Children's Books That I Like

I've been finding new books that I really enjoy reading to my little kids, so I figured I'd share them here.  In this parenting gig, t's always good to find books that you won't mind reading over and over again!

Elecopter
This book has cute rhymes and a very quick, fun-to-read story.  All the best elements!  And I just think it's so clever-- it's about an elephant-helicopter who flies around saving animals on the Savannah.  What's not to love?

Monkey Truck
This one is by the same author (actually, he wrote this one before Elecopter, I think), and it's also cute and fun and rhymes well.  It gets knocked down a notch because it refers to flatulence, and I hate stuff like that, even if my kids think it's hilarious.  (My neighbor once babysat my kids for me and was surprised that they didn't know the f-word.  Not the swear word, the other one which I refuse to use (or type).  She asked if this was a bad word for Mormons and Craig had to reassure her that no, it's not, I'm just really weird.  Yeah, well.)  I guess this one probably loses another point because I also hate monkeys.  But since this one is a monkey truck, it's somewhat forgivable.  Somewhat...

The Snail and the Whale
I find this book utterly charming.  The story is about a snail who longs to travel, so a kind humpback whale allows her to hitch a ride on his tail and they see the world together.  There is one illustration of glaciers is frankly beautiful, but mostly I just like the story.  And, of course, I love whales, so that makes it even better, in my mind.

The Skeleton in the Close
This book is a little longer, and quite frankly it has a pretty creepy premise (a skeleton comes barging into a kid's house, and then is climbing the stairs up to his room!) but I just love the rhythm of it and the ending is great!  This is one of those books that's just kind of fun to read out loud!  And Colton isn't scared of it, so chances are your kid will enjoy it, too.

Edwina, the Dinosaur Who Didn't Know She Was Extinct
No rhymes here, but saying the name Reginald von Hoobie Doobie out loud makes me laugh every time.  And the line, "She just didn't care." might be my new motto for everything.

And since this book is by Mo Willems, we may as well admit that we, like everybody else with kids this age, are in love with the...

Elephant and Piggy Books!
There are a LOT of these and I haven't found one yet that I didn't like.  My favorite is probably Can I Play Too? wherein Elephant and Piggy try to figure out how to include a snake in their game of catch.  Something about them politely pointing out that the snake lacks arms is just hilarious to me...  And honestly, it feels true to life, too.  Haven't we all had those moments where we're trying to talk about something that makes someone else feel "other" to us, but we terrified of offending them by pointing out that we noticed?  (And, more and more, any conversation like that seems to be completely taboo, which sort of makes me sad.)

To Market, To Market
This one picks up with the nursery rhyme, "To market, to market, to buy a fat pig" and continues on as the woman keeps buying more and more animals that take over her house.  It's funny and don't worry, the animals don't get eaten at the end, so it won't traumatize your child!

Hello Ninja
This another short, sweet, & rhyming story.  My only complaint is that I sometimes find myself wanting to slip into some sort of Japanese accent, but that ends up sounding super racist.  So I don't do that, even though the text really does lend itself to that sort of thing.

Beautiful Oops
Unlike most of the books in this list, this book does NOT rhyme.  Instead, it has beautiful illustrations of drips of paint, torn and bent paper, and other "mistakes" being turned into fun and imaginative doodles and such.  My kids love pulling the paper apart and seeing what the artist has done, and it really is colorful and fun to look at, too. 

 The Pout-Pout Fish
This book is a touch longer, but the rhymes are so fun-- my only problem is that I end up trying to read it so fast that I find myself gasping for breath.  But I love stanzas like this:

                     Along comes a squid
                     Quite a slender squiggly sight
                     She is squirmy, she is squelchy
                     She is slightly impolite

How do you not end up saying that at top speed???  There are a bunch of other Pout-Pout Fish books, too, but we've never read any of them, so I don't know if the series kept up its awesomeness or not...  I just requested them all from the library, so I'll let you know!

Waking Beauty & Falling for Rapunzel
These are by the same author and illustrator and have similar themes and are similarly adorable.  In Waking Beauty (my favorite), the prince has just discovered Sleeping Beauty, and the fairies are begging him to wake her up, but he doesn't know how.  Rather than kissing her, he tries things like jumping on her bed and dumping water on her.  In Falling for Rapunzel, it's Rapunzel who is confused, not ever quite hearing correctly what the prince is asking her to throw down from her tower.  Instead of her silky tresses, she throws down silky dresses and a variety of other objects, nailing the poor prince every time until he finally gives up on her.  Both books are happily reminiscent of Rocky & Bullwinkle's "Fractured Fairytales," and have perfect rhyming couplets.

So there you go!  Go read with your kids!  And tell me what your current favorites are!!!

Spring Has Sprung; and So Have My Allergies

Can I just whine about how much I resent my allergies???

I spend all winter shivering and hating the brownness and deadness of it all.  Until, finally,  finally spring arrives-- all the trees burst with leaves and blossoms and the weather is perfectly gorgeous: warm and lovely and not even hot yet! There are no mosquitoes yet and it's just SO PERFECT outside!  Nothing can match that lime green of new leaves, hiding the ugly freeway behind out house!  And Charlottesville is full of eastern redbuds (which are actually purple) and flowering dogwoods-- they're all delicate and perfect.  I want to fling all the windows open and suck in the delicious fresh air.  I want to jump on the trampoline with the kids and be a part of every second of it.

Ryder and Colton walk past our flowering dogwood

But instead, I end up cowering inside, thinking about turning on the A/C, because every fresh breeze leaves me snotty and sneezing and itching all over.  I even wake up in the middle of the night because my jaw and inside my mouth and ears itch.  What is up with that???

It's so unfair.  I want to love spring and just bask in its gloriousness, but I feel like it punches me in the nose every year.  I guess this is why autumn is rapidly becoming my favorite season.  Even though I truly love spring so much, it just doesn't love me back.


It might be time to see a doctor about this...

Double Posting

So you may not know this, but I'll actually go back and edit my posts if I catch mistakes (or, more accurately, if Craig points out typos).  I'm a pretty good speller and when I used to write papers all the time for school, I rarely had grammar issues, so when I make mistakes on my blog, it just bugs me-- it's hard to enjoy reading something when you're distracted by errors.

I just finished doing quite a bit of editing on that previous post on our New York trip, but in this case, I wasn't fixing errors but adding pictures.  We've been switching over to using Google Photos instead of iPhoto, but for some reason, a few of the pictures took a week to upload into Google and one never did, so it's taken some effort on my part to finally get those pictures into a place where I could further move them onto my blog.  I'm not super tech savvy, so when the computer does things differently, it takes me a while to figure out how to work with it!

I don't expect you to go back and read the whole post again (although you certainly can if you're that bored!), so I'm going to be obnoxious and give those pictures their own post, too, just so they don't get missed.  Is that a weird thing to do?  It's going to look weird in my blog book.  But I don't care.

First of all, this picture of Ryder sacked out on Rachael's bed made me laugh:

Make yourself at home, Ryder!

Next, proof that I really did meet up with Suvi:


I'm mostly posting this for )en's benefit, since she's also friends with Suvi. Am I making you miss Brooklyn, )en? 😉


And then, because this is fun, here's Bentley when he was five, admiring his hero:




And here he is once more, aged 10, posed the same (at his suggestion) (and I give much thanks to Hamilton that he still reveres George Washington!):

Okay, I think that's it.  I'll have new material for you next time!

Quick Jaunt up to New York

It's been spring break right now, so I have been drowning in children.  In addition to my five, we've got two extra boys in the house, and I suspect a couple neighborhood girls will be knocking on the door any minute now.  It's hectic and crazy and sometimes it makes me want to tear my hair out, but I also kind of like it.  At least, I like NOT getting up early to make lunches.  And I like seeing kids running around being kids.  And we don't have a whole lot scheduled, and I like that. 

So, yeah, spring break.

We haven't just been home for it-- the kids didn't have school the previous Friday, so we packed up and drove to New York Thursday evening.  I did all that myself (I'm getting good at that, actually) so we could pick Craig up from work and go.  This had two advantages: one, it forced Craig to actually leave work, something he's not super good at.  And two, it meant we didn't have to wait for him to drive home, since we would just be doubling back toward his school anyway.  We drove and drove and drove, stopping only once for a bathroom break.  I had packed sandwiches and snacks for everyone (I used an entire loaf of bread!!!!!) so we wouldn't have to stop for food.

Just as we were driving over the George Washington Bridge, the fuel light came on.  Oops.  Turns out you just can't make that drive on one tank of gas, even if you topped off at the Costco right by Craig's school.  So then we frantically found a gas station and filled up (again) ten minutes from Leah's house.  Oh, well.  We got there around 11pm, which was still really good time.

Friday we'd planned to take everyone into the city.  I figured that was the best day to do it-- the kids' cousin Eliot would be in school, so they wouldn't miss playing with him.  And hopefully things would be slightly less crowded than on Saturday.  (But it's New York City, so you just have to assume that everything will be crowded.)  Unfortunately, Friday turned out to be a day where it POURED rain all day, and it was about 40 degrees outside.  Lovely.

We got all ready anyway-- Tracy was there with us for a few hours, and Rachael was going to meet us at the Museum, so there was no going back, as far as I was concerned.  As we were packing up, Brian (my brother-in-law), spoke up, "I might regret this, but do you want to just leave Colton and Camille here with me?"

Say, what???

After the offer was on the table, I just couldn't say no.  The idea of only dealing with THREE kids (ages 6-10) and not needing the double stroller was too wonderful to refuse.  We hurriedly explained nap times and rushed out the door before Brian could change his mind.

We stopped at Levain Bakery first (and got a cookie for Brian, too!) and then headed to Rachael's apartment.  We were picking up Tracy, but my kids wanted to see Rachael's place, so Craig found a parking spot (!!!!!) and we went in and visited for a few minutes.  Then we drove to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I love that place.  I mean-- it's kind of an awful maze, where there are too many doorways so you always feel like you're missing something.  But I still love it anyway.  I ran around squealing in delight at all my favorite paintings, giving little mini art history lessons to the kids and anyone who was within earshot.  I just love it.  I've said it before on this blog, but there is something so good for your soul to look at beautiful things.  And some of these paintings have become so familiar to me that they feel more like old friends that I get to pay a visit to.  It was a joy to see them all again.

Ryder immediately made himself at home on Rachael's bed.

Bentley liked this Nile Crocodile

Kendra, of course, liked the Sphinx

Notice Bentley walking like an Egyptian.  The Bangles would be so proud.  Don't look at my hair.  That's what the rain did to it-- I really do have the naturally straightest, lamest hair in the world...

We heart George Washington

We took this picture as an homage to the following pic from a few years ago....

Kendra's reaction to the following painting

I can't really blame her for that face...

A very battered print of this hangs in my living room-- it's so fun to see the actual painting!

Ryder showing that he's scared of the tiger

Me pointing out the hidden angels in Joan of Arc

About an hour and a half after the kids began whining, we finally headed out.  Into the pouring rain.  We walked to the Shake Shack and actually managed to get a table, where we devoured our burgers, fries, and concretes.  So good.  So so so good.  I'd wanted to swing by the MoMA, also, since it was free Friday afternoon there.  But the kids had had it, and it didn't seem worth it to fight the rain and the crowds just to make my kids even more miserable.  So instead, we walked in the rain back to where Craig had parked our van-- for only $70 a day!-- and drove back to Leah's, grateful that we weren't messing with trains and subways.  And extra grateful that we had only had to drag three belligerent children around, rather than five.  And a double stroller.

It was nice to get back to Leah & Brian's (where Colton and Camille had been having a splendid time playing with Theo) and change into some dry, warm pajamas. 

At the Shake Shack.  My kids are weird.

Craig also pulls weird faces.  So I guess we know where the kids got it from!

Nothing like a lightsaber and a bottle

The next two days we mostly just hung out with Leah and Brian and their kids, and Rachael and Ian and their baby, and my cousin Jan.  My old college roommate, Suvi, came Sunday morning and it was kind of amazing to see her again.  I think it had been fifteen years since we last saw each other?  So there was a lot of catching up to do! 

We also got to attend Eliot's piano recital, which was great.  And everyone took turns going out in the rowboat on their lake (Kendra LOVES the rowboat and went out every chance she got)...  It was just a really nice trip.  I'm so glad my kids have fun cousins to play with.  And I'm so glad I have awesome sisters to visit!

Kendra gets bundled up in Leah's vest and Brian's hat to go out on the boat in the cold

And again on a warmer day

Leah getting snacks for the boys

Camille gives a piggy back ride to Curious George

Jan, playing with Camille

I love it when my kids get their knees dirty.  I feel like I'm doing something right as a parent.

Eliot and Ryder, two peas in a pod

So many fun things in this basement!!!!

The return trip was easy breezy.  The kids were used to being in the car AND we figured out to put Bentley further away from Ryder, so that reduced the amount of whining by probably 70%.  We made one long stop for lunch (and gas!!!) in Delaware and other than that just plowed on home as fast as we could.  We had a couple narrow misses with DC traffic, so that was lucky.  It was good to be home!

An old toll booth on display in Delaware

Camille makes herself comfortable to travel

The kids are back in school tomorrow!  Maybe I'll finally clean my house!  Maybe...