This is 40, Installment 6

My countdown to turning 40 has been inspirational. Ten years ago, when I first started staying home with my twins, I started writing a novel. TEN. YEARS. While it is not polished and I'm sure will still undergo many edits, it is FINISHED. I finished the ending last weekend. Maybe I cried. When you know characters and their dirty secrets and conflicts and what makes them laugh and love, and what they want in life, for ten years, you get emotionally attached.

Since September this year, I have been working feverishly on finishing the story, with my 40th birthday looming like a sweaty mountain ahead of me. I had to finish writing a book by the time I turn 40. Had to. And I did. I have never been so focused on one thing... maybe forever. It's the closest I've come to feeling like an Olympic athlete. It was almost all I thought about. Sorry, if I was absent from our conversation last time I saw you. Totally living in my book. Major shout out to my husband here... he has been amazing at supporting my writing, well always, but especially the past few months. He basically does everything.

However, my next goal is to send out query letters to literary agents by my birthday (March 17). So last night I sent copies of the manuscript (I feel so naked about this) to a bunch of wonderful humans who have agreed to be my beta readers* and give me feedback ASAP, so I can make edits before I send those letters out to agents. Now I have to write what most writers hate-- my synopsis. So, I'll work on writing that, while sweating profusely about what my beta readers will say, and await my birthday.

To think that I started this entry out thinking I would write about the gradual acceptance and incorporation of Mom jeans... this is better.

And this is 40.

*If you'd like to be a beta reader also...contact me. :)

My unattended kids have stolen my phones and filled it with pics like this. 

A Fall for Books: Seasonal Suggestions

We've been reading all kinds of fall and Halloween books lately. It helps that our library children's section just got a face-lift and that Teddy is recently easier to handle in the library. I've always loved the children's section, but last week we visited and found that they have even more tables and chairs and stools and bins and display shelves.

Teddy's favorite spot is on the giant Teddy Bear's lap.

Books organized by character-- we always have to run to the Thomas bin
first and then the Berenstain Bears bin.

This is my favorite new piece of furniture. It's a book bar for kids!

Anyway, on to the seasonal books we've found. Some were appealing to Teddy, some more appealing to Cal and Clark, and some I liked better. Here are most of the books about fall and Halloween that we've read lately. (Yes, I'm the annoying mom who puts a bunch of seasonal books on hold at the library all at once, and requests review copies for my blog whenever offered.)

The first pile of books about autumn and Halloween 

 Our top books and honorable mentions:

Hoot Owl

I will admit that when I first read Hoot Owl I thought it was weird, though I chuckled a little. The boys also thought it was weird. Then we read it again and laughed more. And again. And now they want to read it all the time and say it's awesome. We love that little Hoot Owl! I was trying to think of what is unique about this book and I think it is that it's a little sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek, but in an optimistic and child-like way. It's not your average children's book, and includes some excellent words and metaphors, that prompted great discussion for the twins and me. Teddy (two years-old) doesn't get much out of it yet, but I highly recommend it for kids maybe ages 3-7. Give it a chance to grow on you.

Monster Needs a Costume

Another favorite of the boys is about a creative, yet distracted monster. The illustrations are great and the concept is soooo familiar, as mom of specifically one indecisive child.

My First Book of Football

My First Book of Football is a brand new one from Sports Illustrated for Kids and Cal and Clark absolutely adore it. It breaks down football into easy-to-read and understand concepts and also has pictures of all the NFL stars. There's a little guy in there with thought bubbles that makes them laugh. That one's a big hit.

Here's a poor quality picture of a couple pages. 

Cal and Clark also liked reading Olivia Loves Halloween, though they'd probably not admit it to you, since she's a girl. It's cute with a cute little moral and I like that.

Ghost in the House

This one is more Teddy's speed. Ghost in the House has super cute illustrations and flaps to open and close. It is a counting book with a great cadence and rhyme with a silly ending. Who is really afraid of whom?! The boys (age 6) enjoyed reading it and Teddy (age 2) also liked listening to it and of course lifting the flaps is always a fun way to get them engaged.

Teddy also loved the Thomas the train book Ghost on the Track, because he loves everything that is Thomas. There are a couple counting ones that Teddy likes, but his favorite is the counting down one called 10 Trick-or-Treaters. He likes looking at the kids' costumes, but mostly at the school bus on a couple pages, and he loves countdowns.

My favorite two are The Little Yellow Leaf by Carin Berger, and Bear Has a Story to Tell by Philip C. Stead. The Little Yellow Leaf is whimsical and friendly and Bear Has a Story to Tell is just adorable. Cal and Clark enjoy it as well. Calvin and I got to meet the husband and wife author and illustrator for this book a few years ago at the National Book Festival, and they are such peaceful, sweet people that I just love them. They live in a barn in Michigan...which is weird but somehow cool, and the charming story of Bear is perfect.

Another good one is The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. This comes with a cool story. My grandmother used to do storytime for the kids at the library when she worked there many years ago. She just this year sent us a copy of the book that she used to read to her kids at storytime around Halloween. The kids loved it any I can see why.

The other books we read weren't much to write about, but I thought I'd share these recommendations with you. Thanks to Candlewick Press and Sports Illustrated for Kids for prompting me to review some books!

Crepes by Clarvin

So I'm sitting here in a quiet house with a nice glass of wine and wanting so badly to work on some long-ish blog posts that have been in my head for awhile, but I know that I won't last much longer and that I'll never get anything posted unless I keep it simple. Somehow these days fly by so fast but they go so slow. They go slowly when the baby is screaming, Clark is having a meltdown over something trivial like orange juice or the way Cal looked at him, and Calvin is screaming for help on the toilet. Those moments take forever. But somehow it all comes to an end in a messy whirlwind and the house is quiet except for the dishwasher and the crickets outside.

So, to make things less complicated I'll just write about today. We read a delightful little library book yesterday called Crepes by Suzette by Monica Wellington. It's an impressive piece of art, actually. The backgrounds for the pages are photo collages of Paris, with real people inserted in places like windows, but the main characters are all drawn in the foreground. At the end of the book there's a crepes recipe so this morning Clarvin and I made crepes. (Clarvin is the name that our friend Margo uses for the twins in order to save time, space, and effort.) We used lemon with powdered sugar and strawberries as filling and they were delicious. I love books that include activity ideas. I highly recommend the book and the recipe.

Here are some pictures from that, as well as some other pictures from the past couple weeks just for kicks.

Master Theodore and I attended Missy's garden tea party to celebrate the
200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice. Delightful.

Teddy keeps smiling

Hockey started!

The ones down on the ice in the corner? Those are mine.

Little sweaty after, but very enthused, as is volunteer coach, Dad

Clark played third base with Dad at cousin's 10 year old birthday party!

Calvin on deck

The 10 year-olds modified the pitching for the 4 year-olds

Teddy bundled up

Teddy slept through the night last night!

Thursday Thesicle

Catching a big brother reading his favorite book to his little brother is the coolest.

Losing Our Bookstore

Today I wrote about losing our local bookstore on Reston Patch. Here it is.

Attempting Autumn-y Activities



This picture sums up my autumn so far. Beautiful weather, curious kids.

I found a cool virtual book club for kids about a month ago. It's through the blog Toddler Approved, which is a site that will make your inner Pinterest Mom drool. There's an Angry Birds craft. Enough said.

Two books are assigned for each month and the various bloggers who join are to read the books and come up with some activities based on the books or even other books by the same author. I vowed to do it. In fact, I think I even wrote on the post and said I would.

The author for September was Lois Ehlert. We read some of her books including Boo to You, Leaf Man, and Eating the Alphabet. Her art in the first two are made to look like objects arranged in certain shapes. Many of the objects are found in nature: acorns, leaves, etc. They’re clever. I thought I could do some kind of arranging of autumn-y objects with the boys. After a big windstorm we had earlier in the month we took a trip to a park by our house with the boys’ twin friends Trevor and Trey and little Alexandra.

Earlier in the morning we had watched an episode of Cat in the Hat. It was about silk worms and how they’re not worms but caterpillars. Nick, Sally, and Cat shrunk to the size of the caterpiller and had an lively and informative conversation with her. 

As we collected tons of bright green acorns that had been prematurely knocked from the trees in the wind storm, we found a huge green caterpillar. I’d never seen one that big except maybe behind glass at the Museum of Natural History. Later I looked it up and learned that it is the caterpillar for the big Polyphemus Moth—in the silkworm family! How did the Cat in the Hat know?! So cool. At least I thought so. The boys didn’t seem to care much. And I lost the pictures of the caterpillar. Gr. 

I could not believe the mileage that the boys got out of those acorns. We still have some of them on our balcony and probably under furniture in the house, and it’s been nearly a month since we collected them. The boys pretended they were trees. They were people. They tried to float them in water. They made them into piles and pretended the piles were birthday cakes whose candles they blew out. They were fruit to can. They were a fountain pouring down. You name it, they pretended it. The best part is that I can just toss them out when they’re done playing with them, rather than storing them like real toys.

We did a little craft with them—we looked at how different they were—even though they’re all acorns. Different colors, different sizes, even different shapes. Then the boys  and Alex glued some of each type and color on a piece of cardboard. I’m using it as a decoration on the mantle for now.



Green acorns glued to cardboard-- we tried to find
as many different-looking ones as we could.



We watched as the acorns turned brown. They're on the mantle
for another couple weeks before I toss them.

For another fall craft, we collected leaves of all shapes and sizes, taped them to TV trays, and the kids used color crayons sideways to make leaf rubs. I seriously cannot believe how easy it was to type that all in a sentence in comparison to how long it took to actually pull this off.
 

Running around collecting leaves

 

For some reason, the kids love each
having their own TV tray.

 

Very serious business

 

Cal's finished product

I did not get anything written about anything we did, other than this. I did not submit my activities to the book club. Perhaps next month? It was fun to discover a new author and new books. It also inspired me to put some books on hold at the library. Some other fall books that the boys have enjoyed are: Acorns Everywhere by Kevin Sherry, Awesome Autumn by Bruce Goldstone.

 

So, I didn't quite follow through on the book club obligation, but it was a great jumping-off point and I'll probably do this month's reading too.

My Calvin Date

Today Brian and I split up the twins and took them on dates. I took Calvin to the National Book Festival and Brian took Clark to a Nationals game. We've only split them up this way a few times before, but I think it's important to spend one-on-one time with each of the boys. We surprised them. They didn't know what we were doing until Brian dropped Cal and I off at the festival on the National Mall.

It's hard because we don't want to put them in boxes and always assume that Cal will like the more artsy activity and Clark the sporty one...but it's also hard because we know that's what each of them likes the most. Cal is bored after awhile at a baseball game, but Clark knows the players and how to keep score and everything.

The date was rather last minute-- I had thought I'd be going to the festival by myself and so I hadn't paid much attention to the children's authors. I could have checked out books at the library from specific authors and then arranged to hear their presentations after the boys knew the books. That's what I've done in the past for myself. Next year I'll remember.

The author I wanted to hear and meet on Sunday was Amy Krouse Rosenthal. I love her adult book, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. I've read only one of her children's books, and the boys and I like it a lot (Bedtime for Mommy). So we heard her speak with my friend Missy, who introduced the book to me years ago, and we got to meet AKR. (Missy wrote about our afternoon here.) She signed my book and signed Cal's festival poster. She and Cal talked about superheroes (Cal has named his superhero self "Throthen" and Clark is "Quesadilla"). I told her about Whispers & Shouts and I was even so brazen as to hand her my card when she asked what the name of it is. Maybe she'll read this...

I bought Cal a book written and illustrated by a husband and wife team. You know how Cal loves to paint; I thought he would like to see the person who painted his book as well as the person who wrote it. We watched Erin and Philip Stead read two of their books from the front row: A Sick Day for Amos McGee and Bear Has a Story to Tell. They were charming.

Then we had a traumatic experience with Cat in the Hat and Sid the Science Kid at the PBS Kids tent, a side trip through the insect zoo and bathroom at the Natural History Museum, and a fun time at the Storybook Station before we walked to Uncle A's house to meet the baseball-ers.

The weather was unusually perfect for the festival (I have horrible rain and sweat book festival stories). I also thought it seemed to be organized and managed better than in past years-- it was a smoothly-operating function. What a fun day!

Here is my Calvin date in pictures:

Mommy and Calvy date!

 

Meeting Amy Krouse Rosenthal

 

Philip and Erin Stead

He ended up being brave enough for a
quick high five from Sid.

Then Cal stood and stalked Sid.

This is a big place with books and pillows for reading!

Yep!

Drawing a ceiling fan

I don't know.

Walking back to Uncle A's house