A book full of love and sparkles

Bryleigh and I just dropped Hubs off at the airport. He’s heading to a tiny, unpronounceable town in Finland for business, and it’s breaking my heart because he’s going to miss Bryleigh’s first-ever ballet recital on Monday evening. Granted, we’re using the term “ballet” loosely when speaking of a class of 1- to 2-year-olds. In fact, the class is actually called “Creative Movement”, but still… It’s going to be on a stage, and they all have costumes and a routine they’re supposed to follow. I just hate that he’s going to miss it, and so does he. If we’d known about the recital prior to the scheduling of this trip, he’d have arranged to go a week before or a week after if at all possible.

This morning I was feeling guilty that Andrew was going to miss the recital, so Bryleigh and I left early for her ballet class so that I could take her to the book store across the Square and buy her a new book. Yeah, I ended up buying her three new books. I couldn't help myself.

It’s a Firefly Night, written by Dianne Ochiltree and illustrated by Betsy Snyder, is an absolutely gorgeous little book about a father waking up his little girl to go outside and catch fireflies on a warm summer night. Written as a poem and with a full spread of scientific facts about fireflies at the end, the book is filled with breathtaking illustrations and even some counting fun for toddlers. One part that I love about it is that it explains that the fireflies don’t belong to the little girl, and she lets them go before following her daddy back inside. 

On Beyond Zebra by Dr. Seuss was a favourite when I was a little girl. While my parents kept a lot of my old books for when we had kids, I’m sure this one was given away to someone or sold at a yard sale. I seem to remember a page or two was ripped in my dog-eared copy. This little ditty starts out with a little boy proudly writing the alphabet and claiming that he now knows everything there is to know when his older brother or friend corrects him by introducing him to a litany of new interesting symbols and letters used to spell unimaginable Seussian words like Humpf-Humpf-a-Dumpfer, Floob-Boober-Bab-Boober-Bubs and Vrooms.

Plant a Kiss is an inspiring book about sharing love written by Amy Krouse Rosenthal (author of another of our favourites—Little Hoot) and illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds. It tells the tale of Little Miss (which is something we often call Bryleigh), who plants a kiss and patiently waits until it blossoms, at which point, to the dismay of her peers who think it’s far too rare to share, she harvests it and spreads it all over the world until she has none left. However, she then returns to her plant to discover that her one little kiss has bloomed into “endless bliss”. It’s a lovely little book filled with love and sparkles.

By the way, my friend made her decision, and although I don’t think it’s the choice I’d have made, I am 100 percent certain that it’s the right decision for her. I’m proud of her.

A good marriage is built on compromise

My friend called me today and is being faced with one of the most difficult decisions she’ll ever have to face in her entire life. I’m not going to go into any details, but it got me thinking about how we make decisions. In our family, we talk over all major decisions at length and make decisions together. The hubs and I usually broach the subject with each other and initially discuss the pros and cons of going one way or the other, and then we’ll let the topic lie for a while before bringing it up again. During this time when we’re not discussing it with each other, both of tend to talk about it our friends and families and get their opinions and insights as well. Then we’ll finally reconvene—each of us having made up our minds individually—and we’ll discuss it again, this time bearing research and external feedback in favor of our position. Usually by this point we’re in agreement, but sometimes one or the other of us will need some extra coaxing. And there’s always compromise.

I don’t know what I would do if I had to make all the decisions on my own. I know that my friend will make the right decision, but I don’t feel for her right now having to do it alone.

Crazy 'bout chicks

I know. I’m a horrible blogger. I keep up with it for a month and then forget about it. Problem is that I get stressed out and feel as though I no longer have time for it. Oh, well. It’s really just for me anyway.

Well, lately I’ve become a better blog reader and have a lot that I love to follow. One in particular is The Art of Doing Stuff. It’s written by this amazing Canadian woman (well, I assume she’s Canadian because she lives in Canada) named Karen who just does all these brilliant projects on her own. It’s what I would aspire to do if I didn’t have to work a full-time job and take care of a toddler. Maybe I’ll get to work on my own art of doing stuff in 5-10 years when we’ve had our fill of kids and they’re all in school and Hubs is making Bank (with a capital “B”) so that I can stay at home and eat bon-bons build a deck or rip up floor to lay down fresh tile all day.

Anyway, before I got off track, I was telling you about my latest obsession, The Art of Doing Stuff. So this week, Karen took a vacation from blogging, and to keep her readers interested for those of us come back daily, she set up a “Coop Cam” in her (self-built) chicken coop in her back yard. Though the feed is incredibly slow (as in, one second the chickens will be there, and all of a sudden they’ll disappear), it’s still incredibly addictive. And now, for your own obsession viewing pleasure: Karen’s Coop Cam (if you’re asked to put in a password, type guest—all lowercase).