Good Reads

I'm in need of some new reading--something great and relatively easy to get into. I just finished a great book, especially if you love Macbeth like I do. It's called The Third Witch and it is the tale of Macbeth told from the third witch's point of view. It was fascinating--wish I would have known about it when I taught Macbeth because it makes for a wonderful companion to the play. Anyhow, on a friend of a friend of a friend's blog I found this reading list and I wanted to join in on the fun and I thought it would give you an idea of some books I've enjoyed. And then, if you feel like sharing, let me know some books you've enjoyed recently (and yes, I've read the Twilight series where I was highly disappointed with the ending, so no need to pass that along). Here's how it works:

The Rules:
1) Look at the list and put one * by those you have read.
2) Put a % by those you intend to read.
3) Put two ** by the books you LOVE (Note: I'm adding THREE *** stars to the ones I REALLY love).
4) Put # by the books you HATE.
5) Post.

***1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen%
*2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
***3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
***4Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
***5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee**
6 The Bible (parts of it)
**7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 1984 - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
*10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
***11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
**12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
**14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (read most of them--not all the histories, love most of them--not all the histories)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
*18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
*19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
**21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
*22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolsto
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
*28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia- CS Lewis
***34 Emma - Jane Austen
**35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
**36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
***37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
**39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
**42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
***44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
%46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
*49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
**51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
*53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
***54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
%57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
*59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
* 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
*64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
%65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
***68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (I read this at least once a year...love it)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
#70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
%73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
*76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
**80 Possession - AS Byatt (a great movie, too, with Aaron Eckhart and Gwyneth Paltrow)
*81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
*83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
**87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
*89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
*91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
**98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
*99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
**100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


I only really hated Moby Dick. It was just plain boring and long and boring and long. Some of my favorites are obviously Jane Austen, who I adore as well as The Kite Runner and, of course, Bridget Jones' Diary (a funny, if not a tad scandalous, read). But my all time favorite is and forever will be To Kill a Mockingbird. If you haven't read this since 8th grade with Mrs. Donaldson, it's time to read it again. Oh, and fall is a wonderful time to read it.

Now, friends, though few of you there may be, share your favorite reads with me!

Oh, How I Love to Stand!

Yes, people, we are in some serious trouble, trouble right here in River City that starts with "T". Trouble because our little guy has learned to stand right on up. It all began in the bath tub one summer night whilst in a land called Spokane (it seems as though a lot of his new techniques have been acquired while bathing.....hmm). And some of the trouble this new skill has caused us:

• Paper messes EVERYWHERE. He can grab books, files, scrapbook paper--you name it-- from every shelf in our office and he likes to EAT it. Yummy. (Right now he is eating Willa Cather's My Antonia. At least he has good taste).
  
• More head-damage due to the falling backwards that accompanies said standing up.
  
• Constant worrying over aforementioned head damage, so I now must watch him like a hawk to protect precious head from any more brain cell loss. (His brain's all he's got since we can't afford to send him to college, seeing as how we spent all our money on his conception).

At least, along with the trouble, this provides pure entertainment and diversion for all of us. His main goal in life is to search out the perfect ledge, crawl to it, pull up to standing position and then proceed to bang on said surface for hours on end.

Some of his favorite places to stand:

• The book shelf in the office.
  
• The shoe basket in the kitchen.
  
• The shoe shelves in the closet (I'm sensing a trend).
  
• The ottoman in the family room.
  
• The couch in the family room.
  
• The bath tub ledge (this one causes the most worrying since he slips and falls so very easily in the bathtub).

Of course, what would a post be without a picture? Here's the proof that the little one can stand:

Standing at the shoe basket. So, he loves shoes and feet (I guess he ought to since he slept the first month of his life in my shoe closet!). When we flew to Spokane, I put him down in the airport and he was soooo excited to be free that he just went a-crawling everywhere. I look over and, sure enough, he had crawled straight over to a guy wearing flip-flops, with his mouth agape, all ready to take a nice big juicy lick right on the unsuspecting man's toes. Luckily, I stopped him in time. Phew!
Look at the happy look on his face!

Below, he is at the troublesome bookshelf where he wreaks all sorts of havoc!

And here he is in the closet with all my beloved shoes. Like mother, like son, I guess. What better thing to love than shoes?

Genius?

Until recently I was totally convinced that my child had the makings of a genius. Yes, I am sure that you'd all say the same thing about your child, but for me, I thought it was oh-so-true. However, notice the past tense in these sentences: was a genius, thought he was destined to become one... What has changed my mind, you ask? Let's just say one too many bumps in the wall has made me seriously reconsider. For one, how smart can he be if he just continues to crawl full throttle directly INTO the wall (or desk or fridge or bed or bath or crib), never stopping, never deviating from his path? For two, how smart can he possibly become if he continues to crawl full throttle directly INTO the wall, losing precious brain cells in the process? How can he go from child prodigy to problem child (as in, we're going to have a problem if you don't stop banging your head) in so short a time?

Here's a picture of the little culprit. Isn't he too cute? (yes, Taraka, I stole this from your blog--just one of many to come). We love this little guy, though we do worry for his head!

Your William Fix....

Whew! We just got home from a two-week vacation in Spokane visiting family. It was a whirlwind of a trip, every day packed with fun adventures. We had lots of fun, lots of craziness and LOTS of food. In fact, so much fun was had that it will take me a while to organize my photos and post about our fun trip, not to mention all the time it will take me to finish all the work at home that has been neglected for two weeks. Coming home from vacation is the PITS! But since I KNEW you couldn't wait much longer for updated pictures of Will, here's your William fix for now! Enjoy...this is after church (and a nap) where he's decked out in this precious outfit. I love the hat and CANNOT get enough of it! Good thing it is still HOT summer in NY, so he can wear this outfit to church this Sunday!

Mad-Time in Maine with the Madsens

Well, another summer expedition has come and gone, an expedition that is fast becoming a summer-time tradition and one that I quite frankly adore: mad-time in Maine with the Madsens. If you recall this post from last summer, you will see that not too much has changed from our Maine adventures:

1. Beth still likes to pose in front of the LL Bean boot..2. And we still love to pose at the LL Bean boot....after a great day of shopping at the best outlets in the world and eating some yummy Ben & Jerry's ice cream. What a dream! (No, we don't have a four-year-old daughter--it's just Beth. Of course, she had to be in our family photo).
And here's our real family picture, sans Beth.

3. We still had a marvelous time at the beach. Beautiful beach and perfect beach weather. Not too hot, not too cold and the water was just right!

Will, Josh and Beth. (What, Beth wanted to be in the picture? I can hardly believe that!)
Will loved the sand, but the water, not so much. He would cry, cry, cry when we tried to dunk his toes in the water. He DID love to snuggle and fall asleep the second we went near the waves and he NEVER just falls asleep like that. I guess we had him good and tired out.
Trying to crawl in the sand.
Will's first time at the ocean.
Too bad Willy didn't want to pose for this family photo.

5. Our motel was awesome. Picture the worst place you've stayed in and multiply by ten. I woke up nightly to scary men swearing in the streets, to loud cannons going off right outside our door and to a train that we could literally reach out and touch. And let's not forget the neighbors smoking marijuana. Yes, a quality establishment for a not-so-quality price.

4. Most of all, we just had mad-fun in Maine with the Madsens, even if we missed most of the Madsens. Hopefully, this will become a long-standing summer tradition. Can't wait

'til next year!

I'm 6 Months Now......

.......and I can:

sit up all by myself and play with my toys (I'm also very close to being able to get into a sitting position all by myself),
drink from a sippy cup myself (don't I look so big?),
eat a graham cracker all by myself (though it makes a BIG mess that Mama doesn't LOVE to clean up, but since I love them Mama obliges once in a while),
play with my "best friend" for hours (it's really just me in the mirror, but I don't know that yet),
and smile real big at Dada when he gets home from work, even if I am eating my favorite veggie: sweet potatoes. I must really like my Dada because all day today I was chattering: dadadadadadadadadadada over and over.

I also like to:

• crawl EVERYWHERE though it's half-scoot/half-crawl
• make lots of "raspberries"
• scream, scream, scream, just like I'm having a grand ol' time
• eat mashed bananas: YUM! In fact, I'll pretty much eat ANYTHING and EVERYTHING. I am getting so much fatter: 16.7 lbs. at my last appointment (25%).
• sleep through the night for the last two months (yeah for mama! I sleep 11 hours in a row, nurse and then go back to sleep for another hour or so! YIPEE! If only I didn't have to go to bed at 6:30, then I might sleep in a little..)
• have LOTS of messy diapers (for some reason this seems to really upset Mama; she keeps muttering something about not being able to afford the mortgage the way I go through diapers).
• giggle lots, especially for my Dada (it's not the same when Mama does it--I think Dada's whiskers tickle me).

Happy 6-months, Will! Here's to hoping for another happy 6!

The Futility of Laundry...

Some of you may know I'm a tad particular about my cleaning--I like things done a certain way, but most of all, I like things to stay clean. With a husband and a baby, this is near impossible, but I like to try. Mondays are designated as "upstairs chores" day: the laundry, the bathrooms, the vacuuming, and the dusting. After the cleaning of the upstairs, I always hope that for at least ONE day everything can stay clean. Mostly, though, I want the dirty-clothes bins to STAY EMPTY. I don't know why this is so important to me, but for one day, one whole day, all I ask is to have empty bins--is that too much to hope for? It seems, inevitably, after all the laundry is washed, folded and put away, Josh will come home from work and decide that all his pants need laundering (though previously they had been happily folded in his closet). So suddenly, my beautiful, precious, EMPTY BINS are full of all his pants that he has now, for some strange reason, deemed dirty. Argh. Now, to avoid this, I call him at work and specifically ask if there are any pants, sitting folded in his closet, that he feels need to be washed. This has helped to alleviate the problem as well as keep my precious bins empty. However, this past Monday, Will and I returned home from running errands to find Josh already home, eating a snack. After our greeting, I noticed he had spilled on his shirt and pants. Immediately, I demanded he take off his clothes. Josh looked at me and asked, "You want me to take off my clothes right now?" Then he shrugged, took off his clothes, handed them to me and wandered around for the rest of the evening in his underwear. I didn't even need to explain that I wanted to throw his clothes in with the last load of laundry--I guess he's just used to my neuroses. So, thankfully, I do want to report that for one day, one lovely day, my laundry bins stayed empty. Not for long, though.....ah, the futility of laundry. Can't it just stay done?

Here's some pictures of Will on laundry day. Yes, he, too, is naked so that I could wash his dirty outfit. He LOVED playing in the buff, though. He's too cute!

It was so very hard to snap a picture b/c he is ALWAYS on the move these days.
Look at that bum-crack.
There he is--fully dressed and happy!