Today, just go read this.  So wonderful.

September Daybook

Outside my window... It is warm and oddly muggy.  Late afternoon sun hits our backyard patio and makes me feel very lethargic if I sit there.      

I am wearing... A red knit shirt, a light brown skirt with green and peach flower pattern.  Bare feet.

I am thankful for... Confession.

I am thinking about... How hungry I am and how I am unmotivated to cook - related to the mugginess, I think.

Learning all the time... Bluejay is ready for some of the Thornton W. Burgess books.  I am so excited to start reading them to him.  We've just started with Bedtime Stories, but I need to get more Burgess books.  My mom has a quite large collection of first editions, but they're in line be given to my brother Gabe, as they were some of his absolute favorites, so I'll need to acquire my own.  If anyone ever visits Sandwich, Massachusetts, I highly recommend the Burgess museum there.  We visited it when I was nine years old, and if it's anything like it was almost 30 years ago, well, I can't recommend it enough.

From the kitchen... As previously mentioned... unmotivated today. So I'm heating up Coq au Vin from Trader Joe's and making mashed potatoes as a side dish.  I did make a delicious chicken tortilla soup earlier this week.

I am creating... I finished crocheting the blanket for Chickadee!  I'm using the leftover yarn to make a small matching blanket for her dolls.  I think she will love that. I just need to finish the edging but it's not easy to find time to work on it these days. I purposefully did not finish weaving in all the loose ends in Chickadee's blanket because I didn't want to be tempted to give it to her before I finished the doll blanket (or I would NEVER finish that one).

I am working on... having less stuff.  It is a big goal of my husband and I to decrease the things that we have, so that our life can be simpler.  I am not jumping on any minimalist bandwagon.  But, there are a lot of things in our house that are neither useful, beautiful or meaningful.  The children have too many toys to clutter up their space and minds.  Yesterday, I asked them to pick up the balls in the back yard.  They picked up two balls.  Therefore, I think two balls is all they need.  This is being largely driven by Aaron, but I am finally really on board.   

I am going... to preschool co-op three times a week with Bluejay.  To a feast-day party for our little goddaughter's first name day.  Hopefully nowhere else.  Trying to simplify our life too. There are too many things to do these days. And they're only babies!  I sometimes question preschool. But he does love it so much.  

I am hoping... to see as much of my family as possible and that all our visits are smooth, as they have been lately.

I am reading... The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.  Really enjoying it too.  I still need to pick up Everyday Saints and Other Stories.

I am praying for... My big boy going to preschool.  Some relatives.  My husband.

I am hearing... Pete Seeger singing the Tree in the Ground. Chickadee narrating her life to me.  Man can that girl talk.  She's gone through a phase of fake baby talk for the past month or so, which I find very annoying.  I try to ignore, I try.  But these last few days she's gone more and more back to her real voice, and that voice? is adorable.  Her speech is quite sophisticated too, as spoken through her raspy little two year old voice.  Everything has a "shh" sound in it.  Today we were looking at an animal book and there was a picture of a macaw. She has most of the animals memorized but when I asked her that one, rather than saying "I don't know" she said "It'sh boo (blue).  It hassh a back (black) beat (beak). And yewwow awound it'sh eyesh."

One (ok two) of my favorite things... Reading my favorite books to the kids and seeing them learn to love them too.  Seeing how delighted Sparrow is when he sees me.  He has a killer grin.

A few plans for the rest of the week... One of my brothers is coming over today to play with the kids.  Working from home tomorrow.  Bluejay's second day of preschool.

A few picture thoughts I am sharing with you... 

   

The Simple Woman's Daybook

Important Children's Books

I've seen many lists lately of good books for children.  Most of them have some of the books my siblings and I grew up loving, and that were very important for the foundations of a love of literature, but most miss some of what I consider the essentials.  So, I'm starting my own list.  Thus far it is VERY roughly categorized by "age" or rather readiness.  I am not including a lot of books that I think are decent, or even quite good, but rather the ones that I think are the most important, in terms of a good literary foundation, and perhaps a few that are nostalgically important to me.  I plan to continue to add to this, and when I have time, even put in links to the books.  

For Little Ones:

Little Golden Books

• The Friendly Book
• Scuffy the Tugboat
• Busy Timmy
• The Tawny Scrawny Lion
• The Saggy Baggy Elephant
• Pretty much anything illustrated by Eloise Wilkin

The Maggie B

The Little Moon Theater

Make Way for Ducklings

One Morning in Maine

Blueberries for Sal

The Frances books

Molly Brett books

Good Night Moon

The Runaway Bunny

Mother Goose

A Children's Garden of Versus by Robert Louis Stevenson

Frog and Toad series

The Seamstress of Salsburg

Winnie the Pooh and other A.A. Milne

A Sick Day for Amos McGee

Ready for a little bit more:

The Brambly Hedge series

Thornton W. Burgess

• Old Mother West Wind and many many others

The Chronicles of Narnia

Mary Poppins series

The Little House of the Prairie - Laura Ingalls Wilder (except for The First Four Years)

The Wind in the Willows

Bambi

Pippi Longstocking

Peter Pan

Getting bigger:

George McDonald

Frances Hodgeson Burnett

• The Secret Garden
• 
  

Anne of Green Gables series

Louisa May Alcott

• Little Women and others

The King of Ireland's Son

The Sword in the Stone

The REAL Grimms Fairy Tales

Heidi (and sequels)

Caddie Woodlawn

Corrie Ten Boom

The Black Stallion

Black Beauty

The Incredible Journey

National Velvet

Linnets and Valerians

Tolkien- The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy

The Jungle Book (Kipling)

Things I want to do

• Learn to play the guitar (at least some simple chords for folksongs)
• Improve my handwriting
• Read more poetry