Children's Book Review

Okay, thanks to my sweet friend's gentle insistence, I am writing my first children's book review. Before I do that, though, I must tell you of our decision to attend the weekly story times for toddlers at our local library. It is called "Wiggle Worms" and at the utterance of those two words, my two squiggly toddlers fly to the door with enough speed to send the dust flying! The promise of that precious 20 minutes can calm the worst tantrums and motivate the most sluggish tasks to completion. After they sing, dance, and thoroughly "shake their sillies out"; we grab some books, a couple of videos, and head for home. It is when we started making these sessions a priority every week that the real joy of library books came to reside with us. Each week we leave with our arms overflowing and Elyssa can't get enough! Her favorite thing in the world is to cuddle up with one of her favorite people and READ. She will take her turn and read to us as well. (Coincidently, I've noticed her imagination soaring!) We'll keep our favorites till they won't let us renew them anymore and keep the new ones coming. I've started going in online and reserving any books I know I want ahead of time due to recommendations or favorite authors. That makes the trip MUCH easier with the two little giggle worms I attempt to herd through the laden shelves and tables. I can't tell you enough how valuable this is to us. If any of you are not currently taking advantage of your libraries, I implore you to start!

Now for the promised review... Last week as I was sweeping through the shelves looking for books we haven't seen yet, I came across a treasure!

The Story Blanket by Ferida Wolff and Harriet May Savitz

This beautiful story will fill your hearts as soon as you see the cover. After all, who wouldn't want to be one of those adorable eager children awaiting a story on that vividly colorful blanket?! See how the shoes hang in the tree above them and tiny feet curl in expectation below them? Once I opened it and began to read, I fell in love!
In a small secluded mountain village, Babba Zarrah captivates the children with stories while they sit on her brightly patterned woolen blanket. As tender hearted Babba Zarrah fills the imaginations of the wide eyed boys and girls, she notices a hole in one of the little boy's shoes. She knows he will need new warm socks but the village is SO secluded that although they are out of wool, no one is able to get through the snow to deliver more. "Every question has an answer", Babba Zarrah says to herself, as she considers a solution. Her solution is to unravel a little of her story blanket to knit the socks. But wait, day by day the children begin to feel as though the blanket is shrinking while other villagers discover much-needed anonymous gifts such as baby blankets, shawls, mittens, and aprons. (not to mention a brilliantly illustrated cat-coat!) Who can solve the mystery? It only takes one look at the familiar vivid pattern for the children to "unravel" the storyteller's secret. Those clever villagers don't just thank their anonymous benefactor, they secretly unravel a little wool from each and every blanket to heap on her doorstep! The last page alludes to the village's cycle of generosity and selfless friendship as Babba Zarrah sits knitting a new sweater for Alexandra with a curling string pulled from the NEW story blanket.

Ode to The Underdog

Memories flood me

Watching her soar

Legs kicking wildly

I can only imagine

Her utter delight

Wind Rushing

Hair flying

Stomach left behind

Giggles, Screams

Pure Joy!

What's in a name?

Now we're on a roll! Names, names, and more names! Both her favorite babies have names now, only "Bitsie" got bumped to her other baby while her pink baby has been named Lula after the funny little duck Talula in the Maisy books. She has named two of her doggies after her two favorite real life doggies; DeeDee and Cruze.

Baby has a new name!

I don't know how many of you have seen this book, but I want to share it with you because it is one of Lyssa's favorites. It's an adorable book about a little girl named Bitsie who has trouble getting out bed. She rolls over, but "OVER IS NOT UP"! When her Daddy calls "in a bigger voice, 'Get up Bitsie!'", she yawns, stretches, and slips out of bed to run into Daddy's awaiting arms.

Just to show you how much Lyssa loves this sweet little girl, she has officially named one of her babies "Bitsie". This is a first since all of her babies up to now have been "Baby". Last night in the car she asked us, "Where's Bitsie?". We had to ask a few questions and discovered she was referring to her latest favorite dolly. And one more note; while she was with Bitsie, my mom heard her saying that she had to go to the nursery because her baby was crying. My Sweet is playing like she is at church, how precious is that?

What to do on a freshly made bed!

Like mother, like daughter

Today for snack I let the girls share Madeline's strawberry yogurt. Lyssa was so excited to have "mo-get" she was jumping for joy when I gave it to her. I resisted the temptation of picking out soggy strawberries in an attempt to keep my daughter from having the same aversion as myself to chunky yogurt. She happily ate a bite or two before discovering the chunks herself and exclaimed, disappointedly, that she did not actually want the "mo-get". I rescued the soon-to-be wasted snack by offering it strawberry-free. She agreed. Daddy meanwhile was trying to convince her that if she liked strawberries she should also like them in her yogurt. To this she replied, "I don't like fruit in my mo-get!" While secretly smiling, I continued to not offer my opinion. Daddy, on the other hand, laughed and roared, "You're weird!" To which she giggled and replied, "No YOU'RE weird Daddy!" She catches on quick. ;-)

Love It!

Now that I'm posting again I have the opportunity to tell the world my thoughts and inspirations! (Okay so the world being the 2 or 3 people who are reading this) It's just good to have them written down somewhere for future generations, right? Well whatever the reason here is my new favorite thing: hiding nutritional boosters in my recipes. It's actually been a new favorite for a while but since I'm just now writing about it, it is new all over again! I love the peace of mind it gives me to know that there is actually a nutritional value in the things my family chows down on! It all started with making my own baby food. After Elyssa started eating finger foods and wouldn't touch the puree, I had a bunch of veggie cubes in my freezer. Well there was no way I was throwing out something I'd worked that hard on so I just started tossing them into scrambled eggs. I was met with success! Lyssa loved those veggie eggs. (Yes after she had already devoured several I discovered that eggs aren't necessarily supposed to be introduced before a year, oops) Then my eyes were opened to other possibilities by the cookbooks; "Deceptively Delicious" and "The Sneaky Chef" (It's an old idea and several people have written about it). Lyssa isn't a veggie lover. She will eat carrots, soy beans, and corn. Sometimes she'll surprise us, but most of the time she convulses after her obligatory couple of bites. As much as I hate to admit it, I don't eat all that well either. So for starters, I've made it a habit to add a little cauliflower to my eggs, a little sweet potato to my waffles, and I make lasagna with both of those plus some spinach, and whole grain noodles. I added a little cauliflower and white bean puree to cheese sauce for mac and cheese and you could hardly taste it. That is not one I do all the time, however, because I don't have time to make my own sauce very often. If I weren't so lazy, I would also have tried a million others, but alas...

My recommendation for you is to add a "booster" to your own recipes. The Sneaky Chef makes it easy by categorizing them by color, like orange puree has several ingredients rather than just carrots or sweet potatoes. A booster might just be switching whole wheat flour instead of white, adding ground flax or wheat germ, or adding obvious ingredients like dried fruit and nuts to oatmeal. The names of the books are misleading. You are not devious or deceitful if you make your family's meals healthier, you are SMART! Like I said, start by making your own meals healthier then experiment with new recipes. I found that the recipes I tried in the books weren't all that fantastic but that doesn't mean I should toss out the idea altogether. Both books are filled with useful info on nutrition and make a great starting point. Let me know what your "boosters" are. I know some of you are way ahead of me in this area!

Have I mentioned MY crush?

Longing to see a friend in "Hi-da-ho"

I promise Chris and I haven't brought the subject up once! She is still enamored. "I go to Ryan's house!", "Yes we saw Ryan in Idaho", "Who else did we see?", "I saw Gram-Grams, and Dennis, and Dresia..." The girl has a good memory!
She still talks about him almost daily. I love the sweet innocence of it! She is also showing her affection more and more to those she loves here, hugging friends on a whim, kissing her daddy, climbing into my lap for a cuddle. Today she kept grabbing the end of my braid and rubbing it on her face, even kissing it. I can see why, she has held that hair in Mama's embrace since she was old enough to wrap her tiny fingers around it. It was her "lovee". It is so amazing to watch her learn how to love. And being the recipient of it is beyond words! They say it only gets better but how can it? I'll have to wait and see. ;-)

I know...It's been a while...

Well I don't know if anyone will even notice that I have updated this blog or not but the time has come for me to face my fears and POST! I say fears because I guess I never realized the expectations that I had set up for myself to have the perfect blog. Shortly after my last post, my sweet aunt passed away and I was determined to write something clever in honor of her. In my failure to get that put together I just kept putting it off, and off, and off....until... Suddenly here we are almost two years later! I will let that go for now, but perhaps in the future I will tell you about how I miss her gentle spirit and genuine laugh.




The reason I decided to write something now is due to the latest achievement in my ever surprising little daughter's life. Seeing how the last few posts were about her eagerness to jump ahead of the expected developmental milestones, I want to tell you of her latest feats. Just to catch you up on the last year and a half, not only did she crawl at six months but she walked at 8 1/2 months, potty trained herself by 20 months and probably now thinks she's ready for kindergarten! But her latest thing is cracking us up even more! She has her first crush!!! When we went to Boise two weekends ago we visited our friends, the Mahoneys. Their oldest boy is none other than Ryan who I started watching at the age of 2 months old when I lived in Boise. Now he is eight (hard to believe!) Lyssa played with Ryan and his younger brother Michael for an hour or two and apparently that was enough. We got home and several days went by without any of us mentioning a thing... Then one day she said out of the blue, "I love Ryan!". (I'm not talking about a statement of fact, I'm talking about that way you say you love someone with your eyes twinkling, your head tilted, and your voice sighing the last half of their name." I just thought how cute it was that she remembered him, but that was only the beginning. Several times a day she asks to look at the pictures of him we took on our trip, giggling and dancing when she sees them. Not a day has gone by that she hasn't sighed and said, "Mommy, I love Ryan!". We just smile and say who else do you love? Sometimes we're on the list sometimes it's just "Gamma", "Boppa", and Maddo.