Reading

E picked up a book we recently borrowed from the library and wandered into the bathroom where I was. She is particularly fascinated by this book as the title is, "E (her name) And Her Yucky Brother". I picked it from the library without the usual glance through and as it turns out, it is a book about a little girl whose family adopts a four year old boy from foster care. After some rough chapters, it has a happy ending. It is also a "First Reader" book and so I was a little surprised by the mature content. Not necessarily new subject matter in our house, though!
Anyway, the point of this is that E made a leap into reading on her own... she picked up this book and read a whole sentence completely on her own. She was pretty excited and I know it was a great confidence booster.We have always loved reading, starting when the kids were babies. Classics like: "Big Red Barn", "Goodnight Gorilla" and "Pajama Time" were among our favorites. When S came along he mostly had to read what E had chosen and often lost interest... he wandered off during most reading times. I remember worrying that he would not share the love of reading... but now, he is right there with a stack of his choices and has his own favorites. He loves "Ella and the Naughty Lion", "Big Chickens" and the classic: "The Little Engine That Could". We have the version of TLETC that has been recently re-illustrated by Loren Long and I love his artwork. It makes reading, "I think I can, I think I can, I think can" 500 times a day allot more bearable. E has moved on to longer "chapter" style books with less pictures. We have read James Herriotts Treasury for Children, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and some of Thorton Burgess's Adventures of..... series. Of course, now L is in on the action. Has been since the day he came home. He thinks books are for eating, but other than that seems to be as happy for story time as the other two.I like to buy used children's books online. I have used Amazon of course, also http://www.abebooks.com as well as www.half.com. One of the easiest ways to search for a book is simply to type the ISBN into the search engine. Also, I have enjoyed www.paperbackswap.com. This is a great site that allows you to trade your books for other members books. You pay to ship a book someone requests from you, but then you get a credit that can be used to request a book from anyone else. You don't pay anything for the book sent to you. Listing books is very easy, there are thousands of great books to chose from and you can even make a wish list for books you are interested in but aren't currently posted. Do I sound like an ad? Well, actually, if you do decide to sign up make sure and type my personal email address in as your referral!

And we love to go the library. Well, mostly we love to go to the library. Trips to the library have become a pretty big excursion for the mommy in the house. First, there is simply the time of morning we have to leave to be at the library in time for story or music time. Second, since we have had to leave early and drink coffee in the car on the way, there is the fact that I desperately have to go the bathroom by the time we get there. However, there isn't time since if we don't go right into story time we will miss out. Its a popular story time and fills up! So, I have to wait.... Then there is the matter of holding a squirmy baby, keeping an eye on an aisle-exploring two year old, and trying to talk E out of another story about "Clifford the Big Red Dog". At the end of this, I have to carry our book bag, weighing somewhere around 30 pounds, over one shoulder, while carrying L in the other arm. I really should use a stroller, but if history serves me, that would just mean I have something to push... while still having a baby to carry and books to manage. We just went to the library this past week. We went to story time and and there I saw... the most perfect pair of summer shoes. They were exactly what I have been looking for- a pair of shoes that would go great with capris, a cute skirt or even jeans. They looked like they could have been Keen or Merrel, but I don't see something that is exactly them on either website. I would have asked the mom that was wearing them what brand they were... except, I had been less than gracious a little earlier when her toddler had tried to claw L's face off. I hadn't noticed her shoes yet, and her muttered, "sorry", when her little guy took both his hands and grabbed L's face, had not really impressed me. I just re-deposited L from the blanket in front of me to the side of my lap opposite her and Mr. Grabby Pants. I should have been more understanding though and offered a smile. No harm done, really. But my energy was elsewhere and now I will never know where those shoes can be found. Cute-Shoe-Wearer? If you are reading this, lets make amends. Let's let by-gones be by-gones. I'm sure your new-walker is a very sweet little boy. He's sure quick! Hey, by the way, where did you get those shoes?