Dealing With Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede

This is quite possibly my all time favorite book and it is, without a doubt, the book I have read the most often over the most number of years. I have given it to friends to read, I have read it out loud to two different people, I have even had my book club read it. Did I mention I love it?

Reasons that you will love Dealing With Dragons:

1- Chapter titles – For instance chapter one is titled: In Which Cimorene Refuses to Be Proper and Has a Conversation with a Frog.

2-Cimorene (the princess and heroine of the story) often refuses to be proper.

3-Dragons uses princess to cook and clean for them.

4- A sign above a door that reads, “NONE OF THIS NONSENSE, PLEASE.”

5- Other princesses are just as dull and ditsy as you could hope they would be.

6- King of Dragons is just a title, nothing to do with gender.

7-Dragons like Cherries Jubilee.

8- Princes also have to follow proper protocol.

9-A bucket of water won’t melt a clean witch.

10- Cimorene’s happily ever after involves being interested and busy and has nothing to do with a protocol following prince!

Would I recommend it? Yes! Technically it’s a young adult book, please ignore that and read it anyway.

Chatter Box

This was this mornings sunrise:

At the time I took that picture Ivy had already been talking for an hour.

Then we drove to Cabela’s in Indiana, and she talked the whole way…

We met Uncle Jim who gave Storm’s progress so far a thumbs up and John and I new instructions on her care, and Ivy kept talking…

We headed into Cabela’s where it’s impossible to lose her becuase even when she is a bit of a brat and hides, she can’t resist talking, so her hiding place only lasts for about 30 seconds…

We got back in the car for the three hour drive home, and she kept talking…

Clara took her third nap of the day, and Ivy kept talking…

Once we got home we repacked and headed out to enjoy the rest of the day, running for John and I and swing sets and slides for the girls, Ivy kept talking, but this time to other kids… I love other kids!

We drove back home, and Ivy kept talking…

I tried to run away from the chatter by mowing the lawn, (desperate times, call for desperate measures!) Ivy followed me.

Just as I was starting up the lawn mower she and her half eaten apple (thank you Uncle Jim and Callie) climbed up in my lap. So I stuffed my ear muffs on her head and off we went mowing the lawn, and Ivy kept talking. Fortunately for my sanity it was a brief attempt at talking, between the ear protection and the noise of the lawn mower she gave up and just sat on my lap munching away on her apple. Pretty soon I felt her start to slide off my lap, and I realized that when she stopped talking for the first time all day, she had finally let herself fall asleep. There Ivy was, sound asleep in my lap, ear muffs on, apple core clutched tight in one fist that was curled up under her chin like it was her favorite stuffed animal.

Alien Trouble

I had trouble, Clara was screaming, and screaming, and screaming.  My friend was due to show up any minute to babysit, John would be home shortly and we were all set for our belated anniversary date.   As the screaming continued with no signs of stopping I started worrying that not only was my evening was in jeopardy but that something was seriously wrong with my kid. As I tried to figure out what the cause of the screaming was I debated with myself:

Do I stay home?

Do we delay leaving until she’s in bed?

Will I feel horribly guilty for leaving a completely upset girl with my friend?

If I leave will I just be grateful that I can say goodbye and leave all the noise behind?

If I am grateful does that make me a horrible mother?

Did I accidentally feed her dairy products?

Does she have a fever?

Am I actually stabbing hot needles into her and I don’t know it?

Have the ten million falls she has taken in the last week as she started walking damaged her brain and now all she can do is scream?

Then during a good scream I looked in her mouth, there I discovered two gigantic aliens posing as molars pushing through Clara’s gums. They must have been aliens, teeth that large, in such a little mouth that would be pure craziness.  Unfortunately my alien banishing tactics are nonexistent so I thought I’d treat it like teething.

Teething I know how to deal with (thank you Ivy for your super early, super cranky teething).  We froze some teethers (I know frostbite, whatever, fridge temp is not cold enough), dug out some aquarium tubing to chew on, pulled out the ibuprofen,and made a call to John to bring home some teething gel. A half hour later drugs had kicked in, Clara was happily walking around the house with her chunks of tubing and John and I left guilt free on our date.

After a bit of a rough start at sporting clays when John’s gun jammed on his first shot things went great.  John was unable to fix his gun, which forced him to use my gun, which effectively handicapped him enough that I almost beat him. We finished up our date night with dinner out and a trip to the grocery store (wild and crazy I know) and came home to two sleeping girls and one friend that still seems to like both us and our kids.

Thank goodness it was only alien trouble!

Gil's All Fright Diner by A. Lee Martinez

“Reality is like a fruitcake: Pretty enough to look at but with all sorts of nasty things lurking just beneath the surface.”

That’s it, that line up there. That’s as good as it gets, you’d think with a vampire, a werewolf a couple hundred pound waitress, ghosts, a horny teenage boy, zombies and the end of the world, not to mention undead cows there would be something more to say, but there isn’t.

Would I recommend this? No. This was Martinez’s first book I have read In The Company Of Ogres and A Nameless Witch and enjoyed both of them, they do have a dark, snarky sense of humor but they were good. This one was not.

Ship of Destiny by Robin Hobb

Better, much better.

I still think that there are too many characters being followed, I still wasn’t as impressed as I was with her others that I have read but I liked it. I liked it in a couldn’t put it down lost hours of sleep over it kind of liked it. I’d be all sleepy and planning on just reading one chapter then suddenly I’d be sucked into sailing and dragons and battles and I’d be wide awake and reading far too long into the night. Now the fact that the first book, was lame makes sense, but that was a big book of lameness to make it through to get to this one!

Would I recommend it? Yes, but of course then you have to read the first two (here and here) or this wouldn’t make sense and I didn’t like those near as much. So as for the whole trilogy I’d say it was good, not great, but good. I think my full recommendation is to start with Assassins Apprentice and read those, then if you liked theme come back to these. Plus technically these fall between the Farseer Trilogy and the Tawny Man Trilogy so you should read them first anyway, but you could skip these three altogether and still understand everything in the Tawny Man books.

Whew, apparently I’ve got nothing succient in me about this book… check out the next review I’m not confused on my feelings coming up for that one!

Seven Years

Today was our seventh anniversary and my photos of photos in the dark do no justice to the great photos my Aunt Helen took that day.

Now seven years have flown by and the girls are among the biggest of the many changes since that day.  Yet tonight over dinner (a completely scrumptious grilled venison tenderloin) as we reflected over the years we were most awed by how Johns grilling skills have grown. For our first anniversary he also grilled us dinner. While I don’t remember if I ate the resulting chunk of boot leather, the meal was memorable!  Thankfully I hadn’t married him for his grilling skills and he hadn’t married me for my cleaning skills so we are still smiling together today!  Of course now John is the best grill master I know but I still don’t clean the bathroom, looks like I got the good end of this deal!

Today

Today Ivy, Clara and I spent 4 1/2 hours in the car.

Today I heard somone say “MOM” from the backseat for the 5 millionth time.

Today I said “What Ivy?” for the 6 trillionth time.

Today I had no response.

Today I looked in the back seat and saw Ivy was sleeping.

Today Clara said “MOM” 37 times.

Today I think Clara was imitating her older sister…but it’s got me worried about tommorow!

Screamfree Parenting by Hal Edward Runkel

I don’t read very many parenting books, but this one kept cropping up everywhere so I thought I’d see what all the fuss was about.  I admit I did not read this slowly and thoughtfully while answering all the “reflection questions” at the end of the chapters, it was more of a skimming, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, hmm that’s interesting, sort of read.

My issue with reading it was my own avoidance of parenting books problem, it breaks down something like this:

one part,”I’m doing just fine thank you very much,”

one part  “If I read all the parenting books, I’ll probably start thinking that I need to do everything different, they will all say different things and then I will go insane which would have the opposite effect I was hoping for.”

and one part “I’m half Finnish and I don’t think that half of me is interested in reflecting on my inner feelings, thank you have a nice day.”

I read it anyway, and tried to stifle my eye rolling on the bold texts that said things like,

“Pain is often the greatest catalyst to powerful change.”

and

“Screamfree Parenting is not a problem-solving or behavioral modification model; it is a growth model.”

Not that these things aren’t true, it’s just that my aversion to books like this was in control of my eyeballs.

My point, I did have one…

This was better than I thought.  For the most part I liked what he said (it helped that I also do/believe many of the things already) and it did give me some stuff to ponder in daily life with my three year old. Hopefully my Finnishness will subside and I can even implement a bit of it. And I liked the basic message of the book. While the author multiple times mentions his disapproval for “what works for fideo will work for your kid”  type books, I’d say, what I took out of it sounded an awful lot like Caesar Milan. The dog whisperer and this guy have the same basics.  Calm assertive pack leader and calm consistent parent aren’t too different when you get right down to it.  I know it works on the dogs, I’ve seen it help with the kids, but knowing it will help and actually being calm are not always the same thing!

Would I recommend it? I’m not recommending any parenting books. Not because how I feel but because what you want to read in that area is completely up to you, I’d hate to add to any insanity (see avoidance issues above).