Reading Books

J loves to read R long books at night before bed. He's read her The Hobbit three times and Alice in Wonderland at least once. I started Charlotte's Web with her, but she really prefers J reading to her for the most part. We've also started Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, but she hasn't seemed to enjoy that as much as she's gotten into The Hobbit and Alice in Wonderland.

This morning, I asked her if she liked The Hobbit--I knew she did, but it had been awhile since they last finished it and I was curious what she would say. Here was her response:

"I LOVE IT!!!!! But the dragon is scary! YIKES!"

That was unexpected. . .

I checked out this book from the library: On Top of Spaghetti, which is, of course, based on the song. You know, the one that goes, "On top of spaghetti / All covered with cheese / I lost my poor meatball / When somebody sneezed."

I like to pick out books from the library based on song lyrics because they're usually really catchy and fun to read, and this is the best way for me to learn song lyrics (I certainly don't learn them from hearing them being played on CD, the way J does). And knowing song lyrics is a MUST around here--being able to sing in the car, to entertain the kids, to distract them, to sing along, etc.

Well, J was reading it to her. On the third page or so a mouse sneezes and poor Yodeler Jones (the dog pictured on the front cover) loses his meatball.

R was hysterical. Oh my goodness. She was SO UPSET. We had to flip back and forth several times to show her that Yodeler Jones was okay, and goodness, don't you want to see where the meatball goes?

At the end of the book a tree sprouts out of the ground that grows meatballs and tomato sauce. She got even MORE upset at that. We only calmed her down by promising her that she could have meatballs and tomato sauce for snack.

Reading Stories

Is so much fun now that R is interacting with the stories so much more. It's clear she's paying a lot of attention to the illustrations on every page as she often asks questions about the character or something on the page.

These are by far her favorite questions to ask:

"Where's his (or her) mommy (or daddy)?"

"Where did the mommy (or daddy) go?"

"Is he (or she) sad? Why is he (or she) sad?" [She also substitutes happy or angry for sad in this question.]

Her favorite topics revolve around how characters are feeling, and she points out some of the most amazing details in the pictures. Noticing these details often changes my interpretation of the artwork. It's kind of amazing to be given a glimpse of this material through a child's eyes, and her questions are the clearest window into how her mind is working and the connections she's making.

Some of the more difficult questions are related to sad things happening to characters in books. We made the mistake of letting her watch "Finding Nemo" a month or so ago, forgetting that Nemo's mother dies very early in the movie. This upset her quite a bit and so we fastforwarded a bit, only to have her get very upset again when Nemo and his father are separated when Nemo swims off into the open sea. Now, she can't read the Finding Nemo book without getting very upset that Nemo is looking for his father (and vice versa), so we have to turn to the final page and point out that Nemo and his father are happy and together.

Reading

I love taking pictures of J reading to the kids. There's just something unbearably sweet about it.
Whenever we change RUS on the changing table in his room, R runs in there with us and plays with all the baby toys in there, including a mess of board books I keep in his room. She almost always wants someone to read one or more of them to her.

Reading Stories

S: Okay, R, it's time to get ready for bed. Let's read some stories. Go pick out a few stories to read.

(R runs to bookshelf and pulls Edwina, the Dinosaur Who Didn't Know She was Extinct off of her shelf.)

R: You not read this story, Mommy.

S: You don't want me to read the story?

R: No. Only teachers read stories.

S: Oh, really?

R: Yeap.

(R climbs into her rocking chair and looks as if she's going to start reading the book.)

S: Are you a teacher, R?

R: Yeap. (flips a few pages, to a page where a bunch of children and Edwina are holding hands in a circle). Ring around the Rosy. Pocketbook full of posies. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

(flips a few more pages)

S: Tell me the story. What's happening here?

R: It's a boy. (quickly flips a few more pages, to the end of the book). Cookies!! (pretends to pick up a cookie and eat it). Yum yum yum!

(R gets up and runs back to her bookshelf. Returns with Is Your Mama a Llama?)

S: Oh, this book is fun. Tell me this story!

R: Once upon a time . . . there was a cave!

S: Oh! What was in the cave?

R: Aminals.

S: What kind of animals?

(R proceeds to flip very quickly through the book's pages until she gets to the end)

R: The end!

Vintage Cookbooks

My grandma passed on to me a bunch of her old cookbooks when we were visiting this past weekend. My mom and I spent one evening looking through them, and had a ton of fun reading through-- and laughing hysterically until we cried about-- some of the crazy things they put in these cookbooks.

First up: Food Favorites, from the Kraft Television Theatre . . . "selected by popular request." (1951).

(But seriously, though, I have a hard time believing these recipes were ever popular.)
"Mayonnaise Appetizer Dip." This consists of basically-- you guessed it-- mayonnaise. Plus 1 teaspoon grated onion, 1 teaspoon horseradish, 1 teaspoon tarragon vinegar, and 1/4 teaspoon curry powder. How disgusting does that sound?

It totally makes me think of that scene in "Notting Hill" where Spike (Hugh Grant's character's roommate) says, "There's something wrong with this yogurt," at which point Hugh Grant informs him that he's been eating mayonnaise.

And how about these "Jellied Green Pepper Rings"?
It's kind of hard to see the picture, but essentially, to make this, you cut the stem off of some green peppers, make some lemon Jell-O, add chopped celery, chopped carrots, shredded cabbage, and chopped cucumbers, and spoon this gelatin mixture into the green peppers and chill. When the Jell-O is hard, you slice the peppers into rings and voila, Jellied Green Pepper Rings. Serve with mayonnaise.

Can we say "ew"?

Next: "Stuffed Prune and Date Dessert."
To make this, all you do is squeeze cream cheese through a pastry tube on top of prunes and dates. They look like decorated turds, seriously.

But this last one is my absolute FAVORITE from this Kraft cookbook: "Cheese Nutburgers"
The ingredient list for the burgers (in its entirety): mayonnaise, pecans, relish, and Worcestershire sauce. (The "cheese" part comes when you put American cheese slices on top of the "burgers" before baking them.) If you'd like to try these I'll be happy to send you the complete recipe.

The other cookbook is called Easy Ways to Good Meals: 99 Delicious Dishes Made with Campbell's Soups (1949).

This cookbook was slightly more appalling than the Kraft one mainly because they tried to put Campbell's soup into dishes that really, really, did not need soup as an ingredient whatsoever.

For example, the "Stuffed Meat Roll," which is essentially meat spread onto waxed paper and covered with a mixture of potatoes and pea soup and then rolled, like one would roll a jelly roll, kinda. But look at that picture! It looks like it's stuffed with lard!
MMMM, "Chicken Mousse." Made with Jell-O, cream of chicken soup, cream cheese, chopped chicken, and mayonnaise, of course. Topped with whipped cream. (I know, I know, I wouldn't believe it myself if I wasn't reading it in front of my own eyes).

Back in the 50s, I guess people just loved to put Jell-O in everything. For example: "Tomato Soup Salad." There was no picture of the actual salad, but check out the ingredient list (I photographed it just for proof): Jell-O, tomato soup, cream cheese, salad dressing OR mayonnaise, and lemon juice. Good gracious. Who would eat that? Or, better yet, who would even think to invent this? But, on the bright side, it's among the few recipes that doesn't ask for BOTH cream cheese and mayonnaise.

But I think the "Grilled Shrimp and Vegetable Salad" wins grossest Jell-O concoction in this cookbook. You make it pretty much how you would expect-- with some Campbell's consomme, Jell-O, and a whole slew of vegetables just mixed up in there. Dang, that is one beautiful salad.

And you know no cookbook would be complete without dessert. Dessert made with soup, of course. So we bring you "Apple Sauce Spice Shortcake with Foamy Sauce." (Yes, that is the actual name of the recipe). Made with tomato soup, along with the typical ingredients for an apple sauce spice cake. MMM, foamy sauce. Take a look.

Current Favorite Bedtime Stories

Along with My Grandma Lived in Gooligulch, which I talked about in R's 25-month letter, she's also been requesting, every night, for me to read The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash. She loves when the cow cries and sometimes talks about the haystack falling. She points out the pigs on the school bus and sometimes yells at them to get off the bus. When the kids have the egg fight, I "crack" an egg on her head which usually gets a laugh out of her.

Stuff R Does

--Say her alphabet and sing the alphabet song over and over. Sometimes she likes to go straight from "A, B, C, D, E, F, G" to "Next time won't you sing with me" but other times she sings most of the letters, usually leaving out everything between S and Y.

--Count from one to 13, often starting at three and omitting one and two. Sometimes she goes up to 15, but she never says 14.

--Talk about walruses. At the doctor's office this afternoon (yes, she has a double ear infection & a chest infection) she pointed to an alphabet chart and identified the W and the walrus immediately. This started when we read Barbara Joosse's Mama, Do You Love Me? the other day and she talked about how scary the walrus was. Then the next day she brought up the "scaarry walrus" and J wanted to show her more walruses to maybe alleviate some of her scared-ness, so he went to this Fisher-Price alphabet game that my friend CraftyQueen recommended and showed her the cute little walrus in that game. Now she brings them up at random moments, often to tell us that walruses are scary.

Reading to Baby

In the mornings, when I get R ready for day care*, I often let her play by herself in the living room while I get all her stuff ready to take (like her lunch or extra clothes or anything like that). One morning, I found her holding her doll and a book, and trying to climb into her chair. I picked her up and put her into her chair and she proceeded to read to her doll, even taking the doll's hand to point to things on the page. So. Cute.*To be fair, I should note that J has been doing most of the morning wake ups with R.

Favorite Holiday Photos: Delaware (Finally!)

At long last, here are my favorite gems from Grammie and Grampie's visit to Delaware and our first Christmas at home with family besides just the two of us there! (Yes, last year, R was with us, but J and I opened gifts by ourselves while she was sleeping, so it wasn't quite the same).

R loves having Grammie and Grampie read to her. The book they're looking at in this picture was one of her favorites this year-- it's a Christmas in Connecticut book that J's great-uncle gave me the first time I went to Connecticut for Christmas with his family. It has lots of pictures of snow, various holiday celebrations around Connecticut, wreaths on doors, and festively decorated homes. She especially enjoyed saying "Tee! Tee!" every time there was a pine tree or a Christmas tree in a picture.
On Christmas morning, she got up and saw all of her presents. She really wasn't quite sure what to do with them all at first, but she seemed to really enjoy her chair. Here she is looking at her new stroller all wrapped up-- it was the first thing she unwrapped, and as you can see in the next picture, she immediately wanted to play with it!I just love those antlers!This is just after she's pulled everything out of her stocking-- other than the house and the chair, everything we gave R fit into her stocking. She got the hang of the click-clackers right away, although she's not particularly rhythmic with them yet.When I found out Grammie and Grampie were going to come, I baked a few additional kinds of cookies-- sugar, peanut blossoms (with squares of vegan chocolate substituted for the Hershey's kisses), and applesauce bread. Grammie brought these delicious vegan bars-- a layer of graham cracker with other assorted grains (oatmeal, stuff like that) topped with a layer of melted chocolate, with a peanut butter drizzle on top. J loved them. And then a few traditions from J's side of the family: clementines and mixed nuts in a bowl.
Grammie and Grampie with their favorite gifts: M&Ms and a magazine about various opportunities for making money. J's dad got a real kick out of reading this magazine while visiting us.

Hush Little Baby

Two books we've been reading--and loving-- recently.

Hush, Little Baby by Brian Pinkney. The first day we checked this book out from the library, R had me read this book to her 10 or 15 times in a row (I genuinely lost track.) Every time we got to the last page, she would sign and say "more, more, more" until I started reading again from the beginning. The pictures are wonderful-- lively, vibrant, and lots of fun to look at.

She also loves a different Hush Little Baby book-- this one written by Sylvia Long. It's a board book Grandma and Grandpa gave her shortly after she was born, and J and I have sung this version of the song to her hundreds and hundreds of times before putting her to bed. She often pulls this book off of the shelf in her bedroom and requests it as her before-bed story. This version has mama showing her little baby different things around their house and backyard--appreciating the evening sky, a falling star, the crickets' song, worn teddy bear, and warm quilt, among others. The pictures are so sweet, and R loves to point out the hummingbird and lightning bug when they appear in the book.

Let's Talk Book Recommendations

One of my favorite things to do is to discover new books for R that I enjoy reading again and again. Here are a few books we've had a lot of fun with recently:

Amy Wilson Sanger has a series of "World Snacks" books that are beautifully illustrated and so so fun to read aloud. We've borrowed Yum Yum Dim Sum as well as Let's Nosh!, both of which I heartily recommend. I hope we'll find others as well-- and these are board books so excellent for reading to R with.

Another one of my favorite library finds (albeit this one was back in Texas) was a book called Bee Bim Bop! by Linda Sue Park. It tells the story of a mother preparing this traditional Korean dish for her family, from going to the grocery store to pick out ingredients to chopping and cooking the dish at home to setting the table and eating with the family. Primarily told from the young daughter's perspective, the book is super-catchy and excellent to read aloud, with prose such as "Hurry, Mama, hurry! Hungry hungry hungry for some bee bim bop!" In the back of the book there's a really nice explanation of the dish and a recipe.

The other book I'm going to mention is another one we found in the library in Texas before we moved-- 17 Kings and 42 Elephants. J and I are a little bit divided on this book. J doesn't love it quite as much as I do. I think he finds some of the text a little weird. But for me, there are two major things selling this book to me: first, the artwork is amazing. It's interesting, beautiful, and just fun fun fun to look at, and second, I LOVE the rhythm of the prose. It moves like a march set in the jungle (which is essentially the story of the book)--and it evokes all kinds of imaginative possibilities for me. (Sample text: "Forty-two elephants--oh, what a lot of 'ums,/Big feet beating in the wet wood shade,/Proud and ponderous hippopotomums/Danced to the music that the marchers made")

I want to post more about the books we love-- but I'm also eager to get some ideas about other books to look for for R! What books do you love reading to your kids?

Goodnight Moon

Every night to get R down to sleep, I read (more like recite) Goodnight Moon to her. I don't really understand why it's called Goodnight Moon, though. The moon doesn't appear prominently in the book, nor does it appear at some climactic or culminating moment.

Most of the second half of the book is the little rabbit saying goodnight to the things named in the first half of the book, and the moon isn't one of the things mentioned in the first half.

In the first half, there is: a telephone, a red balloon, a picture of the cow jumping over the moon, three bears sitting on chairs, two little kittens, a pair of mittens, a little toy house, a young mouse, a comb, a brush, a bowl full of mush, and a quiet old lady who is whispering hush.

Then, in the second half, he says goodnight to: the room, the moon, the cow jumping over the moon, the light, the red balloon, bears, chairs, kittens, mittens, clocks, socks, the toy house, the mouse, the comb, the brush, nobody, mush, the old lady whispering hush, stars, air, and noises everywhere.

So, why, exactly, is it called Goodnight Moon? I mean, isn't Goodnight Room a more descriptive title for the book? I can come up with a number of reasons why it's called Goodnight Moon but none really satisfy me, yet. Is it just because "moon" is more poetic than "room"?

Also, what's up with the blank page where he says "goodnight nobody"?

Passions

My friend t (who comments now and again on this blog) talks sometimes about how her 17-month-old son, S, loves books. From what she says, it sounds like books--requesting them to be read over and over again, sitting independently with a book and flipping pages, etc.--are one of S's passions.

What are R's passions?

Not so much books. She'll look at them for short periods. She likes to pull them off of whatever shelf they're on. If they're not board books, she spends more effort crumpling the pages to hear the noise it makes than looking at the pictures (which is why she doesn't really have access to many non-board books unsupervised). And only when she's tired--before a nap, and before bed, if she's not antsy to nurse--will she sit quietly and let us read a book to her. Even then, she's usually more interested in flipping the pages herself, often to the very last page before we've even read the first page. When we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar (one that she likes quite a bit), she lingers on the pages where the caterpillar's eaten through the fruit, because she likes to feel the holes. She also likes Pat the Bunny. Her favorite page there is trying on Mummy's ring. She tries it on every which way.

Really, we do try to read her a lot of stories. Sometimes we do this when she's sitting and eating, as entertainment. Sometimes I read them to her while she's playing and doing other things. I'll just sit on the floor and have the book open. She'll come over and listen but not always for the whole book. She likes books fine, but she's not really into them.

So. What is she passionate about?

First, without a doubt: Music. She loves music. If it is playing, she starts dancing, no matter where we are. In restaurants, she moves back and forth in her booster seat. When we are out and about, carrying her in our arms or in the Ergo, she'll wiggle in response to music playing in a store. Sitting on the floor, she'll move her head back and forth, and sometimes do this really nifty shoulder move. Standing up she bobs up and down or moves her head back and forth (here's a video of her doing this). And she makes the hugest smiles and sweetest laughs when she hears music she likes.

Now that we have her CD player in the living room, all I have to do is say to her, "R, turn on your music," and she crawls over there and turns it on. When we sing to her (yes, even when I sing to her--which I don't do in front of people other than J and R) she dances and laughs. She loves things that make noise. If she gets a hold of something new, the first thing she does is shake it to see what kind of noises it makes. She loves to crumple paper, and rip it to shreds, I think because she likes how it sounds.

The other thing she's passionate about is Food. The girl has not met food she doesn't like. Except maybe green beans--these she wasn't too interested in when we started her on pureed baby food, but she's eaten them plenty of times since. She just doesn't go after them with the same gusto she goes after most other foods. R loves to eat. Oh man. If there's food around, she wants it, and she usually wants it now. I can't really think of any food she doesn't devour, although she really isn't interested in drinking milk. She loves water, but pushes away milk after the first sip.