Thanksgiving books...

This is an actual snipet of a conversation heard in our house earlier this evening:

Me: "Thanksgiving is so easy because we only have a few books and 3 movies."

Betsy: "Yeah, with Christmas we have like 3 books and 3 movies every day."

And this is very true. The difference between us, though, is that Betsy would end this conversation by saying, "Let's just skip some of them." Which is when I wonder how she is my kid. Because, no, we are not skipping any of them.

Thanksgiving is a lovely, easy holiday around here. The older I get, the more I love it. It is such a simple holiday. It is just about being grateful, eating, and being with your family. What's not to like?

We have a smattering of Thanksgiving books around here. (We have books for every holiday around here, from April Fool's Day to Chinese New Year.) Here are the best of the best:

1. Beyond Turkey by Debbie Herman and Ann D. Koffsky-a nice overview of the holiday, its origins and facts about it. This book also has a lot of activities included.

2. Giving Thanks by Jonathan London-a lovely book about a dad and his son walking through the woods and giving thanks. It's a nice reminder that we need to be grateful of this blessed planet that we are priviledged to live on.

3. An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving by Louisa May Alcott-we are big time "Little Women" fans around here. This story is in a similar vein.

4. The Thanksgiving Door-one of our favorites. Ed and Ann are an elderly couple who accidently burn their Thanksgiving dinner, so they go to a restaurant whose door is open. In the meantime, the family who own the restaurant don't know what to do about these people who have wandered into their Thanksgiving dinner. An excellent book about the true meaning of thanksgiving and family.

5. The Littlest Pilgrim by Brandi Dougherty. A very cute story about Mini, a pilgim girl who wants to be helpful but who is too little.

6. Thanksgiving in the Barn by Nadine Bernard Westcott-the girls would be mad if I didn't include this one, because it is their favorite. It is a pop-up book.

If you are looking for more books about the actual first Thanksgiving, I recommend The Very First Thanksgiving Day by Rhonda Gowler Greene (especially for little ones), Pilgrim Cat by Carol Antoinette Peacock, and The Magic School Bus at the First Thanksgiving (Betsy is a huge Magic School Bus fan and I highly recommend them all).

Another very nice book to add to your collection is Over the River and Through the Woods illustrated by John Stven Gurney. We only know 2 Thanksgiving songs around here-this one and "I'm Gonna Eat on Thanksgiving Day" by Laurie Berkner. (I think that it's on her Waddya Think of That CD.)

Also we have some fun books that feature characters that we love. We have them for most holidays.

Giving Thanks (Care Bears) by Quinlan B. Lee

Clifford's Thanksgiving Visit by Norman Bridwell

Just So Thankful (Little Critter) by Mercer Mayer

Blue's Thanksgiving Feast by Jessica Lissy

Happy Thanksgiving, Biscuit! by Alyssa Satin Capucilli

Our 3 Thanksgiving movies are A Peanuts Thanksgiving (a classic that everyone should own), A Garfield Thanksgiving, and A Winnie the Pooh Thanksgiving. All of them are wonderful.

I am very blessed this Thanksgiving, with my amazing husband and my wonderful girls encompassing my life, and with the ability to share my life every day with my other favorite people, my parents and my sister and her family. For me, there is nothing better in this whole world.

A freckle-faced, red-haired girl...

We are getting ready for Halloween around here. Betsy is dressing as Pippi Longstocking, and Felicity is dressing as Belle from Beauty and the Beast.

Felicity's costumes are hand-me-downs from her cousin Mallory. Mallory and Felicity are our girly-girls around here. Every year Mallory picks out a new princess costume, and then a few years later Felicity wears it. April goes for the nice, Disney-store costumes, so they hold up well. So far Felicity has been a clown (which is a family costume that we all have to wear our first year trick or treating), Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, Snow White, and now Belle. Mallory has been Cinderella, Rapunzel, and this year is being Ariel, so we have a trove of costumes still to go through (Felicity can't wait to get her hands on the Cinderella costume).

Natalie is stuck being the clown this year.

Betsy is always interesting when it comes to her costume choices. She, of course, had to be the clown one year and also the Dorothy costume was hers. That was back when she was 2 and I could still pick out her costume for her. Once she hit 3, she started picking out her own costumes. She has been the Tin Man, Glinda the Good Witch, Tinkerbell, and a doctor. This year she is so excited to be Pippi. It was an easy costume to put together, really. We bought a red haired wig (the package said it was to dress up as a rag doll) and put wire in it and braided it to make Pippi's hair. Then I just picked out a denim and plaid dress that looked Pippi-ish from her closet, and we bought some striped tights. She's going to wear my boots.

(There will be pictures on my Facebook page, if you are interested in seeing it.)

We love Pippi around here. We have read Pippi Longstocking (the original book) by Astrid Lindgren twice. It is my favorite of the Pippi books. There are 2 sequels, which we are just finishing. Pippi on Board and Pippi of the Sounth Seas. The South Seas one was obviously written at the request of children wanting to know what Kurrkurrdutt Island is like (it is the island where Pippi's father is a canibal king).The books are a bit dated and certainly not totally politically correct. But they are very well-written, clever stories with a girl as the heroine, which I'm sure is more than half the reason Betsy likes them.

We also have the movie The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking. It is an okay movie. I liked it a lot as a kid, so I understand why the girls like it so much. As an adult, I find it somewhat cloying and nowhere near as good as the books. But there is nothing objectionable in it.

Walking into spiderwebs...

I have had a lousy week. One thing happened after another, culminating in a trip to the hospital yesterday with what ended up being a kidney stone. My kids are sick, the weather is lousy (especially considering that we had to sit at the football game Friday night in the rain so that Betsy could cheer), I am afraid that I have taken on too much with my volunteering for the year. I'm whiny.

Anyway, I did finish an excellent book last Saturday and had every intention of blogging about it before my nightmare of a week reared its head. It is called The Story of Charlotte's Web: E.B. White's Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic by Michael Sims. It is a really fascinating look at E.B. White's life. He was so interested in animals and spiders and really getting what he was talking about right.

Betsy and I have read Charlotte's Web twice now. I like to read it to her just before we go to the fair. It gives us such an appreiciation for what all goes into raising an animal. It is an excellent choice for kids who aren't quite ready to sit still for long periods of time because the chapters are quite short. (Betsy always says read more, we are used to long chapeters around here). It is such a moving book. Betsy cried the first time that I read it. It gets right to the point-Charlotte dies all alone, and no one ever knew that a certain spider had had so much to do with the outcome of the fair.

E.B. White based Charlotte's Web on his own farm and also on his childhoods spent in Maine. His whole life sort of culminated in this book. He also, of course, wrote Stuart Little. I read this to Betsy a while ago. My only experience with it prior to that was the movie with Michael J. Fox. The book is very, very different and downright odd. The biography illuminated me as to why and what White was trying to say. I think that I will get so much more out of it the next time we tackle it.

White wrote only one other book, The Trumpet of the Swans. We own it but have yet to read it. Sims only spends a few pages on it, so I still know little about it. When we get to it, I'll tell you my opinion of it.

I'm glad that it's Saturday, I'm ready for a new week. Hopefully it will go a little better...

Another obsession...

Okay, so I have confessed to my obsession with sunscreen and Purell. I have owned up about reading poetry to my children twice a day. Tonight, another obsession that has reared its head since I had children.

I am obsessed with food.

Now, there is a caveat. I like food that is not good for me. I drink two cans of Sunkist every day. It is my vice. When the girls go to bed, my very favorite thing is to open my Sunkist and take a sip. Heaven.

So, when if comes to my girls, I do tell them all the time that pop is bad for you. I realize, they will eventually discover that I have neglected to tell them of its wonderful fizzy goodness. They will rebel. Until that time, however, they believe me, even as they understand that I am addicted to it wholeheartedly.

My main thing with the girls is that I have a desperate need to be sure that they are eating enough vegetables and fruits. Fruits are easy. The girls love almost all fruits. Betsy eats an apple everyday, and Felicity a banana. (I have to limit her to 2 bananas a day, as Nicholas swears that he once got very sick from eating too many bananas.) I buy all the berries that they sell at Kroger and we always have grapes. To make life easier, I take all of the grapes off of the stem and wash them, then put them in tupperware.

I do the same with vegetables. We always have lots of raw vegetables in the fridge. I wash them (and cut them, if they need cutting) when we get them home. Usually we have carrots, celery, spinach, broccoli, and cauliflower. We add in new things sometimes. This summer we found a lot of cabbage at the Farmer's Market, so we had a lot of that. In our own garden this year we have enjoyed tomatoes, cucumbers, and cherry tomatoes. I have found that the girls are more than willing to try things. Maybe my kids are just weird, but they really enjoy vegtables. I do try to buy organic stuff, and of course you can't beat the stuff we can grow ourselves.

So, the girls have a large serving of vegetables with lunch everyday. They have hummus with them most days. I like doing that because then if they aren't hungry enough for a sandwich, they have had a protein. (Sometimes Felicity is not hungry enough, but Betsy has a hollow leg and is hungry all the time.)

I like knowing that the girls almost always have a good lunch, and then I can be a little more lax with dinner. If we go to Wendy's for dinner, and they have cheeseburgers, it's okay. It's all a compromise.

As another example of compromise, take our breakfasts. We alternate all week between Honey Nut Cheerios and oatmeal. One day a week we usually have eggs, which we are blessed to get from our neighbors who own chickens. And then...Saturday. The rule on Saturday is that you get to choose whatever you want. Right now the choices are Pop Tarts, Fruit Loops, Apple Jacks, and Frosted Flakes. (I always have Frosted Flakes.) The girls look forward to Saturday, and at the same time, they aren't eating junk every day. It works for us.

I have two books to recommend on this topic:

1) The American Academy of Pediatrics Guide to Your Child's Nutrition. This is a handy reference book to have on the shelf to answer food realted questions.

2) Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense by Ellyn Satter. This is a really great book on this topic. A lot of it is about understanding that your job as a parent is to provide good food, and your child's job is to eat. You cannot force food down your child's throat. But, equally important, you are the parent ultimately making the decisisons about the food that comes into you home.

As I have been writing, the Buckeyes have been losing. I am sad for my sister and my dad, who love watching them...

Of sisters and stalkers...

I spent the day with my girls at a teddy bear picnic. As almost always, it was about Betsy. It was for her Daisy troop. So Felicity and I spent an hour and a half sitting on the picnic blanket while Betsy did the fun stuff. I'm thrilled that Betsy gets to do so many fun things, but I am sad that Felicity mostly just gets to watch. And then, when she is finally old enough to do whatever it is, then Betsy has moved on to the next thing.

That said, I love that my girls are close in age. I purposely didn't want to have them as close together as my sister and I are. (We are 14 months apart.) I always felt like I was just barely an "older" sister, as April always did things either with me or just after me. My girls are 3 years apart. It's nice because Betsy is truly older, but they are close enough in age to do things together. I have just cherished this summer, watching them playing together. They often hold hands, and it melts my heart. (April is still to this day my best friend, but we rarely hold hands, you know.)

Anyway, in honor of all of the sisterly love, here is a list of books that are good for introducing a new baby to your family:

1) What to Expect When Mommy's Having a Baby by Heidi Murkoff. This is an excellent explaining-pregnancy-to-a-toddler book. You can omit stuff if you feel like it's going into too much detail. I personally didn't. I have explained how babies are made to both of the girls many times. I'm pretty straight forward about it, and they ask me questions. It's one of those things that doesn't bother me. I know that not everyone feels that way, but for us, we have found that if we treat it like any other kind of question, it makes it easier to understand and less shameful.

2. What Baby Needs by William and Martha Sears. I like the Sears' because they are very into attachment parenting. I didn't do attachment parenting in this perfect way, but I did breastfeed and have the girls sleep in a bassinette in our room. I mostly liked this book for Betsy because it dealt with nursing as a big part of having a baby, and for us that was a big part of it.

3. What to Expect When the Baby Comes Home by Heidi Murkoff. Another What to Expect book. As always, it answers most questions a child could think up.

4. The New Baby by Mercer Mayer. A cute look at a new baby through the eyes of Little Critter.

5. A Pocket Full of Kisses by Audrey Penn. Most everyone in the world reads The Kissing Hand on the first day of school. This is the sequel, in which Chester's mother gives his brother a kissing hand too. Chester goes bananas. It's a good reinforcement of the idea that there is enough love to go around (as I tell the girls, love is not a pie).

As I wrap this up, I am as always listening to 80s music. Does anyone else find it creepy that so many 80s songs are stalker love songs? I have heard Every Breath You Take, Private Eyes, Sunglasses at Night, now it's on The Flame...

Tales from a sunscreen nut...

Well, it's Saturday night. For me, that means I am listening to 80s music, catching up on my reading, preparing my Sunday School lesson for tomorrow, and realizing that I need to do a blog post to stay with my self-imposed goal of one per week.

I don't have a ton to talk about, but I can think of a few things.

Last week, when I talked about teeth, I wanted to mention that the brand of flouride that we use is ACT. I like it because you only have to use it once a day (once I bought the listerine brand and you have to use it twice a day). Also, to clarify about the singing, I sing a song to the girls while they "swish." It just makes the minute go faster. Betsy suggested it, because the child is ten times smarter than me and she is six.

I also wanted to give the Joy seal of approval to Aveeno lotion. My girls both have really sensitive skin that breaks into a rash pretty easily. This stuff heals it right away. We had always used Johnson and Johnson before, and one day we were somewhere that it wasn't available and we picked this up instead. It just works wonders!

Just as an aside, I am obsessed with sunscreen. That doesn't really have anything to do with anything, but in my mind, someone is reading this who really wants to know these odd things about me. And I do mean obsessed. My kids get slathered in sunscreen every morning. I've done all of this research into the best kinds and what all of the different products available can do for you. If you're interested in my opinion on this, I use Coppertone SPF 50 on the girls. Like I said, they get slathered first thing in the morning. Then, if it is a day that they are swimming, sweating, or the UV index is high, they get slathered again in the afternoon. I recommend keeping sunscreen in the car, near the door, little bottles in your purse-anywhere that you will be apt to use it. I do the same thing with Purell, which I am also obsessed with.

I have succeeded in making the girls hyper viligent about using sunscreen (and Purell). Unfortunately for us all, Nicholas could basically care less about sunscreen and I therefore have to worry if he has the girls for a "mom's day off." He's the fun one...

But that's okay. I like being the weird one. Weird is how I define myself. And the girls are okay with being weird too. We like to think that it makes us unique...

Two nights after a toothfairy visit...

Well, the tooth fairy has paid us a visit. It was a long time coming. Betsy has been wanting this to happen for, oh, at least a year. At school, she was one of the only kids who still had all of their baby teeth, so she is elated that she can go back to school toothless.

For Nick, it was bittersweet. She is growing up and there is just nothing to be done to stop it. Anyhow, I thought that I would use this moment to impart wisdom when it comes to kids' teeth and the dentist.

First off, my kids enjoy brushing their teeth. How did this happen? Well, I think two things, in addition to the fact that my kids are weird. I have brushed their teeth (with a toothbrush) since they were each 6 months old. At least twice a day. Usually after every meal. So they think nothing of it. Also, we have a timer in each bathroom. It is like an hourglass, only it only goes for 3 minutes. My kids know that in the morning and at night we are brushing with the timer.

I still brush their teeth. After lunch, they each get to brush their own teeth. And they don't have to use the timer then. I do this so that they will learn and also because they like it, but they are neither one good enough at it to do their own teeth all the time.

Every night we also floss (we use those floss sticks because it's easier) and they use floride (which we call swish) for one minute. That involves singing (it's not always easy to do something for a minute when you are six and three).

We also visit the dentist every six months. If you live in the Zanesville area, I highly recommend Dr. Robert Malek, who is the girls' dentist. They love going to the dentist. He has video games for them to play and they get a toy at the end of the visit. But mostly, and this is especially for Betsy who loves knowing how things work, he allows them to watch everything that he does. He allows Betsy to get right up in Felicity's face and watch all that he is doing.

Finally, of course, some great books about going to the dentist and good dental hygiene:

1. What to Expect When You Go To The Dentist by Heidi Murkoff. Obviously, I love these books. It answers every conceviable question they could have.

2. Just Going to the Dentist by Mercer Mayer. I love Little Critter. This one is cute and it can calm some dental fears.

3. Show Me Your Smile! by Christine Ricci. This is a Dora book. I like it beacuse Dora asks a lot of questions to engage the child in the book.

4. Meet Michael's Dentist! by Lori Froeb. This one is the girls' favorite. It is a Little People book with flaps (they love flaps).

5. I Know Why I Brush My Teeth by Kate Rowan. I like this book because it goes into detail (in a kid-friendly way) about all of the teeth in your mouth and the importance of keeping them clean.

6. This Book Bites by Timothy Gower. This is a cool book. I got it at a book sale at the library. It goes into so much detail about the mouth. Everything that you could ever want to know, it's in there.

Anyway, I hope that my girls always love taking care of their teeth. Most of my back teeth are gone, due to horrific sinus problems. I love that they no longer hurt me, but it is difficult to eat without molars. So I know whereof I speak. They know that there are some things that Mommy cannot eat. So I'm hoping that they put a premium on their teeth...