Tantrums and Tears

I threw a tantrum tonight. It was a controlled tantrum. I ranted, but I didn't rave. I didn't raise my voice (I think), but I complained and threatened a lot. And I made Leah cry. I felt bad about that.

I was in the library feeling completely overwhelmed by the mess of books on the floor and those threatening to fall to floor. I started saying that I should just get rid of all the books. And then I zeroed in on Rebekah and Leah because they were the unfortunate souls in the room with me.

I asked them if I should just get rid of all the books. They both agreed and then Leah started to think about it and got very quiet. Meanwhile, Rebekah was too young to be affected by my tyrannical mind game and asked me questions about which books I thought I'd get rid of. She always agreed that I should go ahead and get rid of them.

I had a HUGE pile of books that I'd swept from the unorganized shelves. And it was only half of the books...half of the kids' books, that is. And I saw unshed tears in Leah's eyes.

I admitted that I wasn't going to get rid of the books. I was just angry that no one seemed to care about the books. But I wasn't going to get rid of them because I thought they were important and we needed good books to be able to read.

That's when Leah's tears came. She was so relieved and I felt (again) like a terrible mother. She'll need psychiatric care for sure after this one. I just keep recording these stellar parenting moves so that when the kids are spending hundreds of dollars on therapy, they'll have something to refer to as "the moment."

I never did find the missing book that originally set me off. The payoff? I can walk safely into the library now. It doesn't seem as if it was worth hurting Leah.

A Good Read

I recently discovered and read a book by Louisa May Alcott. It was suspenseful and entertaining. And nothing like what I remember about Little Women.

The title is A Long Fatal Love Chase. Follow the link to Wikipedia to learn more about it. I highly recommend it!

If you do read it, come back here and tell me what you thought of it. (It will be our own teeny, tiny book club.)

Finally getting published!

I ordered my blog books today. There are a combined total of 356 pages, spanning 3.25 years of blogging. It cost me $91 for the two books. That's the discount price as they have a coupon for the next 4 days.

So, regardless of my fame as a writer, I can always say I was published. It just came out of my own pocket.

It reminds me of some books I recently checked out of the library. They were based on LDS converts in England - the writer's ancestors. The writing was so bad (immature and unpolished) that I couldn't even get through the first 10 chapters of the first book. (And now I sound like a book snob.) I wondered how the writer even found a publisher for his work. Then I read the book flap and publisher info. The guy is a publisher! He publishes several magazines. He must have figured he'd break into the book world since he had the right "connections." We can't all be so fortunate.

So, I may or may not be a gifted writer (if this guy can get away with that level of writing, we should all try to write), but I am published - or will be. The difference is one copy compared to 100's or 1000's.

I am curious to know what the photos will look like. Many of them were flagged for quality in printing. Since I was focused on my blogging and not necessarily the pictures that were included, I let them all slide. They may be really grainy, but should support the text well enough. We'll see in about 3 weeks.

Hopeful

The past two days have been surprising; I've had good mornings!

Yesterday, I got through some of the piles in my room that have been growing and weighing on my mind. Today I cleaned up the library and girls' room. I even pulled out the vacuum. I know, it's a shocker.

Now, my hands are shaking and I'm having a hard time typing. But I'm alive and being productive.

One of the reasons I worked so hard this morning is that we've had a library book missing for a few weeks. I hate to lose things that aren't mine. I've looked everywhere for that dumb book, including behind 4 different dressers, in and under beds and in cupboards. I even went through our books one by one. I checked my checked-out books online this morning. Suddenly, the book isn't on my list anymore! It's even listed as checked in! ARGH!

This is not the first time I've been on the hook for a book I'd already returned. This time though it wasn't in the system. I'm wondering if someone else "checked it out" and recently returned it. I can't image it floating around the library for this long. Whatever the reason, I'm glad it's turned up.

It would have been nice to not have to search the nasty boys' room for it when I felt so nasty myself.

In case you're wondering, I'm 13 weeks now. I will start my second trimester on Saturday.

Literacy

I love to read. I have read thousands of books in my life-time. I admit to being a self-named escape artist, though. By this I mean that I usually read fiction. I'm reading for the escape. I don't read garbage. Foul language and books with inappropriate content rarely make my reading lists and for this reason, I have OFTEN returned a book to the library without finishing it.

Anyway, I really like books. Chad likes books, too. He's less of a fiction fanatic than I am. He likes to be smarter when he's done reading a book (he already has an escape...it's called an office). Chad reads a lot of history type or church doctrine books. I like those, too, but I usually put the fiction books first on my reading lists.

This is our "library" at home. You can see most of the books here. There are probably another 200 hundred books that don't fit into the picture, or are in other rooms. I started buying children's' books before I was married, so by now we have A LOT. Daniel is starting to really get into reading. Nathan has shown a healthy interest this year, too. Leah wishes she could read. I should make more time to work with her. She'd probably be easier than the boys were. For now, she's having to make do with pretend-reading the stories to Rebekah...


...or this.

This is what greeted me when I woke up from a nap this afternoon. Leah made a path of books that has stops at each door and certain cupboards. I kept trying to get into a deeper sleep, so I spent almost an hour and a half in my room. I was very surprised that she occupied herself quietly so long.

And now I am so glad that we have invested the money into good books for our children. What a payoff this is for me!

I vote for the library

This morning I was in the bathroom with the girls. I was cleaning off the high chair that has a year's worth of garage grime on it and the girls were playing with tub toys.

(For those of you who have never seen our bathroom, it's quite LARGE and carpeted, so it's not uncommon to find the kids playing in it.)

Soon, Leah had to go to the bathroom. While she was sitting there, she said, "Sometimes I read books when I'm in the bathroom."

That didn't seem like a crazy thing. I read in there, too. Volume of books are marketed just for those who linger. (I've gotten so desperate for things to read that I've pulled toothpaste tubes and shampoo bottles out. But maybe that's sharing too much.)

Then she finished her statement, "...to Rebekah." OK Now that's a little strange. Whoever heard of story time in the bathroom? What a place to "gather 'round!" And how is it that I didn't know that was happening? If I were to picture a story time setting, it would be in a grade school classroom or a back corner of the town library.

So if you chance to stop for a visit and need to use the bathroom, be sure to check the story time schedule first!

Pictures

I finally got the books put away. It was not an easy task because Rebekah kept pulling them out behind me. I thought I'd take a picture. The kids will be in here tomorrow digging in to them again. It must be something about the rainbow of colors that they can't resist.

This isn't all their books. There are probably around 10 mixed with the toys downstairs and at least 50 in the boys' room.

These are pretty much just picture books, board books and coloring books. Chapter books and higher reading levels are on the shelves up around the room. We like books! We don't like moving them.

I took Joseph in for his 2 mo. check-up today. (He's 3 months in a week. We're a little slow around here lately.) He's 61% for his height and 32% for his weight. He's going to tower over the other kids! They gave him an oral vaccine for rotovirus. It smells like raw hamburger. I'm not making it up. They also gave him 3 other injections, so he's pretty cranky. I don't remember the other kids getting this cranky. They mostly just slept a ton. I'd prefer that.

Daniel got to pick a prize for reaching the reading requirement in his class (280 minutes for the month). Apparently, there were only 2 kids who didn't make it. How embarrassing. Where are their parents/guardians? What was Daniel's prize? A computer video game. Wouldn't it make more sense to reward him with a book or at the very least a bookmark? Chad made him read 15 minutes before even loading it on the computer.

BOOKS!

We are missing two library books. They were there one minute and impossible to find the next. Ever been there? So I'm going through the kids' books to see if they've been mixed in. The books are so disorganized, that I'm pretty much handling each one. I'm halfway through and haven't found the library books yet.

We have a lot of books. I would be surprised if there weren't at least 500 kids' books. Do you know how easily that many books get spread around the house? It's amazing.

So I'm in the "library" cleaning up books and Rebekah comes in.

Rebekah: "Doing? Making a mess?"

Yeah. Thanks a lot Rebekah. Now sit down and help me out!

UPDATE: I found one! One more to go!
UPDATE #2: I found the 2nd one. Now I really do have a mess to clean up.

Curious George and the monkeys

The library here had a bedtime storytime event centered around our favorite mischievious monkey.

The kids watch Curious George on TV sometimes. Leah calls him Monkey George. They had some drawings for prizes, art activities, ice cream and bananas in a cup, free books and a chance to take a picture with the monkey himself.

The picture makes me giggle. Nathan looks like he's trying to evaluate the monkey's credentials and you can see what Rebekah's evaluation was! Leah was almost sure she'd made a new friend. Daniel was too mature to go at first, but we talked him into it and it appears he enjoyed himself enough. It was a pretty fun night, but WAY crowded. I don't like crowds.

Leah was "reading" one of the books about Curious George tonight and sounding out his name. She was saying, "Cur-e-us-Geor-or-ga." It was funny. She's heard Daniel sound out tons of words, but she doesn't quite know how it goes.