Little Sleep Thief and Other Stories

Posted on 07/09/2011 by chick

Dear Livia,

Here are some more stories about you.

  • It is impossible to sing you to sleep. When I start to sing, you perk up and smile. I guess you really like music. Or you think my attempts at singing are funny. Either way is fine by me. I just love to see you smile, even when I’m trying to get you to sleep.
  • You’re not even 6 months old yet and you’re already mobile. You “swim” more than crawl, but you’re fast. You can make it across Marshall’s bedroom in under 10 seconds. Though you’ll explore anywhere, your favorite place to be is in Marshall’s room with his toys. You just can’t wait to put them all in your mouth.
  • You have extremely sweaty feet. Seriously. They are always wet, regardless of the temperature and whether or not you’re wearing socks. The base of your bouncy seat gets damp from your feet rubbing on it. When I Googled “sweaty baby feet,” I found a lot of references, so it must be a common condition. Supposedly it goes away. We can only hope. 🙂
  • You have the most adorable laugh. You still sometimes laugh when your clothes are being changed, but not as often. I miss it. I have found, though, that saying “Goggy!” to you in a rough voice as I lean toward you makes you laugh for some reason. I do it over and over again, and you keep chuckling.
  • You are very vocal. Your father and I often joke that you’re going to speak before Marshall does.
  • You are clever. Already I can see the signs. Yesterday, in my office, you were crawling around, looking for something to do, when you came up against my file cabinet. You looked up at it, thought for a moment, then very deliberately moved around it.
  • It’s amazing that I have any hair left. You just keep pulling, and pulling, and pulling.
  • Your first tooth broke through just a few days ago. Hooray!
  • Having sprouted a tooth, you deserve some solid food. I want to make an occasion out of your “first cereal,” so it may take a while to get it together, because your father and I will both need to be present and to have a camera ready.
  • You used to sleep from about 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., with just one feeding around midnight. That was great, but I wasn’t getting quite enough sleep, so your father took over the midnight feeding. As soon as we made that change, you started getting up at 4:30 – 5:30. So now I’m getting less sleep, not more. Little sleep thief!
  • You are so adorable. Looking at you, I think how sad it is that we’ll never have another baby. But it also makes you that much more precious to us. Marshall was our first and always special for that reason. You are our last and equally special in that way.

Love,

Mom

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Love = Party

Posted on 07/07/2011 by chick

Dear Marshall,

Last weekend was your 2nd birthday party. Family from both sides came to dine and spoil you to bits. And what a haul of gifts you got! Sand toys, water toys, clothes, books, cars, among other things. You are one lucky boy.

It was nice for us, too, not only to watch you enjoying yourself, but also to have the gates open, chairs in the dining room, and the piano bench at the piano. Your dad even put the glass in the living room table. It was like living in a normal house for a change.

But it was stressful, the preparations as well as the party itself. I really don’t like entertaining people in our home, but I didn’t want you to miss an opportunity to spend time with family. For you, I’ll do almost anything.

I’m not sure I’d eat broccoli for you, though. Even a mother’s love has limits. 😉

Love,

Mom

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Traveling Man

Posted on 07/03/2011 by chick

A description of Poirot’s ride on a camel:

He started by groans and lamentations and ended by shrieks, gesticulations and invocations to the Virgin Mary and every Saint in the calendar. In the end, he descended ignominiously and finished the journey on a diminutive donkey.

from “The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb”

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A Thought

Posted on 06/27/2011 by chick

I would never say that true stories aren’t good, but I think the made-up ones are usually better.

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Occupational Hazard

Posted on 06/26/2011 by chick

Being a detective is not always the nicest job, really, so it should come as no surprise that most detectives are a mite peculiar, having witnessed human nature too many times at its worst. Our favorite fictional detective, Hercule Poirot, is a strange little man. Here, perhaps, is why:

“Mon ami,” said Poirot, “I like to inquire into everything. Hercule Poirot is a good dog. The dog follows the scent, and if, regrettably, there is no scent to follow, he noses around—seeking always something that is not very nice. So also, does Hercule Poirot. And often—oh! so often—does he find it!”

from Peril at End House

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My Moment

Posted on 06/25/2011 by chick

In Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, Amy said,

PURPLE FLOWER

There is a single purple flower a couple of feet from where I am sitting. I am feeling poorly dressed and missing my long hair. I am at Café De Lucca in Bucktown, and there is a purple flower—that’s how I would define this moment. And you, your moment? Where are you at this moment? E-mail me and tell me. If you are the hundredth person to do so, I will bake you a pie and FedEx it to you. You will have to trust me on this.

I remember thinking to myself, “Wow. I can’t believe Amy is going to make me write to her and tell her that I’m sitting on the pot as I read this. That is my moment—reading on the pot.” In fact, I read most of her book in the bathroom. With two kids and a full-time job, my bathroom time is often the only chance I get to read. And if I should occasionally stay in there a little longer than is strictly necessary, who’s to say?

While my current lack of reading time might tempt me to linger in the john, I was a bathroom reader even when I had all the time in the world. It’s a family habit. Like my mother before me, I cannot tolerate being in the bathroom with nothing to read. If there are no books, magazines, or catalogs, I’ll read the label from the deodorant, the shampoo, whatever’s handy. My mom and I had a good laugh when we discovered that we both do that.

After I moved out on my own, I must have read the toothpaste tube dozens of times before I learned to properly stock the bathroom with reading material. Now there’s always something in there, if only an old issue of Smithsonian that I’ve already read from front to back, its pages wavy from the steam of dozens of hot showers, but at least it’s good-quality, educational reading with no inactive ingredients.

Anyway, I thought “my moment” was sort of funny. I wanted to tell it to someone. I even went to Amy’s web site with the intention of sharing it, but when I saw how many people had responded to that same paragraph, how popular the book had become, my story no longer felt fresh, but rather stale and wrinkled, like it had been sitting in the bathroom too long.

Oh well. I’ll share it with you instead. You don’t mind stale and wrinkled, do you? Feel free to print it out and read it in the bathroom. That is, after all, a great place to read.

Posted in Crazy Me, Reading | 2 Comments

Amy’s Interesting Book

Posted on 06/23/2011 by chick

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
Grade: A

On the cover of Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life are some words from the foreword that sum up the book: “I have no survived against all odds. I have not lived to tell. I have not witnessed the extraordinary. This is my story.”

What an intriguing concept! How could anyone ordinary write a whole book about themselves? What would they have to say? And what chutzpah to think anyone else could ever find it interesting!

But it is interesting. The author, who I think of as Amy (justified, I think, given the personal nature of the book), took a bunch of her memories and observations, gave each an explanatory title, then alphabetized them. Sometimes she included little bits of artwork or tables that break up the text nicely and make the whole thing look more like a real encyclopedia.

This is a love it or hate it book, or so it seems browsing through the online reviews. The people who hate it just don’t seem to get the point, and they say, “Yeah, Amy. You didn’t survive against all odds, or live to tell, and that’s why you shouldn’t have written a book about yourself!” But I think everyone has interesting thoughts, at least once in a while. OK, I admit that I found small sections of it dull, but the beauty of this book’s format is that you can easily skip to the next entry to see if it’s more to your liking, and there’s plenty to like.

To give you an example, here’s what Amy says about doing things.

DOING SOMETHING

It is so much easier to not do something than to do something. Even the smallest task, like filling out a Scholastic Books order form or putting away the butter, requires time, focus, and follow-through. It’s astounding, actually, that anything gets done at all, by anyone.

…

Yet. Still. Somehow. I am encouraged to see that despite the colossal effort, despite the odds against one, despite the mere constraints of time and schedules and sore throats, houses do get built, pottery gets glazed, e-mails get sent, trees get planted, shoes get reheeled, manifestos get Xeroxed, films get shot, highways get repaved, cakes get frosted, stories get told.

I’m a lifelong procrastinator, so I get what she’s saying here. Doing something, anything, always feels like a pain in the butt. The fact that I get anything done (like this blog post) is truly amazing. I’ve always wondered, actually, why no one else seems to think that doing things is such a chore. Now I know at least one other person out there also realizes the effort required to do the simplest things.

I liked Amy’s encyclopedia. I recommend it. I also heartily encourage others to follow her lead. Write down the stories of your life!

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Tooth Delay

Posted on 06/22/2011 by chick

Dear Livia,

You have been behaving as though teething for well over a month, and it just keeps getting worse. Your mouth is a waterfall of drool. Your crankiness has escalated over the last few days, to the point that you are sometimes nearly inconsolable. The other night, you woke up every hour or so to howl for a while, before slipping back into a restless sleep. But still no teeth. Would you please hurry up and cut those teeth, Sweetie?

Love,

Mom

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Neat Eater

Posted on 06/19/2011 by chick

As my husband can attest, I’m not a neat eater. I don’t know why, but I just can’t seem to keep food off my clothes. Ah, well. At least I don’t have a mustache to worry about, unlike our favorite fictional detective.

Hercule Poirot addressed himself to the task of keeping his moustaches out of the soup.

from Murder on the Orient Express

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Following Tradition

Posted on 06/15/2011 by chick

I went to the annual Westerly Book Fair last week. It’s a tradition now, so I had to go. I wasn’t nine months pregnant and just about to give birth, so this year’s sale certainly lacked the ooomph of 2009’s. The selection wasn’t that much better than 2010’s sale (a rather lackluster affair), but the sale was held at the library this year, rather than the YMCA, making it seem a little better.

Here’s what I bought.

  1. Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery: For some reason, I thought this was a rare book that I simply had to own, but it’s just the last in the Anne of Green Gables series and not particularly hard to find. Well, it could still be good. You just never know.
  2. The White Deer by James Thurber: Though I already own a copy of this book, I’ve never read it. This new copy is a first edition!
  3. Bed-knob and Broomstick by Mary Norton: I couldn’t remember if I owned a copy, so I bought this one. As it turns out, I do already have one, but it’s softcover. This hardback may prove to be better.
  4. Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo: This is on the top 100 children’s book list, so I’ve been meaning to read it. Now I’ve got a copy handy, so no excuses!
  5. The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo: Why not? She’s a proven author (see #4), so it’s probably decent.
  6. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper: Another from the top 100 list (see #4).
  7. Crosbie’s Dictionary of Riddles by John S. Crosbie: Yay! A riddle book!
  8. The Little Riddle Book: Yet more riddles! Yay more!
  9. Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon : I figured (rightly) that this was the book that The King and I was based on. I thought it might be a fun read.
  10. Eek! There’s a Mouse in the House by Wong Herbert Yee: This one was for Marshall. The title was fitting given the recent invasion of mice in our house. (Thank God for Peeps, our huntress supreme!)
  11. Toes are to Tickle by Shen Roddie: This is a cute book for kids. I do wish, though, that it didn’t reinforce the idea that chairs are for climbing. (They’re really not, Marshall. They’re for sitting.)
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