Momentous

Right now we are trying to make one of the biggest decisions we will (likely) ever make in the life of our family. I have cried and prayed and rejoiced and cried and sobbed and and prayed some more so, so, so many times in the last week. I don't know how the heck I would be surviving this right now without Neil by my side.

And my baby had an EEG and I cried a lot more. 

It's really crazy around here. So much has happened. So, so, so much, even just in regular daily life. There is so much to blog about, but right now I am barely staying afloat (also before all this stuff came up we signed all the kids up for spring sports, and I literally did not even imagine that there would be 3 games per week per kid so I will let you just do the math on that one for a minute).

I have to go do my yoga now for my rotated/tilted pelvis (another fun story) so I'm just going to leave this picture from a few weeks ago when I set a new PR for the half-marathon and had just the best time running with my kids. Every time I look at this photo it makes me so happy--it's the background and lock screen on my phone because I want to feel like Luke did on this day, and it reminds me to try to find the good in all of this right now. 

Chicago getaway

 Last weekend my sweetheart & I slipped away for an overnight trip with just the two of us--no kiddos! Such a treat. We are always terrible about remembering to celebrate our anniversary (it's the day after Christmas) and we keep saying we're going to celebrate it in June but we always forget. But this year we remembered. :-)

We left early on Friday morning and went straight to the Chicago temple. We had the opportunity to attend a wonderful endowment session and I was so grateful for the peaceful time to contemplate and pray in a place where I felt so close to the Lord.

After we left the temple, we headed to downtown Chicago. I had booked both our hotel & parking (highly recommend booking your parking online because it can be crazy hard/expensive to park, especially overnight!) in the River North district. We checked in to our lovely hotel and then walked over to Michigan Avenue. Okay, actually we walked way past Michigan Avenue because we were so giddy walking along and talking and laughing together that we went on Lower Michigan and didn't even notice until we were almost at the lake. Boy, time flies when the kids aren't complaining about their feet hurting, right? This is the third time we've done an adults-only trip to Chicago and much as I love our little darlings, I love love love these trips with the two of us! (We did have a houseful of sulky kids who were convinced that we were going museum-hopping without them...they were slightly mollified when we said we were planning to walk a lot and eat spicy food.)

We wandered around Crate & Barrel for awhile...okay, I wandered while Neil intently studied the interior mechanism of the escalators (he was so fascinated!!!). 

 Then we went over to Water Tower Place and hit Wow Bao! so that we had some delicious bao to sustain us for another hour or two (I think my favorite is a toss-up between the Thai curry and the chocolate but the coconut is dang good too).

 John Hancock Tower--we always seem to wind up here no matter what our actual plans are...just staring up at the sky. Didn't go up this time although we thought about eating dinner there, but we decided to go to Grand Lux instead (I had to get my favorite salad!).

We wandered around the LEGO store for awhile and did some shopping for Isaac's birthday (he was very very very specific about needing  Star Wars LEGOs).

I always love checking out the new LEGO models--Neil is 6'5" for perspective.

After we ate dinner we went back to Water Tower Place to catch the double-decker bus. Yes, I totally love those things! Normally I try to look as non-touristy as possible but sometimes you just gotta break down and learn about the architecture, you know? Anyway, it was SO cold and foggy and clammy that my teeth were chattering like crazy--I was wearing a skirt and sandals and I was miserable! So we hit Forever 21 to try to find something cheap + warm.

I did eventually find a long-sleeved shirt but I think that hour we spent looking around was one of the golden hours of our marriage. I can't remember the last time when I laughed so much. There is no one on this planet who is as much fun to be snarky with as my dear husband (one of the longest evenings of my life was watching a terrible movie with some lady friends and having to keep my mouth shut rather than mocking it nonstop with Neil). Anyway, this particular Forever 21 provided two giant floors full of amazing-to-snark-about clothes.

Two of our favorites:

and this:

Then we went back outside and stared at the Hancock building some more while we waited for the bus. See? Super foggy.

So apparently there is a battle royale going on right now between Donald Trump and pretty much everyone else in Chicago who feels that the giant letters on Trump Tower (which were just finished a couple of weeks ago) are tasteless.  Like...everyone is talking (complaining) about it and supposedly Trump is scheduled to come to Chicago in another week to deal with the hubbub.

My favorite part of the hop-on hop-off double-decker bus tours is that they do this City Lights tour late at night. I've been to Chicago a million times but there is just something awesome about being able to fully tilt your head back and stare at all the lights with no car ceiling/windows in your view, or having to worry about not running into other pedestrians/cars/whatnot. Seriously, it's awesome.

So we rode around a bit and then we got off at Millennium Park and wandered around there and then wended our way over to Buckingham Fountain, as per tradition, and then we wended our way back and caught the bus again and then hiked over to our hotel (we walked about five miles that night, which is good because I was thoroughly enjoying delicious Chicago food).

The next day we ate an awesome breakfast at the hotel and then it was time for our favorite Chicago thing: running along the lakeshore! This time we also ran along the Riverwalk, which was gorgeous and breezy and beautiful. Everything was still really foggy out on the lake and you could only see the first few rows of boats at their moorings. But it was so delightful--seagulls calling and the buoys ringing and bobbing and the water lapping against the breakwater. I love this run more and more every time we do it! We ran for about an hour and then we went back to check out of our hotel.

Lots more walking--we visited another one of our "always" stops, the Chicago Cultural Center and its breathtaking Tiffany ceiling...

 ...and Chinatown...

 ...and Greektown (oh so so so so good!).

 Then more riding around...

 So there's always something interesting to see in Chicago. Usually it's a street festival or parade, but this time the parade happened to have a little twist: zombies! There were a couple of hundred of them and it was um, pretty exciting (one poor little girl near me burst into tears and tried to hide behind a cafe table).

We did see one very interesting thing that I've never seen before--some of the street performers got in this HUGE fight on the steps of the Art Institute and were throwing each other out into the street. We were across the street on the bus, but everyone near them just took out their phones and starting filming it. They were the guys who drum on buckets so they were also whacking each other with drumsticks and buckets. Definitely not something you see every day.

 Later on in the evening we noticed that the sky was getting reaaally dark. Beautiful, but definitely threatening.

And as we went along the heavens opened and the rain poured down!!! Classic crazy Midwestern cloudburst, but it went on and on and on! Fortunately the bus company passed out some free ponchos, so we were able to REALLY look like tourists, but dry tourists! We waded back to our car through ankle-deep water and empty streets and drove back home to our five sleepy little kiddos. A totally perfect weekend (but keep reading--there's more!).


 Last but not least, I will leave you with one of the truly wonderful things I saw in Chicago--monks on a tour bus! (I sat behind them on purpose so I could take this photo slightly less obtrusively.)  Sadly, I did not get a picture of the very best part--their smartphone cases matched their robes PERFECTLY.  

Mother's Day: Family ties

My first little baby, Abigail Grace, was born at the end of my first year of graduate school. I was so busy working on my thesis, teaching, and taking my own classes that I didn't even think about doing any research or reading on motherhood. It just seemed like something that would come naturally--right?




































After nine years as a mother, I have learned so much about how to mother effectively, but I've also learned that some things make me feel like I've had a good mothering day and some things make me feel like I've completely wasted my day. I've learned that I have to consciously plan and research and prioritize my choices as a mother, just as I did as a graduate student and just as I do at work.



I've written about this before, but the most transcendent thing for me has been realizing that I need to deliberately create situations that allow us to strengthen our bonds as a family and our love for each other. Somehow I just sort of thought that these kinds of moments would happen on their own, and that contriving them was cheating. And now I realize that sometimes the magic strikes without warning, but more often than not, I have to really work hard to get us out of our normal chaos and busyness and responsibilities so that we can focus on each other--and it is SO imperative to do so!!

For me, the best way to make this happen is to leave our house behind and go outside. I always joke that I feel like an amazing mom when we're out in the woods together, but it's true! Leaving all of our responsibilities behind--the homework, the piano practice, the laundry, the dishes--allows us to just be together and focus on finding the perfect walking stick. We're able to shed our personas and roles and just be together.

Every season I spend some serious time planning our family activities to really try to knit together this group of mine--I usually start a couple of months before the seasons change and sketch out a tentative list and then during Family Home Evening we make a list as a family.

A few weeks ago around Nathan's birthday we started on our spring list--we went camping as a family. We picked the girls up from school and headed south to a state park which we had yet to explore--it was a perfect evening for camping and we had a delightful dinner around the campfire before we started roaming through the woods near our campsite. When we came back, we ate the Dutch oven cherry cobbler that Neil had made for Nathan's birthday. The kids started roasting marshmallows for s'mores (except for Jules, who wasn't feeling well and crawled into her sleeping bag with a book--she was such a trooper and insisted that we still go adventuring when we told her we could reschedule!). We sat around the fire laughing and talking together until about 10 pm, when all the kids insisted on going to sleep. The biggies fell asleep right away and Neil and I sat around the fire for another couple of hours talking about our hopes and dreams.

When we went to bed, Lukey woke up and decided he would be more comfortable inside my sleeping bag with me. The two of us had just reached an agreement regarding who would get the majority of my pillow (Luke!) and fallen asleep again when Natie woke up and made his displeasure clear in no uncertain terms! He was SO loud and so angry!! All of the other kids woke up and were so good-humored about Nathan's wailing (Jules and I went on an expedition to a nearby outhouse and were reassured by all of the snoring we passed on the way that our fellow campers were happily sleeping through Nathan's caterwauling). We ended up passing around a box of fruit snacks, chuckling as Isaac made a "disco party" with his flashlight, and Natie finally fell asleep again.

In the morning we had the obligatory hot chocolate, pancakes, sausage, and eggs that make any camping trip that much more delightful. The kids washed the dishes while Neil and I started packing up, and then everybody worked together to roll up sleeping bags and fold up the tent. It warmed my heart to see how cheerful and willing to contribute all of the children were, especially when Abigail bounded over and said, "Dad! How can I help?!"

We set off for one of the most delightful and challenging hikes I have ever been on. Sadly, no photos, since I still haven't replaced my camera (the lens jammed and neither Neil nor I have been able to fix it, even with all of the YouTube tutorials out there!) and I didn't want to bring my iPad on the hike. Turns out this was a good move, since we were hiking up a narrow, rocky streambed that necessitated straddling the stream and moving our feet along the sheer rock walls on each side! It was strenuous and quite difficult but immensely fun and incredibly beautiful. As always, the trickier the footing, the more interesting the hike is to our children--at one point we emerged from the watercourse into a beautiful forest and everyone was instantly bored/hot/too tired to walk until we hit the next bend in the stream and its tumbled rocks, at which point all our little gazelles took off again!


Highlights: we found a 5-foot-long black snake, we crossed a beautiful suspension bridge, we found lots of beautiful shells, and we got to clamber down a series of ladders bypassing a waterfall. Absolutely beautiful and we had an amazing time together as a family.

Yesterday we went on a trip that has been soooo long in the planning since it required a lot of coordination--we took the girls to spend a day at the Kings Island amusement park! The boys had a wonderful time here with a babysitter and we had an amazing time just focusing on our two girls. It was SO great to have time where we were able to do "big kid" things and really zero in on those oldest two of ours. It was the most wonderful day--just enough rain to really keep the crowds down (I think our longest wait was 15 minutes for any ride, which is CRAZY!), breezy and beautiful and cool, and the girls were so happy and cooperative and appreciative. Abigail stopped at one point and said, "Mom and Dad, thank you so much--I know you had to do a lot of planning and that this was really expensive, and I just want to tell you that this is the best day of my life." Can you say heart-warming?

Highlights from the day:

• Juliet's insistence that we go on a specific water ride, and then asking just after we had embarked, "Um, Mommy...what does "drenched" mean?"
• One of the kids' favorite bands came on over the park loudspeakers (Imagine Dragons!) and I started dancing and trying to get the girls to dance with me, and Juliet said, "Mom, it's not that I don't want to dance with you...I just don't want to look like a maniac."
• Abigail is a total roller coaster fiend! She rode more than anyone else (thanks to the Parent Swap program & Jules deciding that she would rather not ride most of the coasters, so Neil & Abigail would ride one, and then Abigail & I would ride it again). Neil and I both started to feel like we were aging out of our roller coaster-enjoying years, but boy, Abigail had the time of her life!
• Juliet found a few rides that she just adored and we did them over and over and over again--7 times for the flying-on-your-stomach one and 6 times for the bumper cars!
• We bought the insanely overpriced blue ice cream just when all of us thought we were so nauseated that we couldn't keep going. It magically cured the nausea and gave us energy for the next eight hours! (Word to the wise: if you get motion sickness, do NOT go on the roller coaster where you lie down on your back and zoom around backwards upside down.)
• Holding hands everywhere. I don't think I took very many steps all day without both of the girls holding my hands. I rarely get to do this with them anymore since my arms are always full of Nathan or Luke, and it was such a treat to have my little girls clinging to my hands while they hopped up and down with excitement.
• Getting a chance to just focus on 100% pure fun & enjoyment of each other's company. I love getting the opportunity to all just be friends together instead of Mom & Dad &  to let the kids see us as people with our own interests and preferences (Abigail really enjoyed categorizing all of us into various groups depending on what kinds of rides we preferred).
  
  I just had the best time being with my girls and my darling husband. They are such fun personalities and I adore them so much. So much fun to talk with and so funny and witty and perceptive and fascinating. And it was so lovely to come back home to my boys, who were all tucked up snoozing in their beds, and wake Isaac up to go to the bathroom and have him sleepily say, "Oh Mommy, you are back! Did you have a wonderful time?" and then wake up the next day to my three little boys ready for cuddles and stories. I am the luckiest. 

Beloved by my boys

When my oldest son was around six months old, I remember worrying that I didn't have enough "boy books" around. A wise friend told me that in general her sons were interested in many of the same books that her daughters loved, but she had noticed that her sons really enjoyed "fact books" as well (more on that later).

Right now both of my older boys love fairy tales more than anything else--particularly Bearskin and The Tinderbox, which both feature some pretty adventurous sword-wielding heroes! They also love many of the books on previous lists, but the ones I'm listing on this post have appealed to my boys even more than they did to my girls.

Edward and the Pirates (David McPhail)
The Happy Lion (Louise Fatio, ill. Roger Duvoisin)
The Artist (John Bianchi)
Five Minutes Peace (Jill Murphy)
The Truck Book (Bill Gere, ill. Tom LaPadula)
The Truck Book (Harry McNaught)
Barn Storm (Charles Ghigna)
Just Like My Dad (Tricia Gardella, ill. Margot Apple)
There's No Such Thing As A Dragon (Jack Kent)
If You Want to See a Whale (Julie Fogliano)--my two-year-old asks for this every day
The Gruffalo (Julia Donaldson)
Ordinary Amos and the Amazing Fish (Eugenie Fernandes)
The Little Engine That Could (Watty Piper)
Jamberry (Bruce Degin)
Gregory the Terrible Eater (Mitchell Sharmat)
Kiss Good Night (Amy Hest)
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (Judi Barrett, ill. Ron Barrett) **1978 version! Don't get the updated one which is obnoxiously politically correct--at least if you have the original one memorized
Corduroy (Don Freeman)
Hooway for Wodney Wat (Helen Lester)
King Bidgood's in the Bathtub (Audrey Wood)
All Aboard Trains (Mary Harding, ill. Richard Courtney)
The Paperboy (Dav Pilkey)
Grandpa Had a Windmill, Grandma Had a Churn (Louise A. Jackson)
My Grandmother's Clock (Geraldine McCaughrean)
Wynken, Blynken, & Nod (Ill. Johanna Westerman)
The Buffalo Storm (Katherine Applegate)
Up North at the Cabin (Marsha Wilson Chall)
My Teacher Sleeps in School (Leatie Weiss)
George Shrinks (William Joyce)
Winter Barn (Dorothy Ripley)
Patrick's Dinosaurs (Carol Carrick)
The Seven Silly Eaters (Mary Ann Hoberman)
Big Al (Andrew Clements)
Freight Train (Donald Crews)
Bear in Love (Daniel Pinkwater)
Bridget's Beret (Tom Lichtenheld)
Water Beds: Sleeping in the Ocean (Gail Langer Karwoski)
Sam the Minuteman (Nathaniel Benchley)
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (adapted by Al Perkins) **this is hands-down an all-time favorite that we read every single day
The Story About Ping (Marjorie Flack) **another one that we read every day
B Is for Bulldozer (June Sobel)
Trucks Roll (George Ella Lyon) **another daily book when the boys were about two
Goodnight Digger (Michelle Robinson)
Katy and the Big Snow (Virginia Lee Burton)
Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site (Sherri Rinker)
Dig Dig Digging (Margaret Mayo)
The Monster at the End of This Book (Jon Stone)

If You Liked This One, You're In Luck!

Folks, it is hard to figure out how to organize these posts! I've been staring down half a dozen giant piles of books. Hopefully this system will make sense. :-)

When it comes to children's books, there are some authors who are one-hit wonders and others who are incredibly prolific. Individual tastes vary, of course, but here are my favorites by many popular and prolific authors/illustrators. Please keep in mind that this list doesn't include my absolute favorite illustrator, Trina Schart Hyman--you can find my favorites of hers over here! And I'm also limiting myself to books that I actually own. :-)

And without further ado, my favorites...

Brown, Margaret Wise

• The Runaway Bunny
• The Big Red Barn (probably the most-often read book in our house...we are on our fourth or fifth copy)

Burton, Virginia Lee:

• The Little House
• Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel
• Katy and the Big Snow

Cooney, Barbara (my all-time favorite):

• Island Boy
• Hattie and the Wild Waves
• Miss Rumphius
• Roxaboxen
• Ox-Cart Man

de Brunhoff, Laurent:

• Meet Babar and His Family
• Babar Learns to Cook
• The Story of Babar

dePaola, Tomie:

• The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush 
• The Quilt Story
• Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato
• Strega Nona
• Helga's Dowry: A Troll Love Story
• The Legend of the Bluebonnet

Eastman, P.D.

• Go Dog! Go! 
•  Are You My Mother?
• The Best Nest
• Robert the Rose Horse (written by Joan Heilbroner)

Henkes, Kevin:

• Owen
• Lily’s Purple Plastic Purse 
• Chrysanthemum
• Chester's Way
• A Weekend with Wendell

Hoban, Russell and Lillian

• All the Frances books: A Bargain for Frances, Bread and Jam for Frances, A Baby Sister for Frances, Best Friends for Frances, A Birthday for Frances, Bedtime for Frances
• The Little Brute Family.
• Charlie the Tramp 

Kellogg, Steven:

• Pecos Bill
• Barney Bipple's Magic Dandelions (written by Carol Chapman)
• Is Your Mama a Llama? (written by Deborah Guarino)

Lobel, Arnold:

• Frog and Toad books

Mayer, Mercer:

• Just Go to Bed! (I'll let you decide how far into the realm of Little Critter you want to go, but this one is a classic)
• Herbert the Timid Dragon

Minarik, Elsie Holmelund:

• Little Bear books

Mosel, Arlene

• Tikki Tikki Tembo
• The Funny Little Woman (very first children's book I bought!)

Munsch, Robert:

• The Paper Bag Princess
• Love You Forever (on the one hand, this one kind of creeps me out. On the other hand, it's a nice way of letting a child know that their parents really will love them forever. Just not in a creepy stalker-sneaking-around-town way.)

Robert McCloskey:

• Make Way for Ducklings
•  Blueberries for Sal
• Time of Wonder

Potter, Beatrix:

• First of all, get yourself a giant treasury. And my favorites are The Tale of the Two Bad Mice, The Tailor of Gloucester, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, The Roly-Poly Pudding

Provensen, Alice and Martin:

• Our Animal Friends
• Town and Country 
• don't miss their other ones listed here!

Rylant, Cynthia:

• The Relatives Came 
• When I Was Young in the Mountains
• Puppies and Piggies
• Night in the Country

Seuss

• Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories (which includes Gertrude McFuzz & The Big Brag)
• Fox in Socks
• One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish
• Horton Hatches the Egg
• The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins/Bartholomew and the Oobleck (I love both of these but they take forever to read!! Better for older kids who are reading independently.)

Shannon, David:

• How I Became a Pirate (written by Melinda Long)
• A Bad Case of Stripes

And other really great authors who have written a lot--here's my #1 favorite of their works:

• Carle, Eric: The Very Hungry Caterpillar
• Cole, Joanna: The Magic Schoolbus Inside the Human Body--every single one of the original ones (I don't like the new ones), but the old ones are pure gold
• Dewdney, Anna: Llama Llama Red Pajama
• Dunn, Judy: The Little Duck (there are about six of these in the series and we love them all!)
• Falconer, Ian: Olivia
• Jeffers, Susan: My Chincoteague Pony (I may or may not cry every single time I read this)
• Johnson, Crockett: Harold and the Purple Crayon
• Lear, Edward: The Owl and the Pussycat (ill. Jan Brett, worth buying solely so your two-year-old walks around asking for a "runcible spoon")
• Lies, Brian: Bats at the Beach
• Lionni, Leo: Frederick
• O'Conner, Jane: Fancy Nancy
• Peet, Bill: The Caboose Who Got Loose (my kids love Bill Peet & so we have a ton of his books, but this is the only one of which I'm really fond)
• Penn, Audrey: The Kissing Hand
• Polacco, Patricia: The Keeping Quilt
• Rathmann, Peggy: Officer Buckle and Gloria
• Sendak, Maurice: Where the Wild Things Are
• Steig, William: Dr. De Soto
• Willems, Mo: Knuffle Bunny
• Yolen, Jane: Owl Moon

Book Week: Seasons & Holidays

Year of Seasons:

• The Year at Maple Hill Farm (Provensen)
• My Favorite Time of Year (Susan Pearson, ill. John Wallner)
• A Book of Seasons (Provensen)
• A Busy Year (Leo Lionni)

Spring:

• The Mother's Day Mice (Eve Bunting, ill. Jan Brett)
• and then it's spring (Julie Fogliano, ill. Erin E. Stead)
• Sugarbush Spring (Marsha Chall)

Summer:

• apparently this is not a season that I like to curl up and read about

Fall:

• The Biggest Pumpkin Ever (Steven Kroll, ill. Jeni Basset)
• Oh, What a Thanksgiving! (Steven Kroll, ill. S.D. Schindler)
• Halloween Cats (Jean Marzollo, ill. Hans Wilhem)
• Thanksgiving is Here! (Diane Goode)
• A Turkey for Thanksgiving (Eve Bunting, ill. Diane de Groat)
• Sarah Morton's Day: A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim Girl (Kate Waters; photographs Russ Kendall)
• Samuel Eaton's Day: A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim Boy (Kate Waters; photographs Russ Kendall)
• Sophie's Squash (Pat Zietlow Miller)
• On the Mayflower: Voyage of the Ship's Apprentice and a Passenger Girl (Kate Waters; photographs Russ Kendall)
• Applesauce Season (Eden Ross Lipson)

Winter, aka let's sit in front of the fireplace and read all day!:

• The Hat (Jan Brett)
• The Night Before Christmas (ill. Douglas Gorsline)
• Animals in Winter (Henrietta Bancroft, ill. Gaetano di Palma)
• The Big Snow (Berta & Elmer Hader)
• Sugar Snow (My First Little House series--fun for younger kids who have listened to the Little House books & would like to see more pictures)
• North Country Night (Daniel San Souci)
• Night Tree (Eve Bunting)
• Winter at Long Pond (William T. George, ill. Lindsay Barrett George)
• Sadie & the Snowman (Allen Morgan, ill. Brenda Clark)
• The Gingerbread Baby (Jan Brett)--this one is a huge hit with younger kids
• The Valentine Bears (Eve Bunting, ill. Jan Brett)
• In the Snow: Who's Been Here? (Lindsay Barrett George)
• Walk with a Wolf (Janni Howker, ill. Sarah Fox-Davies)
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Seuss)
• The Polar Express (Chris van Allsburg)
• The Tale of the Three Trees (Angela Elwell Hunt, ill. Tim Jonke)
• Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree (Robert Barry)
• The Friendly Beasts (ill. Tomie de Paola)
• The Twelve Days of Christmas (Hilary Knight)
• Father Christmas (Raymond Briggs) **British swearing
• The Other Wise Man (Henry van Dyke)
• The Tomten (Astrid Lindgren)
• Gingerbread Mouse (Katy Bratun)
• The Story of the Nutcracker Ballet**We have five different versions; the two that are most accessible to younger children are by 1) Deborah Hautzig and 2) Susan Jeffers. My older children really love this version, which is illustrated by photographs from Balanchine's balletic version accompanying the story. 
• Olive the Other Reindeer (Vivian Walsh and J. Otta Seibold)
• Owl Moon (Jane Yolen)
• The Christmas Tree That Grew (Krasilovsky)
• Good King Wenceslas (ill. Jamichael Henterly)
• The Little Drummer Boy (ill. Kristina Rodanas)
• One Winter's Day (M. Christina Butler)
• The Wild Christmas Reindeer (Jan Brett)
• Old Bear and His Cub (Olivier Dunrea)
• This Is the Star (Joyce Dunbar)
• The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey (Susan Wojciechowski)
• Bear Stays Up for Christmas (Karma Wilson)
• Gingerbread Friends (Jan Brett)
• Llama Llama Holiday Drama (Anna Dewdney)

Book Week: Fairy Tales & Myths

One of the earliest book rules I made as a parent was that I would not read Disney books. I let the kids check them out at the library, but I just couldn't stand reading them--I always felt compelled to say, "Okay, this is what really happened to the Little Mermaid."  Over the years, we've filled our shelves with beautifully retold and illustrated versions of classic fairy tales and myths. You'll notice that this is quite heavily weighted towards my favorite illustrators! Most of these are picture books; I'm hoping to update it later with some of my favorite YA authors.

The majority of these are translations or retellings from the Bros. Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen; I have simply noted the name of translator or reteller so that you can more easily find the specific edition.

A word about illustrations: occasionally I will tape together pages that I think may give my children nightmares (i.e. the rose thicket full of thorns in The Sleeping Beauty). It's never seemed to bother them--occasionally I've had a kid ask about the illustration so we've slit the tape, looked at the pictures, and decided that they're kind of gross & taped them back up again.

Mythology:

• Greek Myths and Legends (Anthony Masters, ill. Andrew Skilleter)
• D'Auliare's Book of Norse Myths
• D'Auliare's Book of Greek Myths
• Heroes in Greek Mythology (Karen Bornemann Spies)
• A Book of Myths (selections from Bulfinch, ill. Helen Sewell)
• Bulfinch's Mythology (such a classic! One of my very very favorites as a kid)
• Folk Tales & Fables of the World (Barbara Hayes and Robert Ingpen)
• East of the Sun and West of the Moon: Old Tales from the North (Kay Nielsen)
• Percy Jackson & the Olympians series (Rick Riordan) 
• Kane Chronicles series (Rick Riordan)

Fairy Tales--focus on really really beautiful illustrations and a "truthful" retelling of the story (i.e., not Disney, so not all endings are happy!). 

• The Wild Swans (Susan Jeffers)
• The Twelve Dancing Princesses (Ruth Sanderson)
• Cinderella (Marcia Brown)
• Cinderella (Susan Jeffers)
• Rexerella (Keith Faulkner, ill. Graham Kennedy)--my dinosaur-loving two-year-old is in love with this one!
• The Persian Cinderella (Shirley Climo, ill. Robert Florczak)
• Rapunzel (Barbara Rogasky, ill. Trina Schart Hyman)
• The Sleeping Beauty (Trina Schart Hyman)
• Sleeping Beauty (K. Y. Craft)
• The Little Mermaid (ill. Charles Santore) **artistic nudity--tasteful, but definitely nude
• The Kitchen Knight (Trina Schart Hyman)
• Snow White (Paul Heins, ill. Trina Schart Hyman)
• The Complete Fairy Tales & Stories of Hans Christian Andersen (we have multiple editions of this--a big leather-bound one with every story but no pictures, and then a whole bunch of books with illustrated selections)
• Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales (another giant leather-bound)
• Swan Lake (Margot Fonteyn, ill. Trina Schart Hyman)
• Little Red Riding Hood (Trina Schart Hyman)
• Saint George and the Dragon (Margaret Hodges, ill. Trina Schart Hyman)
• Pegasus (Marianna Mayer, ill. K.Y. Craft)
• A Treasury of the World's Greatest Fairy Tales, Vol. I & II (Helen Hyman) Note: these books are absolutely outstanding but can be quite difficult to find. Look on eBay or Amazon Marketplace; I purchased one for about $2 and the other for $20, but I've seen them going for several hundred.
• The Water of Life (Barbara Rogasky, ill. Trina Schart Hyman)
• The Tinderbox (Stephen Mitchell, ill. Bagram Ibatoulline)--my five-year-old son asks for this almost every single day
• The Serpent Slayer and Other Stories of Strong Women (Katrin Tchana, ill. Trina Schart Hyman)
• Bearskin (Howard Pyle, ill. Trina Schart Hyman)--this is the other book my son wants to hear every day
• Fanny's Dream (Carolyn Buehner)--a really great one to have as a foil!
• Iron John (Eric Kimmel, ill. Trina Schart Hyman)
• The Nutcracker (Susan Jeffers)

Legends:

• Merlin and the Making of the King (Trina Schart Hyman)
• King Arthur and His Knights (Sir James Knowles, ill. Louis Rhead)
• The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (Howard Pyle)

Book Week!

Hello dear friends! After the latest email asking about my list of children's book recommendations (interestingly enough, that's the most common email I get referencing this blog) I decided it's really time to update things since the most recent post on that topic is from 2010! I'm also updating my pages so that you can more easily find all of these posts, and I'll continue to update it as we go along.

For now, I hope you enjoy the list of my favorites! I know that I have spent many an hour hunting online for a decent list of books that my kids will not only enjoy but that I will enjoy reading to them (again and again and again). Happy reading, friends--I hope these are useful to you and please please add in your favorites in the comments if I've missed them!

when he is older

Today has been an interesting day.

This morning I took the girls to school, took Isaac to preschool, and then went back to school to help out with Abigail's class party for a couple of hours. (It was amazing--they were headed off on a field trip this afternoon to see a production of "Alice in Wonderland" and so they had a Mad Hatter Tea Party this morning that was completely Pinterest-worthy right down to the Cheshire cat faces on the cupcakes and the homemade petits-fours with the words "eat me" written on them and the pieces of cheese cut out in hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs, and the edible teacups filled with fresh fruit...yeah, you get the idea. And there were games and decorations and it was really so impressive!).

Anyway, after Abigail's party I picked Isaac up and brought the boys home and started getting lunch and realized I felt awful. I had been so busy all morning that I hadn't paid attention to how I was feeling, but suddenly I was dizzy and hot--sure enough, I was running a fever. So basically I took a nearly-comatose nap all afternoon before going to get the girls from school and taking them to the optometrist. Then I came home and started dinner and went back to bed while Neil fed everyone. I tried to get up a couple of times but I felt so wretched that I ended up just resting until Neil left for work when the kids were in bed, and then I was up putting people back to bed over and over and I decided I might as well do all the house stuff that I hadn't done all day like picking up and folding laundry and paying bills. This was interspersed with kids waking up (Nathan and Luke were both feverish too) and then I looked at the clock when Luke was crying and it was 12:38 AM with still no sign of Neil and I started feeling all "woe is me, what kind of a Friday night is this, grad school is never-ending," etc.

I was lying in bed next to Luke rubbing his back while he slowly fell asleep and suddenly all of the agitation and stress and "I'm not feeling well" of the day just sort of melted away as I listened to his breathing slow and deepen. I started to get up and immediately both of his little hands reached out for me and as soon as he touched my face, he instantly fell asleep again. I lay there for a little longer thinking about what a blissful stage of motherhood I am in right now. Yes, there is a lot of running around and messes and sleep deprivation, but my children are contented by my presence and that is an amazing thing.

Abigail said something the other day--I don't even remember the context--but it was something about people worrying about their kids taking off at museums or zoos and losing them--something along those lines. And she looked blankly at me and said, "But Mom, why would we ever run away when we have such an awesome mommy like you? That just doesn't make sense."

Oh, how that warmed my heart. And how grateful I am for how affectionate all of my children are; for their willingness to cuddle and snuggle and be physically close to me and generously bestow their tight squeezy hugs and drooly little kisses (I got some very wet kisses from baby Nathan today!) and to help me to know how very loved I am and that even though there are a million ways I could be a better mother (and believe you me, they often tell me in detail how I can improve!), I am still a good mother who is trying my best.

Goodness in the world

Lately my heart has been overflowing with gratitude for my life and all of the good things and people in it. Everywhere I look I am able to see the beauty in my world and I am so grateful for that, because there have been so many dark days this past year! And as I'm coming back into the light I am just overwhelmed by all of the good that there is surrounding me. I've caught myself multiple times in the last few days getting all choked up over something completely commonplace--yesterday it was seeing Juliet help Isaac to combine his agave nectar-peanut butter mix so he could more easily make himself a sandwich.

And my heart is especially full this week because we're coming up on the birthdays of my oldest and youngest children. It's bittersweet for me. I am so thrilled by all of the progress that they both have made in the recent past--Abigail is becoming my right hand, my friend, and just the sweetest little darling I could ever ask for. She is maturing into this responsible, humorous, and compassionate young lady and I am so awed every day by how much she is changing and growing.

And Nathan--my dear little boy--is finally starting to drink of his own iniative. Such a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but so huge in our lives! A comment Isaac made today testifies to how remarkable and exciting this is for us--he walked through the kitchen and stopped transfixed and said, "MOM! LOOK! Natie is picking up his cup in his own two hands and he is drinking, Mommy, he is drinking!! All by himself!"

And indeed he was. It seems to be getting easier to persuade him to drink and we are so grateful!!!

Another thing I am really enjoying these days is seeing the similarities between my husband and my children. We inherited an enormous set of K'nex building toys and the five of them (the four oldest kids and Neil) have built some really impressive stuff. Isaac and Abigail in particular are very into K'nex and have built some cool motorized dinosaur models (which actually walk across the floor) and various vehicles. The Ferris wheel & rolling ball machine (both of which are powered by a small motor and do work) are our favorites so far. Right now they are working on a roller coaster.

 Some days I look around my messy house with its skiff of toys and books and laundry and I wish so much that we were done with school and moving on to our "someday house" (which of course will be perfectly clean and always organized!). But really, I love my little house so dearly. I am almost done with all of the painting and I feel like it finally reflects my taste now rather than my taste eight years ago. I am particularly fond of the new armchairs flanking the fireplace--we had the papasan chairs since the year we were married and they lost their appeal about eight years ago when I realized that they spent all of their time taken apart and lying around the living room while the kids played with them. I hated always getting after the kids to leave the papasans alone or to pick them up and I cannot even tell you how amazingly happy I was to give them away to a new home! I practically skipped on my way back inside after helping to load them up. And I've been searching for the perfect armchair for about two years and I am so in love with these gray linen tufted beauties and their nailhead trim. Have I set my heart a bit too much on material things? Quite possibly when it comes to how much I love those chairs.

 And the white cabinets and gray walls were worth every single second of the time it took to convert them from the red walls and builder-basic oak cabinets. The afternoon sunshine fills the kitchen when I'm making dinner and just makes it the happiest, sunshiniest most beautiful place to be. It's so nice to passionately love a room where I spend so much of my time.

 I overheard the girls on March 31st discussing what pranks we might play on them the next day for April Fool's. I have never really done much to celebrate April Fool's day but I wanted to make it fun for them since they were so excited about it--so I got online to get a few ideas and then spent an hour or so setting up about ten pranks. My personal favorites were the Jell-O in juice cups (Luke's reaction was priceless), the socks that were sewed shut at the ankles, and the pillow barrage that toppled down from their bedroom doors in the morning. They were also pretty entertained by the paper mustaches that I added to our family pictures; Juliet was less entranced by the (washable marker) mustache adorning her own face. Isaac, as you can see below, left his on all day.

 And last but not least, a few things that have made me think, "Oh, what a wonderful world!":

1) Selling our cantilevered umbrella (thanks, Craigslist) for just about the cost of the chicken coop materials.
2) A quick evening run to the library by myself and coming home with SO many books on topics that fascinate me & I'd been wanting to do a little more research...literally so many books that I had to borrow a library cart to get them all to the checkout desk (I couldn't physically carry them all even in my bags!).
3) Plants! I am so much happier with live greenery and flowers in my home. A few weeks ago I bought myself some flowers at the grocery store. Just as they were starting to look tired my visiting teacher stopped by with a beautiful bunch of purple tulips. When the tulips began dropping their petals, Neil surprised me with a gorgeous potted lily. And a few days later, my dear friend Jen brought me some potted cuttings from her aloe vera--all the way from Arizona!!--on a morning when I had literally been thinking that very day about tracking down an aloe vera plant for my kitchen.
4) Listening to Abigail pray last night at family prayer. So incredibly heartfelt, specific towards the needs of our family and extended family, and really taking the time to ponder and think as she was speaking.
5) Yesterday the boys and I mixed up some homemade playdough. Normally it's banned from our house (I hate the mess!) but this recipe seems way less prone to crumbly stickiness than does the storebought kind. It has been the source of much joy over the last 48 hours.
6) I quietly supervised yesterday while Abigail and Isaac made a batch of homemade instant oatmeal. They did a great job and happily ate the fruits of their labor this morning before I was out of bed (another win!).
7) I'm finally feeling enough like "myself" to start doing things again that I eliminated because of stress but have missed nonetheless: composting, cloth-diapering, and cheese-making. None of which are vital to my life but all of which add something intangible that makes me feel more content with the status quo (okay, the cheese is pretty dang good).
8) I expected the marathon recovery to be really awful. I was definitely stiff for a couple of days, but I ran 2 miles yesterday and it helped so much with the soreness that I ran 4 miles today. Now I just need a new goal to work towards!
9) My little lettuces are up! I love seeing those little green shoots every morning and evening as I walk quietly out to visit the chickens. It's rapidly becoming one of my favorite parts of the day.
10) I am so blessed in my marriage. Did Neil want chickens? Not particularly, but he knew how much I did & how long I'd been reading up on them and thinking about them and so he supported our endeavor and threw himself into it whole-heartedly (he did nix a couple of other suggestions about our urban homestead--and wisely so!). He is definitely the voice of reason in our relationship (I am all to prone to passionately commit myself to something new without fully considering the ramifications) but he is so supportive and logically helps me find a way to achieve my goals.

And last but not least, I hung the salt-dough Easter ornaments that we made last year. I love looking out and seeing these bright little flashes of color twirling against the sky.

Marathon!

You guys! I did it! I am officially a marathoner!

Neil and I drove down for the race on Friday night, since there was only packet pickup the night before (!!). My parents were SO kind and offered to watch our kids so that he could be there with me, and I was so grateful! It was so so good to have Neil there with me supporting me and running interference on things.  Anyway, I was getting so nervous the night before the race—I had an awful stomachache, headache, and felt like I was going to throw up all night. I didn’t sleep very well (which is a shame because we had a beautiful and HUGE suite) and woke up an hour before I needed to in the morning.

Neil drove me to the starting line and I found the 4:10 pace group and lined up with them. I wanted to run it in less than 10-minute miles so I didn’t want to go with the 4:25 pace group. Frankly I was hoping to be way faster when I originally started training (my half-marathon time would have predicted a 3:50 finish) but I have been sick through so much of training that I have really struggled to go quickly—if I go under 8:45/mile I start coughing like mad and can’t stop—thanks to the double-header combination of bronchitis and strep midway through training. And, quite frankly, I haven’t been as careful about what I’m eating as I should be and so I’m not at an ideal racing weight.

Anyway, I LOVED running with the pace group! The two pacers were so incredibly friendly and really worked to create a sense of community within the five or so of us that were running with them. We had other people sort of ebbing and flowing and it was nice to talk to them as well, but there was a sort of core group that stuck together for most of the race. I spent about fifteen miles talking with another woman (we had the same first and last name!) and we got to be good buddies over the course of several hours! One thing I really liked so that our pacers insisted that we walk through all of the water stops to make sure we got enough water (it was pretty hot by the end of the day and I started taking one cup of water to drink and another to pour over my head) and then they would check to make sure everyone was there before we started running again. After about fifteen or sixteen miles I was so looking forward to those walking breaks! It really helped me mentally to know that I could walk for those ten or so steps as long as I just made it to the water stop, and I was able to avoid walking anywhere else on the course, which made me feel pretty good. It’s always nice for my internal motivation to be running past people who are walking up the hills or whatnot. 

Mile 22--I was super focused on never letting this girl catch up!

Another thing I loved about the pace group was the ability to maintain a steady speed without having to worry about it myself. When we first started off it (of course) felt way too slow and it was really good for me to have someone telling me to hold back (and then of course we passed all of the people who sprinted out). I loved not having to constantly check to see how fast I was going and worry about whether I should speed up or slow down—I just kept pace with my new friends! And it was so good to have people to talk to—we were literally about eight or nine miles into the race before I started paying attention to how far we’d gone.  

I felt really good for the first fifteen miles or so. After that it started to get incredibly windy and we were pushing against the wind the whole time. I dropped back a bit and focused on catching up to the pacing group at waterstops—that took me through miles 18-20. Unfortunately, those miles were easily the windiest of the whole course—we were running along a straight road with no trees lined with giant buildings and so the wind just funneled right down it pushing us backwards. It was sooooo exhausting! I finally decided that I would just run at my own speed and not worry about staying with the pacing group. I dropped down from 9:30 miles to about 11-minute miles, but by that point I was just thrilled to still be running past all of the people walking with their heads bent against the wind. I was worried about hitting the notorious wall but I never did—I was so thankful! I definitely slowed down but I just kept on going and let my legs go at the pace where they were comfortable rather than trying to push it too hard.

The last six miles were kind of unpleasantly hilly. By this point it was quite hot and still really windy! Neil caught up to me about mile 22 and biked alongside me off and on for the next three miles. It was so good to have him with me talking to me and giving me something else to focus on. And it was also nice because he had cold water instead of the awful lukewarm stuff at the last aid station.  He peeled off at mile 25 so that he could meet me at the finish line and that’s when I realized it was a 3/4-mile looong uphill all the way to the finish—and the wind was back! I seriously felt like I was taking two steps backward for every step forward.  I just kept going and plugging away—I passed a LOT of people on that last uphill—and I was so grateful for all of the people cheering there because I focused on saying, “Thank you! Thanks for being here!” instead of mentally griping about the awful wind and hill. And then it was downhill to the finish line for the last two-tenths of a mile! It was so exciting and I felt great as I finished—I think I raised my arms and cheered as I was running downhill.  The two pacers from my pacing group were waiting at the finish line and they hugged me and congratulated me and pointed out where Neil was waiting on the sidelines. 

It was a great experience. I definitely was more worn out by the end than I was hoping to be and slowed down more than I was planning to, but I felt like it was a good decision with the heat, wind, and hills. I was most worried about hitting the notorious wall and I never did—I just kept plugging away with my same slow and steady pace. I was passing people all through the last six miles of the race and that felt great. And I was so, so, so grateful that Neil was there—he biked around and met up with me every so often and handed me a couple of Kashi bars, took my jacket, and had water when I needed it most. It was so great to have his support.

I think the hardest part of the race for me was miles 17-19. I still had a long way to go and pushing against that wind was miserable! By the time I made it to 20 I knew I was getting close, and once I hit 22 I felt great—I knew I had it in the bag with only 4.2 miles left and I’d gone past the dreaded 20-mile mark without hitting the wall. I made sure to walk around a lot after the race and even stopped in the massage tent, and so far I feel pretty good! Definitely stiff but not in horrible pain (although I did take a healthy dose of ibuprofen before I fell asleep last night).

All in all, it was amazing. It was so good to be able to finish something that I have been working on for SO long and was such a huge deal! I am so grateful for all of the people who made it possible—I still kind of can’t believe that I ran a marathon!! My final time was 4:17:55, so I came in under my goal time and still have lots of room for improvement if I decide to do another one some day.:-)