more about books

while we’re on the subject of books, i would like to make my own review.

as The Mr. mentioned a long time ago, i have a great collection of books.  being a first grade teacher will do that.  but i also love love love children’s books.  i love to read period.  but it was always so much fun to collect these children’s books.  i spent a lot of my salary on them thru’ scholastic.  (god, i miss scholastic!)  maybe it’s because i remember when the flimsy newspaper-magazine would get passed out in class when i was younger, and always circling a zillion titles…  never ordering any.  well, there was the one time i got to get Mad Libs!!   FUNFUN.

i digress….

i haven’t been very knowlegeable about babies’ books, though.  many of my students/ teachers would mention titles i hadn’t heard of.  baby classics like:  Goodnight, Moon, Corduroy, &  Guess How Much I Love You.

i did read corduroy while teaching b/c it was one of the books we read as a school.  the other 2 jovie had gotten as gifts.  the first time i read them was to her.

i have my own review of the latter.

if you hadn’t read it, it’s about a baby bunny & father bunny.   the author Sam McBratney thought that would be too simplistic for a baby.  so he calls them “little nutbrown hare” & “big nutbrown hare” each.and.every.time.   

not only is it a mouthful to say, but really?  “nutbrown”???  is that in the crayola 64 box?

well, it’s time for baby to go to bed.  so daddy begins to do so, and the baby says:  “guess how much i love you.”  the whole book then becomes this sad sad competition of who loves whom more!

you gotta hand it to the baby for coming up with ways to show dad how much he loves him.  of course he begins with his outstreched arms, as we’re all wont to do as littlies.  but nonono.  that’s just not enough for dad.  he then has to tell the baby that he loves him MORE…. simply b/c his arms are longer.

so baby tries to come up with ways to show daddy he’s loved, and each time, this NUTbrown hare has to show up his baby.  sometimes i read it to jovie more truthfully and i’ll say things like:

“oh really, jr, you love me as high as you can hop?  well, looky me!  i love YOU as high as i can hop.  and that’s sooooo much more than you, that i bump my head on this tree limb.”      “awww, that’s so sweet that you love me to the meadow.  i love you PAST the meadow, over the stream and all the way to gramma’s house, for that matter!  so there!”

so, yeah, i tend to take on a tone when i read this sometimes.

because, finally, this poor poor baby bunny has come up with so many ways to show his love.  surely his dad can’t love him more than that!  he exhausts himself when he says “i love you to the moon!  (b/c surely there’s nothing farther than the moon!)”

oh, but you poor poor baby.  even when you’re sleeping, that dad has to show you up & get the last word.  b/c of course.  he loves him to the moon……   and back!!

it might be a shorter book if the author just let the dad say “i love you infinity to the infinitieth power” like all the other very mature folks.

harumph!

luckily, jovie’s not as discriminant when it comes to books as her dad and i apparently are.  she loves them.  she plays in her bucket o’ books as much as her toys, i think.  and she knows the word enough to go get one when we ask.  (when she wants to, of course…..  ahem!)

here she is enjoying some bathtime reading:

um, honey- it's upside down.

if you say so......

aaahhh. much better!

and, yes. that is her baby bathtub in the big tub.  this was at the end of may, and the first night she actually went upstairs to her bathroom.  b/c until then we saw no need in breaking our backs.  kitchen sink it was!  then we thought that perhaps 10.5 months was certainly time enough to go to the big bathtub.

pool time

day 1- loved it. surprisingly w/o needing any coaxing at all.  immediately began to splash:

splashy-splash!!

day 2- more like how i thought day one would’ve been.  (you can’t hear the whine that accompanies this picture:)

i don't wanna touch the water

day 3- somewhere in between.      <we were an “expert” at going to the pool, so we didn’t bring any film…….     oops>

but it’s official.  our pool is open for business!  & days 4, 5, etc….  have been a great success!   she even loves her ladybug raft!

this is so cool!

oh, by the way,  this marks our 101st post!!!  thanks for keeping up with our adventures!

Baby Book Review

Today’s selection is “Happy Baby Words” by Roger Priddy.

I was optimistic about “Happy Baby Words” given Roger Priddy’s previous works including “Bright Baby Colors”, “Snowy Bear”, and “Funny Faces Dizzy Dragon”. It begins by instantly capturing your attention by proffering the following: “My face: Happy or sad? What kind of face should I make?”  Though the same has been asked countless times in literature, none have done so this bluntly and often not immediately on page one. Regardless of the approach, the question nonetheless forces the reader to examine himself and others, their presentation to the world, and their existence therein.

Priddy then moves to the body, explaining that “I’ve got a lot of growing to do”. Whether Priddy is examining his own self-worth or the readers is open to interpretation; however it is clear that he is out rightly challenging Dostoyevsky’s principles of satisfying human need, which, unfortunate to the reader, parallel most other critics on this subject. There are also images of various body parts – hands, feet, noses, etc., which are a nuisance to the actual message attempting to be conveyed here. Perhaps Priddy wants to provide assistance to those who have trouble grasping his intention?

Unfortunately the book goes downhill from this point. There are ramblings about meal time, play time, bath time and so on; presenting a disjointed mess of a logical thought pattern. Photograhic images of each point presented persist throughout the entirety of the book, captured in a stongly utilitarian fashion, continuing an unnecessary distraction and further driving home the point of the need to provide a crutch to the bourgeois reader. The chapter on Dress Time was wholly unneeded – I am well aware of what a shirt and a pair of pants look like. I won’t give away the ending, but let’s just say if you don’t know what piece of furniture you sleep in each night, Priddy clears that up pretty swiftly.

Though his existentialist ideals are prevalent, Priddy’s approach here is tired and pedantic. No new ideas are presented and the style is formulaic and boring. Come on Roger, the same book has been written hundreds of times! I was looking forward to a fresh style and a thought provoking read, but those are clearly not found in “Happy Baby Words.”

Here's Jovie Pointing Out the Obvious Flaws in the Book

we’ll call her ‘fang’

sorry it’s a tad blurry:

lonely tooth

look carefully.  you can click the picture for larger view of 3 teeth:

just 3.

this is what you come for:

our baby girl is eleven months old!!   duuuuuuude.

101.8

this is not jovie’s favorite radio station.  it is actually the reading on the thermometer a few days ago when she got her first fever.

one week shy of 11 months, and we finally got to see what kind of kid she’d be when she was sick.  you hear sometimes how being sick changes things…. personalities, routines, etc…

i’m developing a theory that it makes the family revert back to newborn times.  b/c that seems to be what happened to jovie.  instead of the nice naps we have grown acccustomed to, she decided to go back to the days where she wouldn’t nap, but for possibly 15min or 30 at most.  with lots of crying in the duration.  wait- did i say crying??  no, i mean ear-piercing-blood-curdling-glass-shattering-screaming.  

well, it wasn’t like that ALL day.  at least, not when we held her.  The Mr. picked a fine time to decide to work from home this week….   tho’ it is The Mr.’s fault that we have a fever at all.  he has the smallest of colds this weekend.  unlike last time- in february—where his whole workgroup got it, and it was BAD.  this time- pretty minor.  and we weren’t diligent this time about keeping him away from her.  we discussed it.  but, really-  she’s ~11mos old.  isn’t it about time we let that immune system work? 

so on tuesday (after sleeping all the way thru the night w/o any peep at all) i noticed after breakfast she had a little runny nose.  it began when she started to “snorfle” [for the potters in the group, that's what i call what haylee used to do]….  she wrinkles up her nose and sniffs in and out.  she does this not cold-related.  but this time, there was stuff to snorfle.

not a big deal, this runny nose.  just a little here and there; she even let me use the aspirator (which has rarely been needed).  she seemed fine.  was playing pretty good.  until she decided not to.  she would rather be held, please.

of course- i thought it was probably due to the fact that daddy was home.  she tends to change a few habits when this happens.  so when she refused to nap, i thought it was b/c of him as well.  by that time, her nose wasn’t even running very much.

as the day went on, just around the time she was grating on our nerves- what with the holding and the holding and the not-getting-any-work-done-here holding… i finally picked her up after she didn’t eat much dinner and i noticed she was quite hot.

so, poor baby.  but really- it was gone by yesterday afternoon, and she hasn’t had a runny nose much at all.  nor is it stuffy.

yesterday was a little ruf.  she was fussier in the early part of the day than she had been on tuesday when it all began.  again- going back to the reverting to newborn stage:  at one point the only thing that calmed her was my rhythmic swaying/shushing.  and she even wouldn’t go down for a nap until daddy held her and she slept in his arms first.  that hasn’t happened in many months. 

we’re glad she’s back to her newer old-self today.  happy, playful little girl who at this very moment is still sleeping!

<<<visualize an adorable picture of mommy & jovie watching baby einstein while holding flopsy under a blanket here.   daddy was too busy at work for me to ask him to take her first “sick” pic…… but wow, it woulda been cute!>>>