She clasped her hands for pure joy and looked up in the sky and it was so blue and pink and pearly and white and flooded with springtime light that she felt as if she must flute and sing aloud herself and knew that thrushes and robins and skylarks could not possibly help it.
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
It turns out I was too sick to go to the release party for Harry Potter 7. But Denis, Carrie, Nana and Poppy picked it up for me yesterday on their way to the grocery store. I meant to read it slowly, to savor it since it was the last book…but I couldn’t. I’m sure there are people who haven’t finished reading yet, so all I’ll say is that it was riveting. I plan to re-read the entire series at some point…but I have some sorely neglected knitting I need to do first!
In other news, Carrie isn’t completely potty trained yet, but she is -><- this close. She went and ran those errands yesterday in panties, and went to a public restroom when she needed to go. I haven't changed a single diaper (except at night/first thing in the morning) since Thursday, and there have only been two little accidents. I am so proud of her - and I really can't take much credit for it, it's like a switch flipped and she just figured it out. (Hopefully I didn't just jinx everything...)
I have absolutely no idea where the week has gone. None. All I know is that it’s already Thursday. Tomorrow, Clue #4 of the Mystery Stole comes out…and I’m not even halfway through Clue #1. Tomorrow, Denis’ parents are coming for the weekend. But tomorrow is also very important for one other reason…
The book – you know, The Book! – is going to be available!
I’m toying with the idea of going to the release party tomorrow night, so I can get the book as soon as possible. Would that be crazy?
Today I read Carrie at least 40 books. She brings one over to wherever I’m sitting, and when I take it she raises her arms to be picked up, settles into my lap and waits for me to read to her. It’s so sweet it makes my breath catch. And then, when we’re done reading the book, she signs “more”. Sometimes we read the same book 4 or 5 times before she tires of it and goes to get another. If we’re reading “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”, and I don’t help her put her finger in all the holes in the foods, she grabs my hand to remind me that I’m supposed to be doing that. And I love it when we read books about dogs and she signs “dog” every time she hears me say the word.
The thing I find amazing is when Carrie digs through a pile of books to find two specific ones for me to read at bedtime or first thing in the morning – it’s part of those two “routines” to read two stories. She’s pretty good at only picking two, I guess because it’s one for each hand. And they’re not always the same two – she obviously knows specifically which books she wants to hear and recognizes the covers.
I love that I have a little bookworm on my hands, and I can’t wait until I can share all the wonderful books I read when I was young with her!
I’m still reading the Discworld books, but I also picked up the first three books of the Earthsea series by Ursula K. Le Guin. I’m halfway through book three and I’ll have to go back and get the other three soon. They are fantastic! It’s strange, I’d always thought I’d read something by her because her name sounds so familiar, but none of the book titles do…
I hadn’t been doing all that much reading before Carrie was born because I spent all my free time knitting. Now that most of my free time is spent snuggling my sleeping baby, I only have a hand free to hold a book instead of the two hands I’d need to knit. This is a perfectly fine trade-off, as far as I’m concerned, because the knitting will still be there when Carrie’s older and too big to nap in my lap. And I’m sure that will be sooner than I’d like! (Of course, then I won’t have any excuses not to clean house or do the laundry while she’s napping, either.)