The Kitchen Table

A Failure to Screen

Bama reads a lot of books. A lot. She picks up a half dozen every trip to the library, and wants to read many of them at that moment. A more competent parent might screen all those books before getting them home. Me, I'm happy I've got all three of us, haven't inadvertently dropped extra (not checked out) books in the bag, and haven't fallen down the treacherous stairs from the children's room.

My wilding, or irresponsible, approach to reading has brought us Zathura (lots of brotherly fighting), Cosmo and the Robot (name calling), Earth to Clunk (more name calling), among others. Sometimes, as with Cosmo and the Robot, I edit out the name and carry on because there's more in the book that I like. Zathura, I put aside for when she is older.

We've also brought home The Widow's Broom (loved the dark brilliance of it), Gossie (and all the gosling books), the beautiful friendship of Toot & Puddle, the humanist All the World, When Carmen Learned English, and the list goes on. Many are way above her comprehension level (Two of a Kind, Sojourner Truth's Step-Stomp Stride), but she's curious and asks good questions and uses the pictures to sort out some of what she doesn't understand. A friend said, Oh, you didn't read the books ahead of time? Not always, no. I wish I did, but I don't. Sometimes, we sit and read and there you have it. Me, editing out "stupid" on the fly.

Today, after a night interrupted by wet beds, teething, sheet changes, and sobs we had a play-date and whirling trip to the library. I almost never say yes to television, but today I offered it. Something new, and sweet. I flipped through netflix screens hoping she wouldn't spot an image like Dora and ask to watch it. Babar! Yes! 

Babar, King of Elephants. How bad could it be? We already knew about Babar's mother murder and that the king dies from eating a poisonous mushroom. Yeah. Except in this drawn out version, Babar's mother is shot while he's on her back.

(image: cinemotions)

As she falls dead, he's hurtled from her shoulders to go bouncing through a jungle clearing. He goes back to her, calling to her, finds her dead. Birds chirp louder, the monkey screams, and the hunter returns with his double-barrel shotgun. Babar, in a panic, runs, as he does in the book. But in the book, he runs for a page and finds himself in the ciyt with the kindly old lady. In this movie, he runs across a desert, through mountains, in the night, into a cave (to be chased out be a leopard), into another cave (to be frightened off by a cobra), swept away by a flash flood. Each element sent Bama into new panic -- he's never going to stop running! What's going on with the water? Why can't he run? What's happening? 

Later, I explain that some snakes are poisonous and will bite things to hurt them -- this after the kindly old woman is bit by a cobra. Bama thinks snakes are nice. I do not, in fact, want to dispel her of this idea. Ditto spiders. I'd like her to be interested in creatures that generally freak me out in part because I think my own oogies are lame, in part because she's a girl and I'd like her to be of hte 1% that doesn't get creeped out by bugs and snakes.

Then comes the rhino battle. Doesn't bother her, we move ahead. Cornelius' house burns down, the old lady is bit, and Alexander --- one of Babar's children -- nearly drowns. Mired by worries, Babar has a nightmare. 

The second the video showed a glowing door I told Bama to close her eyes. Too late. 

See the scary thing on the far left, the white thing with the nose on the back of something? She saw that before I got it together and turned off the television. She's been asking about the ghost on the alligator all night. Would it come to our house, would it live here, why did it go to Babar. She didn't see the sequence, when the elephants chase the demons away, but I tried to tell her Babar chased it away.

Then she read Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. A book I chose, but wasn't 100 percent about and had set aside. She found it and gave it to Mister, who hadn't read it but thought it must be okay if I'd brought it home from the library and it was sitting around.

(Image from Sam and Boo Book Reviews as well as a good write-up and discussion on this as a banned book.)

Anyone read Sylvester? He is an only child, a collector of rocks. He finds a magic pebble that grants wishes. An encounter with a lion, he wishes to be a rock so the lion doesn't eat him. Bam. He's a rock. His parents don't know where he is, the police can't find him, he's vanished. (Sylvester needs to be touching the pebble to work its magic.) In the end, after a long while, the pebble rolls near enough and everything works out.

But when they read it, I was out of the house. It was enough for our girl and sent her over the edge. Dead mother? Scary ghost things? Babar running endlessly and nowhere? A goddamn rock?

There are growth moments here, somewhere. But now I need a new safety trick for her, because I'd relied on magic rocks as her security (under the pillow, in her pocket) and after tonight, I'm not sure she'll be so keen. The big takeaway? It may be as easy as no TV, but could be watch everything first.

Doesn't that idea just make you retch? 

Plenty of Good Stuff in Plenty

 

via www.bonappetit.com

 

I was invited to join the Ladies' Cookbook Club which is exactly what it sounds like. A cookbook club for women. It's quite a group. The founder, which sounds so formal and stuffy, which she isn't, is a food editor. Attendees included my friend @sarahm, one of the founders of a recently defunct freshly prepped meal delivery company, a woman who works once a week for one of the farmers at her local Green Market (genius, I was thinking it would be a smart gig and per her, it is!), a well-networked techie. The women are, for the most part, from an intersection of food and technology. (Oh, and there were plenty of fantastic necklaces to be had!)

The rules: pick a cookbook, pick a recipe. Each person selects one recipe to prepare, enough for 8-10 people. With 20 attendees, that's a lot of food! 

 

The inaugural book was Plenty from U.K. chef-owner Yotam Ottolenghi. He is also the author of the new vegetarian column in the Guardian, despite his not being vegetarian. 

Ottolenghi's recipes are ingredient-rich. Laundry lists of herbs, some possibly unfamiliar ingredients such as harissa or preserved lemons. I selected mushrooms with herbed polenta which called for four different fresh herbs and two tablespoons of truffle oil. Despite the lengthy chopping queue, it was easy to assemble and tasted fantastic. My two changes to the recipe would be minimal: more mushrooms (it calls for four cups, I used five and would advocate for six) and less oil (2T per batch of mushrooms was too much; 2T of truffle oil seemed overkill though it smelled delicious and made my cab ride delightful). He's not big on salt which is not a problem in this house, but several people wanted more salt.

If you can get over your worries about the ingredient roster, you'll be fine. I sipped tea and listened to craftlit's Dracula** while prepping. I did, in fact, prepare everything -- mise en place! -- and found it incredibly helpful. 

My second dish, the Ultimate Winter Couscous, was less successful with the smalls. It came out too spicy;  the rcipe calls for two tablespoons of harissa stirred in at the end. I might use only one or omit it altogether. The vegetables weren't soft enough; my own fault, in the rush to dinner I didn't check carefully enough.

On the other hand, it was the best couscous I've had and I don't like couscous. But, I used the vegetable broth I'd make on Sunday per Mark Bittman's directions in How to Cook Everythign Vegetarian. I browned my vegetables, included mushrooms, and tossed in soy sauce at the end. Vegetable stock is about as intersting as white bread to me, but this was rich and wonderful and showed well in both the polenta and the couscous. I'll do my stock this way always. 

via www.bonappetit.com

Despite the imperfections in execution, I'd make this again because it is easy, forgiving, and flexible as many of the recipes in the book seem to be.

Others on our list (Bama helped me choose):

• Green couscous
• mushroom ragout with poached duck egg
• green pancakes with lime butter
• saffron cauliflower
• lentils with broiled eggplant
• tomato party
• swiss chard, chickpea, and tamarind stew
• gado-gado
• green lentils, asparagus, and watercress
• black bean paste and quesadillas
• soba noodles with eggplant and mango
• caramelized fennel with goat cheese
• Tamara's ratatouille

I'll stop there, but you get the picture. The recipes are not perfect. There have been several criticisms of portions in the ingredient list (the spicy Moroccan carrot salad calls for 2.5 cups of cilantro leaves which seemed overkill to the woman who made it. I thought it would be okay if they were chopped a bit more, but I'm a cilantro nut as it seems Ottolenghi is, as well); not enough salt; odd combinations. But with the nearly 20 dishes on the table representing about a third of the book (okay, I didn't count so maybe 1/4?) there wasn't one that I didn't enjoy. Even the fried limas.

**craftlit is a fabulous podcast. a chapter a week of a book, with readers for the characters. part play, part audiobook, all swell. 

Happy with Hungry?

 

via www.innocentdrinks.co.uk

Mister found Hungry? for me a few months ago. I've cooked many recipes from it, including this chicken, bacon, and leek pie. I haven't had one failure.
Make adjustments for US measurements (we have a scale that weighs kg or oz), and Anglophile away.
It's chock full of vegetables, and in the ingredients, the authors note whether it counts towards or for your five a day.

Recipes we've tried:

• Green Mac n Cheese. The smalls are eating it tonight for dinner. Right now. They love it. It includes cubes of roasted butternut squash, whirled tomatoes and basil, and a green crust of broccoli/basil/bread crumbs on top.
• Toad in the Hole. I used sweet Italian sausages from Tamarack Hollow Farm, purchased at the Union Square Green Market. So good. They ate it all.
• Smoothies. Please, mama, make smoothies.
• Bright mash.
• Peas. Yes, a new way for cooking peas. I should have known. 
• Homemade beans on toast
• Spag (their term)
• Chop chop salad

The book includes a section of down and dirty recipes for one vegetable sides. Like carrots, beans, peas. It's been handy as a way to expand beyond the blanche, the sautè. 

via www.innocentdrinks.co.uk

It is not an easy book to get hold of, but I think it's worth the search if you're looking for another handy standard of recipes that are pleasers to tastebuds, time, and budgets.

Stretching

 

 

I was lucky enough to be invited into a book club last year. I'd been casting about, hoping ot find one that worked for me in my pregnant, temporarily in NYC state, and our friend started one with her soon-to-be-cousin-in-law. 

It's a huge group, with anywhere between eight and 15 people showing up to talk about books like Cleopatra (universally hated, only one person got past page 45, and she finished it out of sheer will; the NY Times is full of gas) and Super Sad True Love Story,  which I missed but am reading for a different book club.

What I like about book clubs is that they force the members to read. I haven't finished every book. In fact, there's a rule with our club now that if you don't finish at least 75 percent of the book, you probably shouldn't show (I might have inspired this rule, but I had a newborn!). It's a big group, as I said, and the chances of us getting off-topic are high, especially with that many members.

But the downside of book clubs is that you don't always read books you're interested in, even if you suggested them (Cleopatra, you charlatan). Our group had selected Isabel Wilkerson's Warmth of Other Suns, but kicked it after another failed non-fiction selection (Precious Objects, best described and read as a collection of vignettes that are individually (more or less) interesting but as a whole not as cohesive as could have or should have been). 

Several of us were disappointed by its dismissal. A couple of people had started Warmth of Other Suns, a couple had purchased it. I suggested a splinter group. Gasp! A splinter group. We met last night, four of us, in a tea shop near my house. Over creamy mushroom soup and shared pots of rooibos and a lovely white tea, we talked about structure, language, narrative, and the importance of voice. What Wilkerson did with this book is give an event, the Great Migration, and 6 million people who left the south and all they knew behind, faces and a voice. 

Voice. Stories. Narratives. These personalize and legitimize the incomprehensible. For example, we can be horrified to learn that a lynching, which I knew was commonplace, occurred every four days. Every four days. Then apply personal stories to the lynchings. Young teens like Emmet Till, men old and young, all seen as guilty of an infraction, therefore tortured and killed. (Wilkerson uses stories from people she interviewed; I mention Till because his story became widespread after the documentary cited was released and his name may be familiar.)

What I appreciated about the book and about meeting with friends is that I am reminded to stretch and that I can stretch my knowledge, my empathy, my vocabulary. Reading, and why it was important to teach it as well as I could when I was teaching, and to read as well as I can on my own, allows us to become better people on many fronts. 

And, selfishly, for two hours, I'm not a mama. I'm a reader.

Another Use for All Those Bananas

Don't get me wrong, I love banana bread. Maybe I like banana bread, a lot. And, now that I have a recipe (from Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table ) that I've tweaked on the flour end, it's my go-to.

But I like muffins and I like variety. Enter the banana cereal muffin from Good to the Grain: Baking with Whole-Grain Flours. It took only minutes to set up, made easier by having leftover breakfast cereal (the multigrain blend from Whole Foods bins) on hand. They were moist, needed a little more banana kick, and had a nice texture. 

 

I haven't baked much else from the book, a few things, and I like it. Do not be fooled. She uses AP flour in almost all of the recipes, she says for consistency, but lots of substitutions and a decent selection of recipes per flour type. I love that she includes rye, quinoa, and amaranth flour. I have become a barley fan after using her scone recipe. It's incredibly easy, and the barley flour gives the scones a nice creamy texture. 

Who is this? Leads to a fine 20 minutes of quiet.

One of the best uses of my iPhone is googling a topic or person while in conversation with friends. It's obnoxious, I am sure, but I can't help myself. I used to write down lists of things to check when I got home, now I google and bookmark (or delicious, or pinterest, depending on the relevancy/half-life of said topic).

Last night, late, because Rabbit was up for the third time -- this kid is eating three meals a day and nursing, he so does not need to be up AT ALL during the night -- I was reading something that mentioned Elizabeth Gilbert. I should know that name, apparently. I googled. Oh, her. Eat, Pray, Love. A book I didn't read and don't intend to unless it's jammed in the back of an airplane seat pocket and I'm done re-reading the flight card. I looked at pictures of her. I thought about her haircut because I've reentered my usual, I hate my hair shouldn't I cut it off end of summer stage. (I asked Mister to look at photo. "Um," he said, "So I don't think she's [my type of] attractive and I'm having a hard time picturing this hair in black with your face." I take that as a No.) I thought I might read the accompanying article which was penned by comedian John Hodgman. Gilbert, whom he affectionately calls Liz, and Hodgman are long-time friends who were published in the Paris Review together. He wants Gilbert to be acknowledged for the genius of her short stories. "The Famous Torn and Restored Cigarette Trick" is available online and is worth the read. 

The internet is a time sink. I am putting my phone in awkward places more and more because, frankly, I don't need to know what is going on all the time. I have two small children who are present, why can't I be present? 

but it's also full of juicy goodness like the Gilbert train that led me to a story I'm enjoying and want to share.

(I still like her hair and I think she's doing alright in the 42 and looking good category.)

What's Cooking, Honey?

When we visited BaMa and Co. in Vermont last month, she had this book, Time for Dinner: Strategies, Inspiration, and Recipes for Family Meals Every Night of the Week, on her glorious kitchen counter. It's from the editors of Cookie magazine, a defunct publication for families (read: mamas).

We had the baked beans (start them during nap, done for dinner. Add a salad and cooked green, some bread. Done.), and I was convinced. I bought my own copy the next week.

Mister and I have a ton of cookbooks (our NYC subset numbers about 20), and there are several that are on my favorites list, but for helping me with time in the kitchen vs. time with Bama, this book has been a great resource.

I've made the braised pork twice (delicious both times; butt is better than shoulder); the lentil and sweet potato soup (except I made it with split peas); and the pseudo-gorditas. Corn cups with filling. I'd planned on using the pork, but the pork works out better when it's started on time, even though it doesn't take long, a nap can throw off your schedule. 

 

We filled the cups with scrambled eggs, hot sauce, tomatoes, cheese, and lettuce. Not the most exciting, but delicious. Next time, I'd add some beans and some thing a little juicy and savory to the mix. (The pork would have been great.) If you're vegetarian, a bean and zucchini saute could be fabulous. 

What's That You're Reading, Lady?

I put solitaire on my iPhone. Big mistake. My reading time has been dramatically impacted, with almost no books completed since mid-December. I want to say that no, I really have finished a book in the last two months, but I'm not sure I'd be telling the truth.

I'm a reader. Really, I am. It would be difficult to be an English teacher and not enjoy, or live for, reading. I read constantly when Bama was first born, a lot on the iPhone because I could read books while nursing her in the middle of the night.

Then I decided solitaire made sense.

Oh goodness.

Yesterday, I updated my book lists and discovered the last completed book I'd listed here was ... what was it? Damn.

So, I am reading people, I am. I am reading all the books listed in the sidebar, albeit slowly.

• What's Going on in There? : How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life

  I like Lise Eliot's book, a lot. But I also recognize that my interest in neurons, chemical pathways, and so on is a chapter by chapter thing. I'm on chapter five.

• The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps, Third Edition

  I have done work (and continue to ...) with Facing History and Ourselves, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and other organizations. I bought this book when I was at the USHMM for its Belfer National Conference for Teachers. My stack of Holocaust/genocide texts is high, though pitifully small compared to many other fine teachers I have worked with. I cannot recommend this text highly enough. It illuminates an often overlooked, ignored, or castigated community of persecuted people. It is not known how many homosexuals were murdered by the Nazis; survivors were persecuted after Liberation. The text also paints a clear picture of camp brutality, and the odd humanity that was sometimes present.

• Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer

  Mister and I had chickens for about a year and a half before asking Aunty Cake to adopt them. We would like to have a better garden, really, a garden, and chickens again (as well as some other friends like goats, sheep, a couple of pigs, and a cow). Carpenter set up her farm in my hometown of Oakland. Her writing makes me laugh, makes me curious, and makes me want my farm now.

• At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays

  Mister gave me Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader on our first date. I love her essays. I am in awe of her vocabulary, her knowledge of books, her turn of phrase. Ex Libris was about the love of books and of reading. At Large and At Small is a love of essays, those short bits of writing that illuminate, elucidate, entertain. She's clever, that Fadiman.

I'm trying to read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies but am having difficulty as I recently watched the lengthier television version (with Colin Firth as the frosty and then unfrosty Mr. Darcy). The dialogue echoes unpleasantly between the versions making it a shelved text (for now).

Also tried to read Sarah Chayes's The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban but yesterday returned it to the library a month overdue and only one hundred pages in. Yes, Chayes is knowledgeable, but something about her writing didn't work for me. I'm going to try it again in a few months, after I pay off my fine.

Something You Might Like #17

This is a total grab-bag of items. Some are fun, some are sweet. A couple are to feed your mind and soul.

Visit

When I was in my teaching program, we were visited a few times from people from Facing History and Ourselves, a Boston-based group, with offices around the country, which uses case studies from the Holocaust, the Armenian Holocaust, Northern Ireland, and other conflicts to discuss human behavior and choices. I attended the Holocaust and Human Behavior workshop that summer, then became involved in a teacher's roundtable on transitional justice -- what happens after a genocide or other civil break. This past week, I've been popping in and out of an online forum on the International Criminal Court, the ICC, which is in The Hague and addresses the prosecution of crimes against humanity. We started with a film about the ICC called The Reckoning. It will be available for viewing until Dec. 31. I highly recommend watching it as an introduction to the ICC, and as a look at what can be, might be, should be done to those who commit the most serious crimes against humanity. (The United States, under President Bush, did not join the ICC. It is not clear whether or when the U.S. will. This is a separate issue.)

A teacher I know through FHAO and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum published this interesting (and beautifully written) piece about sex, drugs, poetry, and her seniors. 

Make

I'm working on a Tasty Scarf for one of my Etsy customers (yes! I have customers! :). I picked up several new yarns this past week including a lovely pima cotton from Mirasol in a sunflower yellow, and a crisp green grass from Jil Eaton MinnowMerino. The merino is single ply and so soft. I'd like to get more and knit something up for Bama, but I'm already halfway into (and shelved for the scarves) the Child's Placket Neck Sweater from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts, and a bolero from Interweave (pattern? issue?) is waiting in the wings.

Kitchen

Bama's vegetable in-take had dipped of late. My cooking was becoming routine, and I needed to add some new veggies into her line-up. She's a good eater, but as we continue transitioning to regular foods, there are still things to watch for. Like greens, for example. They can be slippery and difficult to chew. She hadn't been too wild for greens, or so I though, until I made up a bag of braising greens from Riverdog Farm's food box (courtesy of Aunty Jenny). Yum!

More Veggies: I often try to have some cooked items on hand, and am getting better about incorporating them into random dishes. For example, for lunch, I made a quesadilla with roasted sweet potato, then fried an egg and put chard on top (I fry the egg and put raw chard on top, then cover the pan to help wilt, prep the chard). The egg/chard combo came from our friends, the O'Reillys, and was a pregnancy breakfast staple. Bama loved the whole thing, eating more sweet potato then she normally does.

Quick Dish: This week, I bought Cooking Light's special One Dish Meals issue because I wanted a go-to for easy prep dishes to add to my laundry list of quickies (like tacos. Mmm. tacos.). Last night, I threw together the Tex Mex Lasagna. I used grapeseed oil in the casserole dish, not cooking spray, and I added slices of zucchini (uncooked) to one layer, and slices of roasted sweet potato to the other layer to boost the veggies. And, because we're sharing this with Bama who might not like spicy as much as Mama and Papa, I cut the salsa by 1/3 but added in that much extra tomato sauce. The result? We all liked it, we have leftovers, and it was assembled and cooked in 45 minutes. 

Meatballs: Last new kitchen trick, from one of the mamas in my mamas group, was meatballs. I used 1/2 pound each lamb, buffalo, and beef, seasoned with sage, oregano, coriander (for brightness), and ... I keep forgetting. Roll into marble-size balls and fry. I froze packets of 6-8 meatballs, then mixed some that were on hand with Trader Joe's Organic Joe's O's Pasta. I don't love TJ's, nor do I love canned food, but as a back-up, it's better than Chef Boyardee (too much sugar) and Annie's pasta was gross (gluey and made Bama gag). 

Covet

While I have no interest in the Time Out Pad that Mamabargains keeps hawking, I think this pad for the table looks great. I bought oilskin fabric from my local store and use it as a table cloth for Bama, especially when we are out on the town. But a friend likes the SmartyPants toddler mat because it's easy to clean and will be something her son can use for other non-food projects, like painting.

Aunty Jenny and I took Bama and Speed Racer out for a walk last week. You know, before we all went crazy in the house. After our walk, we made a couple of pit stops to look at neat things including a bear backpack she's thinking about for Speed Racer (who may be rechristened Winston Churchill one of these days for his diplomacy and hair). There were three bears, perfect for SR, Bama, and Cindy Lou Who. ;) The store, which is all about products from recycled materials, carries several Sprig Toys toys including the awesome Dolphin Boat Explorer, which is for three and up, but maybe if I took out the choking hazard life preserver ... Sprig Toys are "battery-free, eco-friendly, paint-free, kid-powered toys sure to dazzle the most discriminating preschooler."

Read

Uncommon Grace reviews books each Friday. One of her recent picks was one of my childhood favorites, Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden. This version is beautifully illustrated by Inga Moore.

I don't read as much as I used to, but I'm doing alright, I suppose. I added three books about Afghanistan to my library call list (after Futureshock, for which I'm in a mighty queue): Earth and Ashes ,The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban , andThe Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Vintage). I heard about the books on an NPR segment called "Three Books," in which a reviewer gives some background and then recommends three thematically-linked books. Recent triads include three not-geeky, female-centric comic books, three books about spooky houses, and three books about music.

One Year Check Up

Bama and I saw Dr. G on Monday, her pediatrician, for her one year check up. Mister and I usually go together, but he had a business meeting. When we are both there, he handles the weighing and undressing and so on. I usually sit eating bon bons. This time, without Mister, I handle the wiggler on the scale, already tricky and made trickier by her exhaustion (we were way into what should have been nap time).

Dr. G asked the various development questions: walking (no), pulling up (oh, yes), finger-walking (yes), saying any words?

Um. words. 

Speed Racer is saying "Ca" and "Da." Bama has mystery words. Dabin. Apum. We're pretty sure they mean something, but neither Mister nor I know what they are. (For the record, I thought Dabin was book, but ...) On Sunday, though, as she was pulling on my mother's necklace, and we were saying, "gentle" to Bama who kindly stroked the necklace and said, "yenyil," which sounded a lot like "gentle." Dr. G said she could have said it. Ah, our progeny.

We've been reading to Bama pretty much since day one. I used to read a bit from New Yorker articles while I nursed. She didn't seem to mind nor did she seem to like them. We read three books before naps and bed. At some point, Mister started offering her two books to choose from. It's a regular thing with us, but these days, Bama is wanting to select books from her bookshelf. This can be challenging, when you have the wordless wonder pointing and "ah-ah"-ing, four books later, you find the one she wants. (Current favorites: Touch and Feel: Farm , Snoozers : 7 Short Short Bedtime Stories for Lively Little Kids , I Am a Bunny (A Golden Sturdy Book) , Ten Little Ladybugs and a few other touch and feel books I can't find links for. Mister's current favorite is Guess How Much I Love You while I'm fond of I Am a Bunny and Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes.

I talked with Dr. G about weaning, something about which I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I'd like my nipples back. On the other hand, I love curling up with her and nursing. We'll be fine when the transition comes, and I'm not likely to be one of the mothers who nurses her child until kindergarten, but it is a big change for us, especially since Bama has never taken a bottle.

Before weaning, though, we're cutting out the night-time wakings. Currently, Bama wakes up around 11pm and again around 3am, give or take. That has to end so we're ending it this week. Yes, it does suck, Virginia. One night in and it was awful. We'll live, but it isn't a good time listening to your child cry as she waits for you to nurse her back to sleep. I comforted her, played solitaire on my iPhone, and felt lousy. I'm hopeful tonight is better but am not expecting it to be. (I told her she is learning how to go to bed on her own. Sigh.)