservations. There is some interaction between the two groups and the fact that they are both discriminated against lends interest to the story.

Almost forgot this one. This was a short, almost sensual story about a cooking class. Each character takes a chapter and it's neat to see how the lives entwine. Plus, sometimes I just love reading about food. And the author clearly loves food.

Well, I'm sick today and called in to work so I'm hiding in bed with a laptop and books. Here's some of what I've read recently.

I know Nick Hornby is "lad lit" or whatever you want to call it but I tend to really enjoy his writing and his books. Granted, they may not be literary masterpieces but you don't really want to read a literary masterpiece every single day. He's very talented at making people and relationships feel real. I don't know if its because of his own new experience with kids but the 6 year old in the book felt authentic as well - somewhat annoying and crazy but you like him anyway.

Another fun book to read. Explores the idea of all the different cultures bringing their gods to a new place and how the gods survive.... but it's funnier than that sounds. For a thick book it kept me entertained the entire time.


I have to admit that my knowledge of history is very lacking sometimes. I know that there is some animosity between Japan and Korea and I had a vague idea that Japan had controlled Korea at some point but I had no idea of the specifics. Its interesting what you can learn from childrens' historical fiction. The narration was split between Sun-Hee and her older brother Tae-Yul. It covered the last few years of WWII before Japan surrendered.

I had tried and failed in the past to read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Since then I've read some books of his essays and really enjoyed his writing. So, I thought, why not give it another try. It's a huge book (1104 pages total), really very very large, but I thought, hey, I've read big books before. I love big books. This will be a challenge but I am "a reader" and I will read this book.

But.... I failed. I mean, I could have persevered for the next month that it would have taken me to get through it but I really read for enjoyment and I was spending more time trying to figure out if I even like the book than I was reading the book. I found myself not reading anything because I would have to read this book. Around pg. 100 I started getting interested but around pg. 200 I realized I was not interested enough. Sad.

On the other hand, I loved this book and zoomed through it in a weekend. Granted, it was a very lazy weekend. Yay, for post-apocalyptic novels. I just love that genre for some reason. Anyway, this was quite good. Its sequel of sorts to her earlier novel Oryx and Crake which I wish I had reread first. I love her inventiveness about what the future will bring. Very dystopian.

So, why is Margaret Atwood not labeled sci-fi? Or only sometimes? In my library's catalog, Oryx and Crake is her only book labeled sci-fi and then only 2 of 3 copies are. One is in regular fiction. So why is this sequel not sci-fi and why isn't Handmaid's Tale or the Blind Assassin? I think it's because she is "literary". Sci-fi just can not be classy. I wonder if it has to do with gender as well. Women don't read sci-fi/fantasy. Women do read Margaret Atwood. Therefore Margaret Atwood can not be sci-fi?

Combining my children's books for this post, I also recently read The Graveyard Book. Loved it. I thought it was interesting how sophisticated the concepts and vocabulary were in this novel. I understand why it is shelved mainly in our teen section even tho I read it for my children's materials class. Basically it was the story of a boy growing up in a graveyard while the man who killed his family hunts him down. Needs to have a sequel and needs to be a movie. But please, no 3D, I am so tired of 3D.

Let's see if I can remember everything I've read in the last few days.

No, I did not read the one with the movie cover. This was a very desolate, sad book. I read it in just a few hours. It is missing a lot of exposition about the story - how the characters came to be where they are. The reader has to fill in the blanks a lot. It will be interesting to see what the movie is like.

This one was pretty cool. It was obviously riffing off of Harry Potter and Narnia and maybe even Oz to an extent but the main character is a unfulfilled young adult who has the same problems any other sullen young adult might have despite the fact that he is a magician. Generally pretty dreary but fun to read something that's magical without being sparkly.

Technically the next two are for my children's class. Fractured fairy tales this week.



I liked both of these, the Fairest is a retelling of the Snow White story. Ella Enchanted is Cinderella. I liked Ella's character much better. The Fairest protagonist was only concerned with being pretty and the story kind of snuck in a moral about not being concerned with pretty but... it was too little, too late after she obsessed about it the whole story. I love that they are both characters with more than one dimension. It really added a lot to the fairy tale idea.

I think I'm missing something but I'm not sure what... This is why I'm writing these things down now.

Super traditional tellings of Mother Goose. Someone commented on the forums about the political incorrectness of some of the stories and was completely shot down by everyone saying they were silly. I should have helped them out but couldn't find a proper stance to take.

Basic rendition of the story. Wolf gets boiled alive and eaten by the pigs in the end.... weird.

Cute story. This one came the closest to having a strong female character however she's old so probably not a big role model for 4 year old girls obsessed with princesses.

Beautiful illustrations but it's still an odd story.

I love tall tales. This one had a bit of the modern to it in a weird way. He added an addition to his parents house (one day after being born cause he just grew that fast) and added a "jacutzi".

Aesop's Fables are so abrupt. Oh he won, now it's over. Weirdly short, obviously moral. I don't know how these still appeal to kids.

mmm.... I love a good thriller sometimes. I sped through this super quick. The main character was very compelling too - an unlikeable victim of a crime. And I don't usually guess correctly when guessing the killer but I definitely wouldn't have this time - I'll leave it at that.


Unfortunately this book did not make the cut. I was probably only 20 pages in when I decided to stop reading. It seemed very existential-ish to me. The main character in the first story was called only "the average man". Meh. Strange how the order you read books in changes your opinion of each book.

These are the books I read last week for our controversial or challenged childrens books segment. Interesting to see what can actually be told in a way that appeals to children.

About illegal immigrants. When Border Patrol comes she hides her friend and his mother from them.
A man and his son live in the airport. Sad but with a hopeful moment at the end.
About the LA riots. A hard topic well tackled as evidenced by the Caldecott it received.
It's a picture books but is it really meant for children? A lot of violence and very distressing subject matter. This was shelved in the art section of our adult nonfiction.
A little girl living during WWII who discovers a concentration camp.
An American soldier in Vietnam. I was surprised that these books tackled the war topic for children. I didn't really like the illustrations for this one.
A cute but very controversial picturebook that's made a lot of news headlines.
I'm not sure why this one was controversial other than the possible indications that the cats were in a gang... ?
A classic my-dad-is-gay book. Boring and not well illustrated.

By Column McCann
This book was a little like Crash (the movie). Multiple lives in New York, generally told from the first person, that come together in the end. But it was less serendipitous and more random - things happened and they weren't usually good things. And of course there was the element of the the Man Who Walked Between the Towers - a children's book I read recently and a documentary as well. Overall, I liked this but had a lot of interruptions while reading it so its been hard to keep the storyline straight in my head.

Well, my attempt to review/describe/list the books I read begins now. There will be some children books here and there because I'm taking a Children's Materials for Libraries class this semester.

I'd like to be able to look back at what I read even if it's just a list of things. I hope to do some short reviews as well just so that I can practice. Hopefully this will be slightly interesting but it's mostly for me.