WWW Wednesdays – May 23, 2012

My bookshelf

- What I’m currently reading
I’m still reading Mermaids in the Basement by Michael Lee West. I’ve been busy working on several projects at night and I’ve had little time to read. The book’s font size is also a little small for me, which doesn’t help with the reading speed.

 

- What I recently finished reading

Nothing new since last week. :-(

 

 - What I think I’ll read next

Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him by Luis Carlos Montalvan and  Bret Witter. With almost 600 five-star ratings on Amazon, I have a feeling this book is quite special. It tells the true story of a decorated U.S. soldier who came back from Iraq physically and emotionally injured, and how a golden retriever helped with his recovery. Tissues, please…

 

My kids’ bookshelf

- What they’re currently reading
- Wild & Woolly by Mary Jessie Parker. Wild, a bighorn sheep, and Wooly, a ranch sheep, decide to try each other’s lives for a day but find out they prefer their own after all. At the end of the story, I love asking my kids which sheep’s life they’d prefer to have and why. It gives me great insight on their thinking patterns and personal tastes.
-  Little Monkey Lost by Keith DuQuette. Little Monkey is bored and decides to find adventure in the jungle. There he meets nine different kinds of monkeys who teach him fun new things. The end of the book features many facts about the New World Monkeys pictured and my kids like sharing the names and facts of each monkey type.
- The Birdwatchers by Simon James. “When I go birdwatching, things happen,” Grandad says. After hearing so many stories about birdwatching from her grandfather, Jess decides to join him one day. By the end of the day, she’s had the opportunity to seen plenty of birds, including a pair of dancing penguins! A very sweet story teaching respect about nature.

- What they recently finished reading
- Dinorella : A Prehistoric Fairy Tale by Pamela Duncan Edwards. What a wacky and funny story: imagine Cinderella but featuring dinosaurs. And I hope you don’t have a problem enunciating the letter D because this book is full of Ds! As in, “Dinorella is dying to go to the dance, but her dreadful stepsisters, Doris and Dora, declare she’s too dowdy and dull.” Fairy-Dactyl to the rescue!
- I Dream of Trains by Angela Johnson. This is the poignant story of the son of a sharecropper who dreams of leaving Mississippi on a train with the legendary engineer Casey Jones and his black fireman Sim Webb. My kids are a little too young to grasp all the concepts in this book (slavery, cotton picker, the great migration, etc) but it was a great introduction. I also had no idea who Casey Jones was until then, but the last page of the book gives a lot of information about him and the themes in general, so this was a good lesson for all of us.

- What I think they’ll read next
I got so many books from the library this past week, you wouldn’t believe. I’m sure there’s some good stuff in there! What about you? Any books you or your kids are reading you’d like to share?

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WordPress weekly photo challenge: Hands

These are the hands that tickle Elmo’s nose when he gives a hug to my son for a picture at SeaWorld San Diego. That will teach him to try to sell millions of Tickle me Elmo dolls.

WordPress weekly photo challenge: hands – Elmo and Bert at SeaWorld San Diego

These are the painting hands that let the artist’s creative juices flow freely.

WordPress weekly photo challenge: Hands

These are the firefighter’s sturdy hands that sometimes need a little extra help from the jaws of life to save lives. Thank you, hands.

Firefighter holding the jaws of life in his hands

Of course, I couldn’t help myself from including Jewel’s beautiful and inspiring Hands song for this weekly photo challenge, so enjoy it!

WWW Wednesdays – May 16, 2012

My bookshelf

- What I’m currently reading
Mermaids in the Basement by Michael Lee West. So far I’m enjoying it, especially since I have no idea where the story is going.

 

- What I recently finished reading

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. What a wonderful book, mixing  words, detailed pencil illustrations, even a few photographs so well. What a beautiful story, where strangers find out they’re all connected in one way or another. What a great mystery to be solved, piece by piece, just like the gears of the automaton Hugo tries to fix. And what great homage to the history of cinema. I recommend this amazing works of art to all children from 8 to 99.

 

 - What I think I’ll read next

My to-read bookshelf is almost empty so I’ll have to see if something new arrived at the library or if I need to pick a book from my own collection.

 

My kids’ bookshelf

- What they’re currently reading
- Stuck by Oliver Jeffers. We LOVE this book as it is simply hilarious! Floyd’s kite gets stuck in a tree, so the boy tries to knock it down by throwing increasingly larger and more outrageous things. You’d think when he grabs a ladder, and later on a saw, he’d finally use them right. But no, he keeps throwing them up the tree!
- Bedhead by Margie Palatini. This book is for anyone who’s ever had a bad hair day, and forgot it was picture day…
- Bad Boys Get Cookie! by Margie Palitini. The Bad Boys are back! Wolves Willy and Wally try to satisfy their sweet-tooth craving by chasing down a runaway gingerbread man. Unfortunately they try to attract it by dressing up as Hansel and Gretel, only to run into a witch in front of her gingerbread house who offers them to come inside for some sweets. Very funny!

- What they recently finished reading
I’d like to recommend a few books for the younger crowd (age 2-4) we recently read because we really liked them, even though my kids are getting too old for them.
- Jazzy in the Jungle by Lucy Cousins. In this book full of die-cut pages, the jungle animals help Mama JoJo find her baby lemur Jazzy.
- Wow City! and Wow School! by Robert Neubecker. We’ve read them before so this was a request for seconds (probably thirds). In Wow City! Izzy takes a trip to the big city with her father, and in Wow School! she starts her first day at school. In both books, a yellow dog is hiding somewhere in the picture on every spread. My kids just requested Wow America! again and I just saw that a brand new Wow Ocean! is coming out tomorrow. I’ll have to check my library for this one…

- What I think they’ll read next
I ordered a whole bunch of early reader books so we’ll find out if they’re any good soon enough. What about you? Any books you or your kids are reading you’d like to share?

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WordPress weekly photo challenge: Blue

Living in San Diego, CA, I get to enjoy beautiful blue skies the majority of the year. I’m not sure what makes the sky so blue here, but I’m guessing it has to do with our latitude and the ways the sun rays light up the sky. It really does help when taking photos of various subjects, and using the blue sky as a nice, contrasted background.

I took this photo in our backyard a few weeks ago, after what will probably be our last rain for the next six months.

WordPress weekly photo challenge: Blue

I also can’t help thinking about my boys when I hear the word blue. My whole world is blue because of them. They avoid the aisles of girl toys, calling them “the pink aisles”. They both have beautiful blue eyes and look great with blue tops, so I buy a lot of those. We also have a blue couch at our house, courtesy of IKEA. With a removable cover you can throw in the washer, this is one of the best furniture investments I’ve made with two kids. Here’s my four-year old when he was just a baby, sitting on the blue couch in his blue footsy pajamas, with his beautiful blue eyes (which you really can’t see well on this picture). 

And here’s a photo of his brother when he wasn’t even two years old, sitting on our blue couch in my blue T-shirt, using my Boppy pillow and a burpcloth to breastfeed his lovey. How cute is that? I also have a photo of him using my breastpump but you’ll have to wait for the color “yellow” to be the theme of the photo challenge!

A special Mother’s Day story

This past Thursday afternoon, I received a strange email message that got my attention immediately. It came from my Every Day I See A Cow blog, mentioning a post I wrote last Thanksgiving where I featured cow hand puppets from IKEA. But it wasn’t about a cow.

The email sender was a mom located in Nova Scotia, Canada, almost 4000 miles away from San Diego, where I live. As I read her message, I quickly realized it was a cry for help. Earlier during the day, her two-year old daughter lost her lovey. Her ONLY lovey. Yep, no backup. Gasp!

So this desperate mom browsed the web for hours looking for a new lovey, which happens to be a lamb hand puppet from IKEA, just like the ones featured next to the cow on my Thanksgiving cow blog post. Of course, luck would have it that IKEA recently stopped selling these hand puppets. Apparently they’re not a hot item on the resale market either. At least, not on the day this lamb puppet disappeared.

As you can imagine, this tragic and sudden loss didn’t go well for her daughter, who kept crying and asking for her lamby. As she couldn’t find another one to buy anywhere, this poor mom became frustrated until she saw my blog post and emailed me, asking me if by any chance I would have an IKEA lamb hand puppet. Hmm, I replied, attaching the photo below, like… this one?

IKEA lamb hand puppet

I actually bought several hand puppets at IKEA a few years ago. I think they were only $1.99 each at the time and very entertaining for the kids. I think I have a frog, a chicken, a zebra, and of course, a lamb. My kids still like to play with these puppets once in a while but I figured they could manage with one less.

So I got this mom’s address and on Friday morning I went to the post office to send our lamb to greener pastures. I’m pretty sure Nova Scotia has much greener pastures to offer than San Diego. And the best thing about all this is, in about a week a little girl will be happily reunited with “her” lamb lovey. Someone should tell her it just went on a vacation for a week or so…

This experience tells me that as moms, we need to stick together. Maybe one day another mom will be the one helping me out when I need it. But if there’s one single piece of advice I can offer new moms, it’s to get several copies of your baby’s lovey. That’s what I did with my two kids and even though we haven’t lost any so far, I don’t regret the additional purchases. 

By the way, if your child ever lost his or her lovey, I’d love to hear your story. How far did you go to replace it?

Happy Mother’s Day, everyone!