“Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew… [A]nd it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alife possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!”
Since K has basically grown up here on the blog, the only one of my four to be born after I started blogging, and since today is her 6th (!) birthday, I figured I’d celebrate by letting y’all know what the four of them are up to these days.
K is still our most active child, climbing on anything and everything, begging to be put into gymnastics or swimming classes. She is reading the Betsy-Tacy books with her dad these days, which has led to a desire to go on “adventures”. She constantly laments that she never has enough to do, and so she has developed a talent for inventing things. These mostly involve her older sisters; it’s quite nice to have a couple built-in playmates.
The latest “adventure” was digging a “raccoon trap/home” in the field behind our house with a couple of neighbor kids.
Which brings me to eight-year-old A.
She is our resident math-whiz (“I like math!”), Percy Jackson fan (well, not the only one, but definitely the most passionate), Harry Potter nut (ditto), and proud Nerd (“Nerds rule!”) She has a fear of boys and tuxes (especially boys in tuxes), and loves the band One Direction. Huh. She must have older sisters.
C is 12 now, and is growing into a lovely young woman.
She’s still into writing and drama, begging to be put into drama classes and constantly writing stories. She has recently discovered a passion for dystopian fiction, devouring the Hunger Games trilogy and obsessing over the movie. (Yes, we did. Opening night.) She also has discovered spy books: she adores Ally Carter’s Gallagher Girls series, and was thrilled when she came to town a couple weeks ago. She asked a couple questions during the Q&A, and was doubly thrilled when Ally commented that they were good questions when she signed our books.
And M, our resident high schooler?
 She’s obsessed with all things India (initiated by a post by favorite author Kristin Cashore) and is currently working towards graduating early so she can spend a year in New Delhi on a student exchange. I still have trouble keeping her in books (right now she’s devouring the Hex Hall series), and she’s still all over the map (though she prefers fantasy) when it comes to reading. She recently splurged and bought herself this:
(She loves her Nook.) Hopefully, that’ll help with the keeping her in books problem…
There you have it: my four beautiful, smart, amazing daughters. (No, I’m not biased.) Thanks for letting me gush like this. A mom has to, every once in a while.
It’s been a while since I’ve done anything really non-bookish here. And it’s also been a while since I’ve shared pictures of my lovely girls. And it’s been a while since I’ve bragged about M… and so I thought I’d combine all three today. This past year, M has discovered that she loves photography (like mother like daughter?), and that she has a talent for it. She’s basically taken over my “good” camera (as opposed to the everyday one that the rest of the girls use), and loves walking around the house taking pictures.
Her favorite subjects, though, are her sisters. And, perhaps not surprisingly, they love to have their pictures taken.
K being sassy:
I love A’s freckles!
And she’s really not like this all the time, but C does pouty SO well.
And, as everyone knows, it’s hard to get one of yourself, when you’re the photographer. Good thing M’s resourceful.
Aren’t they great? (And yes, I am proud of all of them!)
Imagine this scenario:
Your first child is a precocious kid. She asks you to read aloud books like The Secret Garden or House at Pooh Corner when she’s barely four years old. She’s a bit of a slow learner when it comes to reading (which you happily blame on the school system in Mississippi), but by the end of first grade, she’s reading books like Junie B. Jones and The Magic Treehouse series to herself. She seriously takes off in second grade, and by third grade she’s devouring Harry Potter (all of them that were printed by that date, anyway) and anything else she can get her hands on. She progresses increasingly as she gets older; nothing is too difficult, to obscure, or too big for her.
Sound familiar?
I have thought about pushing C; M and I have thrust books at her, telling her that she’d LOVE this, that or the other. We’ve bribed her: the only way she read Order of the Phoenix was that we wouldn’t let her see the movie until she finished. But, I wonder about either of these approaches: I want C to love reading, and she’s not going to love reading if she’s forced or coerced or bribed to do it.
1. Find a genre that your child is interested in. For M, we let her read the Harry Potter books over and over, and threw fantasy books at her as often as possible. Sure, we gave her other books to “branch out” but mostly we let her read where her interests were. For C, however, it’s not been so easy. She enjoys picture books, and still pilfers through our picture book piles every library day. So when I’m at the library, I pick up a few picture books with longer stories that I know C will pick up and read. Fairy and folk tales, books about girls her own age (Moxy Maxwell or Bobby Versus Girls, Accidentally), and general non-fiction, are also all things that she likes.
3. Don’t push it. You know the saying “at least they’re reading”? Think about that. Reading is not supposed to be a chore, it’s supposed to be fun. And if they LOVE reading Magic Treehouse (even though you think it’s crap), then let them read Magic Treehouse. Besides, if you push a kid to read something they’re not ready for they’re going to end up hating it (or at the very least, not getting much out of it). And that would be worse, I think, than them reading under their grade level.
5. In that same vein, try a parent-child book group. I’m not going to go into details, but rather send you over to Imagination Soup for some great ideas and reasons why this works, and works well.
Oh, and 6. Keep trying. Just because they don’t love Saffy’s Angel right now, doesn’t mean they won’t love it later. (We handed the book to her at the end of third grade; she could have read it because she read well enough. But she didn’t actually read the book until a month ago, and started it only because she couldn’t find anything else to read. She did like it, in the end.) Time and patience, as with everything, is the key.
M is 13 today.
(I’m mildly freaking out because that means there’s a teenager in the house. Eek!)
She was 8 when I started this blog, and has been the one daughter to feature prominently on it (I love C, A, and K, and as they grow — if I’m still blogging — I’m sure they’ll find their way onto the pages here). But M has been here because she’s a reader, and that is something I love about her (among others).
I know it’s not a tradition for moms to make birthday wishes, but I’m going to make them just the same:
I hope that because we share the love of books, and in many instances the love of the same books, that we’ll be able to weather the next 5 years or so better than I weathered them with my mom.
I hope that as she goes on in school that she won’t forget the love of reading, that she’ll be able to make the time to continue to read, and be willing to continue to come to me and say “Mom! You HAVE to read this book! It’s awesome.”
I hope that I’ll always make time to hear her.
I’m blessed and lucky to have the girls that I do. I hope I can treat them as well as they deserve. (I love this song…)
Happy Birthday, M!
I can’t hijack Hubby’s blog, like he did mine…
(His bachelor’s graduation — he had two more over the years; we were engaged at the time.)
I need a filler for today…
(He’s the cutie on the far right.)
(He’s standing second from the back. The really amazing thing about this picture is that his older brother — the one in the back — is only a year older than he is. )
He does the philosophical ruminating, and I do the rest 😉 …
(He’s the second one from the left — I think it’s cute that he wore hats!)
I feel a need to embarrass him publicly 🙂 ….
But mostly because He’s turning FORTY today (!) and that’s something to celebrate, even over here.
(He’s the baby in this one.)
I bummed a few pictures off his brother, who had access to the ones at their parents’ house, because I thought it would be fun to take a little walk through (not quite) forty years of history. And because it’s always fun to see pictures of someone you only knew as an adult when they were kids.
Happy Birthday, Russell.
I have parents telling me that ALL the time. Where they can’t get their kids to read…. I can’t keep M in books. I check out 10-15 a week, and that doesn’t even last. I try to keep up with all the recommended books that bloggers read, but I am losing the ability to keep track of which ones I want to read and which ones M would want to read (though honestly, they’re often the same thing), putting holds on things as I see them. When that doesn’t work, we scrounge the shelves looking for things that sound interesting, and while we generally find good ones, sometimes we come up short.
Like today.
So I decided to turn to you, dear readers, who read so much more than I do: what should M read??
Let me tell you a bit about her. She’s a precocious reader, reading at a 10th grade level. However, she’s not quite 12, so obviously there’s some things I’d rather her not experience (though I admit that’s just me…) — though I admit that it’s hard to judge what’s “acceptable” or not…. Anyway. She tends toward fantasy (she loves Eragon, Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, Bartimaeus, the Magik series, and so on), but she also likes well-written historical fiction and contemporary fiction. In short, she’ll read just about anything. She’s not read much non-fiction, but I’m not sure if that’s because I don’t really know what’s out there or because she doesn’t want to read it. She’s also a bit sketchy on the classics… I think that’s because she’s not that interested. But I suppose if there was a really good novel she’d like it no matter when it was written, right?
Also, if you had this problem (which is a lot harder than many well-meaning people think it is), where else (besides blogs) would you go to find lists of books recommended for 7th-10th graders??
Please help me!!! (Thanks a million!)
By M, for her Language Arts class (I found it lying on the counter…)
I AM
I am a loud reader
I wonder what to read next
I see my books as gold
I want a library
I am a loud reader
I pretend I’m the hero
I feel the characters
I touch my imaginary friends
I worry for them
I cry at the sad parts
I am a loud reader
I understand my “insane” mom
I say “Go away, I’m reading!”
I dream to be the hero
I try to eat and sleep
I hope to have a book dedicated to me
I am
a
LOUD
READER!
On so many levels… but this isn’t about me. (I HATE January. But that’s beside the point.)
I need book help. C has discovered that she really likes graphic novels. Well, she likes other novels too (Moxy Maxwell — I was right! — and both Clementine books, specifically), but she really liked Ellie McDoodle: Have Pen Will Travel, which was kind of like Diary of a Wimpy Kid for younger kids. My question (help #1) for all you graphic novel fans out there: is there something else like this that is appropriate and interesting for an 8 year old second grader?
Book help #2 involves A and the preschool crowd. My turn to teach (we do a little co-op home school preschool with some friends) is coming up and I’ve decided to do (since it’s no longer January!) a unit on Carnival, Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day. I’m in need of pictures book ideas for any of these topics, but especially Valentine’s Day. They need to be short-ish, mostly because they are only 4, but also because we don’t have a lot of time. Any recommendations will be MOST helpful. (If you have any good craft ideas for those topics, too, I’d love to hear them!)
Thanks in advance…
Stories are a major part of my Christmas celebration. (What? You thought I was going to write about something non-book-related?! Um… nope.)
I’m sure reading Christmas stories goes all the way back to when I was really little, but I don’t really remember the tradition of story-reading until I was in middle school. By that time, we kids had pretty much grown too old to appreciate the Christmas Eve talent show tradition. That, and we’d moved away from extended family, and a talent show of 6 people really isn’t all that much fun. So, Mom came up with a brilliant idea: let’s pick and read our favorite Christmas story, ending with Dad reading the account from the Gospel of Luke.
We’d read funny ones, sweet ones and tear-jerkers, and some would read the same story every year (Barrington Bunny!), and others would pick and choose. It became a part of Christmas that I looked forward to.
When I got married, though, we picked a different Christmas tradition for Christmas Eve. But I didn’t want to give up the tradition of story-night. We let it slide during the early years, before we had kids (though we started collecting stories and poems), but pretty much as soon as M got old enough to enjoy listening to stories, we started Story Night. We gather in the living room by the lit Christmas tree — sometimes just us, sometimes with friends we’ve invited to share with us, light all the candles in the house, and lay out a blanket (if we feel like it). The kids are usually in PJs, but not always. And we read Christmas stories. Funny ones, sweet ones and tear-jerkers. We each get to pick (and now, for the older girls, read) our favorite for the year. Sometimes it’s the same one, sometimes it’s different for each year.
We did add one thing, though: mugs of super-rich, made-from-scratch hot cocoa. Yum. There’s something about sitting in the candlelight (and now that we have a fireplace, firelight, too) and reading stories that just says “Christmas” to me.
My choice for Story Night has changed over the years. I’ve read Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus, The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey and The Polar Express. Last year, I read Christmas Day in the Morning. One of my perennial favorites, as well as the girls’, is Emma’s Christmas. We’ve suffered through Berenstain Bears Meet Santa Bear (which, mercifully, got “lost” in the last move), and usually someone reads How the Grinch Stole Christmas. My favorite version of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas is the one illustrated by Jan Brett (someone usually reads that one), and Hubby likes reading The Gift of the Magi or Santa Comes to Little House, a beautifully illustrated version of the chapter from Little House on the Prairie. And this year, I’m looking forward to reading Great Joy.
And, I can’t forget: the recipe for our hot cocoa. May you all have a very merry story-filled holiday season.
To-Die-For Hot Cocoa
Recipe from The Washington PostFirst thing I have to stress: you HAVE to spend the money and buy top quality ingredients. Otherwise, it’s just no good. We make this one, because the Hot Chocolate is just too rich for the girls.
1/2 cup dutch-process cocoa powder (barring that, you can substitute Ghirardelli cocoa powder)
1/3 cup sugar
pinch salt
1/2 cup water
2 1/4 cups 2% milk
3/4 cup half and half
1 teaspoon vanilla extractIn a saucepan stir together the cocoa powder, sugar and salt. Stir in the water and cook over low to medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture forms a past. Cook, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes. Slowly whisk in the milk and half-and-half and heat until warmed through, about 5 minutes. Do not let the mixture reach a simmer. Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the vanilla extract. Carefully transfer the mixture to a blender and pulse until frothy on top. Pour into individual mugs and serve immediately.
To Die-For Hot Chocolate
1 1/2 cups 2% milk
1/3 cup whipping cream
2 tablespoons granulated sugar, optional
3 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped (again, splurge and spend the money to buy something REALLY good, like Ghirardelli or Guittard)
1/8 teaspoon vanilla extractIn a saucepan over medium heat, heat the milk, cream and sugar, if desired, just until a skin forms over the top of this surface. Do not let the mixture reach a simmer. Remove the pan from the heat; add the chocolate (can use semisweet) and set aside until the chocolate has melted, about 1 minute. Whisk the mixture until the chocolate is incorporated. Return the pan to medium heat and heat until the chocolate shards melt and disappear, whisking often, about 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the vanilla extract. Carefully transfer the mixture to a blender and pulse until frothy on top. Pour into individual mugs and serve immediately.
And don’t forget about the rest of the Advent stops:
6 December – Laura (Musings)
7 December – Wendy (Caribousmom)
8 December – Nymeth (Things Mean A Lot)
9 December – Raidergirl (An Adventure in Reading), Chris (Stuff as Dreams are Made on)
10 December – Dewey (The Hidden Side of a Leaf)
11 December -Suey (It’s All About Books)
12 December – Chris (Book-a-rama)
13 December – Jill (The Well-Read Child)
14 December – Robin (A Fondness for Reading)
15 December – Alyssa (By The Book)
16 December – Rachel (A Fair Substitute for Heaven)
17 December – Literary Feline (Musings of a Bookish Kitty)
18 December – Dev (Good Reads)
19 December – Callista (S.M.S. Book Reviews)
20 December – Tiny Little Librarian (Tiny Little Librarian)
21 December – Carla (Carla Nayland Historical Fiction)
22 December – Carolyn Jean (The Trillionth Page)
23 December – Booklogged (A Reader’s Journal)
24 December – Kailana (The Written World) / Carl V. (Stainless Steel Droppings)
The Book Nut 