The Kids' Week In Books, No. 8

It might seem that "Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel" would be a book for boys, but I don't see why girls can't enjoy a story about machinery too, especially when the steam shovel is named Mary Anne. This book is a fun story about working hard and finding imaginative solutions to problems. The illustrations are pencil drawings that convey a lot of character.

"Miss Rumphius" is a tale of the narrator's great aunt Alice, who traveled the world but made her greatest contribution right in her own backyard. Hannah likes to say "Rumphius" and giggle. It is a funny name, you must agree.

"Millions of Cats" is sort of a bizarre story of a very old man and a very old woman who want a cat but wind up with "cats here, cats there, cats and kittens everywhere, hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats" until a startling turn of events leaves them with just one kitten. The black and white drawings make the cats look a little weird, but, as Josh would point out, cats ARE weird. I think Hannah likes this one for the repeated refrain quoted above.

"The Wreck of the Zephyr" has excellent illustrations and bright colors, and the moral of the story is not to think of yourself more highly than you ought and not to be impatient, and a few other good lessons.



"Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" is a silly book about the town of Chewandswallow where the weather brings food instead of precipitation. Hannah finds that concept really funny. It's a cute story, and definitely different from the mainstream!


We are still working on "The House at Pooh Corner" due to repeated requests to re-read the chapter where Pooh sings "tiddley pom." Many of Hannah's made-up songs now include liberal sprinklings of "tiddley pom" as well.

Hannah's First Haircut

Believe it or not, this is "after" but in pajamas and with bed head because she is sick!

The kids were really sick while my mom was here (Mom was sick too!) so I didn't get a lot of good pictures. It was so great to have her help, especially with Hannah's first haircut.

Hannah's hair was getting long, but was looking sort of scraggly and never seemed to stay "done" for long. We decided to trim the back into a little bob, but left her bangs long in the front so that they can still sweep over to the side with a bow, if Hannah will leave the bows in for longer than 47 seconds at a time!

It is super hard to get a toddler to sit still long enough to cut her hair. I still don't think it's 100% even in the back, but it's close.

Since Hannah has been sick, I don't have any fabulous pictures of how it looks, but the one above and one below will have to suffice for now.

Hannah having a tea party with Gigi, eating M&M s'mores. Hannah is using a little Haviland demitasse cup that is the perfect size!

Mom with Jack, who is also sick sick sick but still looks cheerful in this photo!

The Kids' Week In Books, No. 7 - Rabbit Edition

In "Bunny Cakes" by Rosemary Wells, little Max and his big sister Ruby are making cakes for their grandmother's birthday. Ruby makes a fabulous pink cake with real food ingredients and Max makes an earthworm cake. Max disturbs Ruby in the kitchen and knocks stuff over so she sends him to the store with a list of ingredients to buy, and Max tries to write his own ingredients, not understanding that his scribbles aren't writing. Eventually Max figures it all out and the cakes are completed, to the delight of Max and Ruby's grandmother who can't decide which to eat first. This is a cute book with an engaging story, and Hannah really likes it. It appears there are lots of Max and Ruby books, so we will be sure to check them out soon.

"The ABC Bunny" by Wanda Ga'g is an alphabet book, as you might imagine, about bunnies, as you also might imagine. The illustrations are great black and white pencil drawings, and the rhyming text is simple enough that a beginning reader could probably read it to himself. The endpapers for this book are the text of the book set to music, and I keep meaning to take it down to the piano to see if we like the song.


Jim Arnosky's "Rabbits and Rainbows" is a story of five baby rabbits on their first foray out of their nest. The text is descriptive and the illustrations are nice, especially in how they show light. Each page has a lot of detail so there are plenty of things to point out and talk about as you read this book.

Bedtime Update

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions on how to cope with Hannah's bed problems. We changed the doorknob so that it locks from the outside, and put Hannah back in the big girl bed. She is doing pretty well at night. The first night, she cried at the door when she couldn't open it, so I went back in and reminded her that she had to stay in the big bed and then when she cried again I just let her cry for a while. When I went in later to feed Jack, she had climbed back into her bed and fallen asleep, and I was glad she was not sleeping on the floor. Subsequent nights she has stayed in bed.

Naptime is another story entirely. There are so many interesting things to do in her bedroom, even though she has no toys or books in there. One day, she emptied her entire drawer full of socks and tights, and lined them all up along the edge of her bed. Another day (when Jack was not in there, thankfully) she climbed into the crib, dismantled the mobile, tossed out Jack's blankets and pacifiers, and was in there wailing when I went in to put her back to bed. Another time she tossed all of her blankets and whatnot into the crib, and was just trying to figure out how to hoist the (empty) wicker laundry hamper into the crib when I went in.

Previously, Hannah was sleeping about 1.5 to 2 hours a day for her nap. Going with a much shorter nap or non-existent nap the past several days has made for an exceedingly cranky toddler. I think she will just have to get used to and accept the fact that she is not allowed out of her bed, and I'm ok with the time it will take to get through to her on that point, but it's not fun. Thankfully my mom is here this week to help, since in addition to these bed struggles, both kids have been really sick.

I also wanted to add that my comment in the previous post about the two hour quiet time we have is not because I need my "free time" or whatever, but because I really think there is a benefit to having a rest hour of sorts for kids. The sleep books say that ALL kids up to age 5 need a nap, or they will be sleep deprived ("Sleepless in America" was a good book about sleep needs for everyone, but it's not really a how-to manual). Certainly that holds true for my kids! I use the time to do housework that I can't do with a baby and toddler in tow, and to stay on top of things like making dinner, or to do work for some business clients we have, or to do my exercising, and so forth. I just wanted to note that it's not like Bon Bon Hour for me, although I am always glad on days when I have some time at the end of naptime to read or blog!

Valentine's Day Eve

We went to a Valentine's Day party at Calvin and Patrick's house today. As always, I was so impressed with Alaina's fabulous entertaining! There were tables for making Valentine bags, coloring Valentine pictures, making heart shaped mini pizzas, and decorating cookies, and then there was a big table full of kids eating yummy goodies and a bag of pretty valentines and a goody bag to take home. Hannah seemed a little overwhelmed at times but I think she did pretty well overall.
Jack was very well behaved sitting on the floor with the other babies most of the time. In the picture above he and Eden were alternately holding hands and clapping each other's hands, and smiling. It was SO CUTE!

My mom came to visit today and will be here almost a week. Hannah was very excited and got thoroughly worn out so she hasn't even tried to get out of bed tonight (more on our big girl bed progress tomorrow).

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

The Kids' Week In Books, No. 6

For this week I thought I would review two books by Dianna Hutts Aston, illustrated by Sylvia Long. "A Seed Is Sleepy" tells the story of how seeds work and become plants, and "An Egg Is Quiet" describes how eggs work. One neat thing about these books is that you can read them on different levels. The largest text is a very basic overview (though still well written), then there is medium sized text that gives a bit more detail, and finally small text goes into a lot of description. I think that's a particularly effective way to approach a science-type topic for children, because it allows the child to direct the process by asking questions and the parent can read more about things the child is interested about. Best of all, these books are gorgeously illustrated with bright colorful drawings that start on the detailed endpapers and even extend to the beautiful lettering in the text. Hannah has really enjoyed these books, and the information seems to be sinking in, because today at lunch Hannah found a seed in her apple, and instead of referring to it as "a piece of trash" as she normally would, she said, "Yook Mama! A seed in my appo!" (Yook=look; appo=apple). I'd highly recommend these books for little children, but I think older kids might like them too because of the deeper detail sections.


We finished "Winnie the Pooh" by A.A. Milne for our read-aloud book. It's really gratifying to see how much Hannah loves this book! The great pencil drawings by E.H. Shepard that appear on nearly every page help her "read" the stories to me or to Jack after we're done, and it's fun to see which details she decides are important. Moreover, this book was a lot of fun for ME to read, because the text is so funny and charming. Because we enjoyed it so much, we moved on to "The House at Pooh Corner" for our next read-aloud book and we like that one too.

The Jig Is Now Completely Up

You may recall that we had to move Hannah out of her crib about a year ago because she figured out how to climb out of the crib. No problem, we thought, we'll put her in the pack and play, which she can't escape. We tried putting her in the big girl bed a few months ago, but after a while she figured out that there was NOTHING stopping her from getting out of the big girl bed, opening her door, and coming out into the playroom at 3am to turn on the light and play or read. After a few nights of waking up in the wee hours to find her at-large in the house, we reverted to the pack and play.

That catches you up to this afternoon. I heard Hannah wake up from her nap, but we have a two hour quiet time rule in effect, so she had ten minutes left to hang out in the pack and play. I heard the usual amount of noise in there, but she wasn't crying, it just sounded like she was talking to herself and banging around a little.

Until I heard the door open. Imagine my surprise when Hannah toddled cheerfully out of her room on her own! "Hannah!" I exclaimed, "how did you get out of your bed???"

"I jumped out of THERE, Mama," she replied with emphasis, "an' I found Daddy's books!!!!"

Note that the above picture of her clutching "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" was not staged, as you can probably guess by her bad case of bed head. Apparently Effective Habit Number 7B involves teaching toddlers to climb out of pack and plays.

Now I don't know what we will do to contain this child. Any ideas?

At Least He's Creative!

No, he didn't make the WHOLE mess all by himself. He had a little help from a certain someone whose name begins with "H" and ends with "annah."

But the point of the post is, Jack is getting quite creative with his determination NOT to crawl. If he wants to go somewhere other than where he is, he will roll on his back and do a backstroke type move scooting, or he'll be on his stomach doing a cross between a butterfly stroke and that breakdancing move called "the worm." Today I watched him move at least five feet forward while sitting up by a complex wiggling/scooting/arm flailing maneuver. I said, "Buddy, crawling can't be THAT much harder than moving around from a sitting position!

In other news, Jack liked to figure out how things work. I recently got out a toy for him that Hannah was never that into. It's a wooden cube where each face has a different activity like an abacus, puzzle, rotating disks, wooden rods that can be make into a fish, etc. The top is one of those wire mazes with the wooden beads on it. This toy occupies a lot of Jack's attention. He likes to thread all the beads to one side then the other, or rotate the toy around and move all the pegs and pieces about. His other favorite is a wooden shape sorter puzzle block, and I think it's interesting that he wants to put the pieces in the holes and stack them and bang them together. I have noticed with several other toys that Jack's approach is always to notice the small doo-dads and how they move and operate, whereas Hannah prefers to grab a toy and use it for a pretend use as like a shopping cart or baby stroller.

I don't think it's a good idea to pigeonhole kids, but it's fascinating to me to see how early a child's learning style and preferences start to come out.

The Kids Week In Books, No. 5

I couldn't find a picture of the first book I'll mention this week, but I wish I could because the illustrations are what makes it great. "The Troublesome Pig" by Priscilla Lamont tells the story of a little old lady who buys an ornery pig. The pig won't jump over the stile to get home, so the old lady goes off in search of a remedy. It's a funny story. The old lady says droll things like, "Well I never did!" and such. The real selling point for the book are the excellent water color illustrations, which bring the book to life. I'd highly recommend this one.

"Angus Lost" is by Marjorie Flack, the author who wrote and illustrated "The Story of Ping" which you might know. Angus is a little Scottie dog who goes on adventures. Hannah likes him. There are other Angus books in the series, and we have them on hold at the library but haven't read them yet. The one thing that bothers me about Angus Lost is how the script is full of random CAPITALIZATIONS that are pretty MEANINGLESS and make me wonder why I should emphasize suhc trivial bits OF the story. See how annoying that is? If you can get past the caps, you would probably enjoy this book.

"Are You My Mother?" by P.D. Eastman is an older book that you might remember reading when you were a child yourself. You probably liked it. The pictures are jaunty and the story is lively. I use a different voice for each of the characters and Hannah thinks that is funny. You can really get theatrical if you like, I won't laugh at you.

I think "Dr. Seuss's ABC" is one of the best ABC books out there. In characteristic Dr. Seuss style, it's funny and clever and silly, with good illustrations. The letters are also printed clearly (what is up with ABC books that print the letters in such a way that they are almost indecipherable by even adults? What good is that to a child who is trying to learn letters???) and that is a bonus. My favorite is R. "BIG R, little r, Rosy Robin Ross. Rosy's going riding on her red rhinoceros."

Other Reading:
We're still reading "Winnie the Pooh" by A. A. Milne for the read aloud book, and reading lots of nursery rhyme anthologies and poetry anthologies and large chunks from both of the children's Bibles we have. We read a lot of books every day, because that is what Hannah likes to do, and I don't mind.

They Grow

I just realized I haven't updated all week! Bad mama! Jack is 8 months old now and has 4 teeth! Two more are cutting in today, so soon we'll be up to 6. Having all those teeth coming in at the same time, combined with a runny nose, is making Jack sad. He is keeping up his spirits in spite of it all, and has figured out that clapping a lot can get our attention. So he's clapping all the time! I think Hannah thinks he's clapping for her!

Hannah had her two year old checkup today. She started out fine, but as one kid after another came out screaming from having shots or whatever, she started to get apprehensive, and by the time her name was called she was clinging to me and started sobbing when they wanted to weigh and measure her. She pretty much cried the whole time, saying, "You're all done! You're all done!" whenever anyone tried to do anything. She didn't have to have any shots, and once she realized she really WAS all done and the doctor gave her a My Little Pony sticker, she felt better. We had to weigh her with me holding her, and she never would stand still to be measured, so I don't know how tall she is, but the doctor said Hannah doesn't look overweight at all, and seems to be in proportion and a good size for her age, so maybe next year!