Quack Quack by Louise Rupnik

I thought it would be fun to review Uriah's favorite book!  Quack Quack is a touch and feel book for babies, and Uriah absolutely loves it!

There are photographs of various animals in this book with little patches for baby to feel.  Uriah doesn't just feel these patches.  He bites them.  I guess this book is Uriah approved!  This is the only book that he'll sit all the way through.  He loves it!  He's not quite 14 months and I try to read a few books to him every day, but he usually gets bored halfway through the book.  

This is a good one for little babies because it's not too long and they like patting (or biting!) the animals in the book.

Sick

For the last week and a half.  Hoo boy this is fun.  Everyone else has already gone through it (and still have lingering symptoms- thank goodness the boy is still nursing because he can't keep anything down but mama milk) and finally today I notice a little drip from the nose.  Perfect.  Well, maybe hubby can pamper me for a couple of days while I recover.  Lacy has already missed 4 full days and 2 half days of school AND two violin lessons.  We are managing to get practice in most of the time, though.  Hopefully by this Thursday she will be 100% better and ready to fiddle again!

And I always start getting smug in late February that we didn't get sick this winter.  And then we get sick in March.  Never fails.  I'll stop being smug about our health next year.  If I remember.

The Monster Princess

Tonight we tried something the girls picked out from the library yesterday.  The Monster Princess, by D.J. MacHale, ended up in my bag from the new picture book section.  

Did you ever wish to be a princess?  Lala, the Rugabee, did.  A Rugabee is a type of monster that lives underground and collects a special kind of nut.  But Lala, a very talented and popular Rugabee, wanted to be a princess and live above ground and dance!

One day, she ventures into the castle and finds the princesses' room, where she tries on their dresses.  At first they are afraid, but they end up ridiculing her in public, which really hurts Lala's feelings.

When I opened this book and realized it was a rhyming book, I silently groaned to myself.  I am not a fan of rhyming books.  I've never really liked poetry (sorry, Mom, it's true, but I'll still recite poetry for your birthday) so rhyming books usually have a groan-inducing eyeball-rolling effect on me.  But The Monster Princess was actually not obnoxious rhyming, so it's one I could read again!  Most rhyming books aren't very cleaver and they try too hard.  I didn't feel like that with The Monster Princess.  The girls enjoyed reading it with me, so I officially declare that The Monster Princess will be renewed 3 weeks from now!  Unless, of course, somebody has a hold on it already.

All boy!

They say that boys and girls are equal and that we teach them to be boy-ish or girl-ish based on our own biases and expectations.  Well, I don't believe that for a second.  I didn't believe it when my first child was born and she gravitated toward girly things to do.  I did buy the gender neutral toys, and they have a box of dinosaurs and trains (Rose requested the trains, actually!).  Of course, the dinosaur gets dressed up in fancy dresses and Lacy parades the beautiful T. Rex around the house singing, "This is the dinosaur of the queeeeeen!"

Now I have a boy.  He turned 1 about a month ago.  I love him more than life itself and I would do anything for my little man.  I'm so glad I got him!  Of course, being a mom to a boy is a new thing for me, so I treated him exactly as I have treated my girls.  And the girls have put bows in his head more than once.  I may or may not have encouraged that.  Once I put a girly diaper on him and Dave wasn't too thrilled about that, but all my diapers were dirty and I only had a pink flower one handy.  What's a mom to do?

We're in the midst of a large amount of remodeling at our house, due to some unfortunate wind, ice and rain damage that occurred.  Because Dave is handy with this type of thing, he is doing the majority of the work himself.  My dad comes over and helps Dave often with the work that needs done, as he's pretty handy as well.  Uriah of course wants to be around all the action.  He loves hanging with the guys and is always picking up tools and trying to "help" any way he can! It's adorable!  At least, until he finds the razor knives and carries them around.

Twig

Looking for a sweet little book for your sweet little one?  Twig by Elizabeth Orton Jones is a good choice.

Twig was published in 1942, but even though it's going on 70, children today are the same as children 70 years ago, no matter how different we think they are.  They're full of imagination and can turn the simplest thing into a magical wonderland.  I know my own children will play with paper, cardboard boxes and fabric scraps for hours, coming up with all sorts of uses for them.  Twig is no different- she turns an old, empty tomato can into a fairy house!  It is just so amazing!

Your child will love listening to a book about a little child who has an imagination as big as her own.  You will love reading it to your child because the chapters are short!  Short chapters are a wonderful thing.  If you don't have much time to read because you've been busily running around all evenings, you can choose to read one chapter. If you have more time, you can read as many as you wish!

The language is simple and the characters are cute.  This is a good book to read aloud to kids who haven't had many chapter books read to them yet.

My favorite part about this book?  Twig looks a lot like my little Rosie!  I'll have to read Twig to Rose soon... I've only read it so far to Lacy.  Rose will be 5 in May and maybe she'll be ready to listen to it then.  I already call her Little Missy a lot, just like Mrs. Sparrow calls Twig Little Missy in the book!  Don't you see the resemblance?