I’m join­ing another 5MinutesForBooks car­ni­val. I love Tues­days! This one is called, “I Read It!” I have sev­eral of their book rec­om­men­da­tions saved in my Google Reader, and this is a chance for me to tell you about one that I read and what I thought.

The book I read is Find­ing Stephanie by Susan May War­ren. Here is the orig­i­nal review. I’m not much of a book reviewer. I can’t always tell you exactly what I liked or didn’t like about a book, but I usu­ally can tell how much I liked it by how late I stayed up in order to read it! This book must have been pretty good, because I stayed up later than my hus­band! That has prob­a­bly only hap­pened 3–4 times in the last 6 years.

Find­ing Stephanie is the 3rd book in the Nobel Legacy series. The first two books are about her somewhat-prodigal broth­ers and how they find their way back to the fam­ily ranch which she has been run­ning. The third book is about Stephanie. I had hoped it would get into more of how she felt about being “the good child” who waited on her own dreams and sac­ri­ficed in order to main­tain the family’s ranch. It did talk about that a lit­tle, but I felt that dis­cus­sion was pretty super­fi­cial. I didn’t really feel like I knew how hard it had been for her. In this book, Stephanie becomes neigh­bors with a movie star who pur­chases a nearby ranch. He seems to have some inter­est in her based on her lack of inter­est in his star­dom. This is one of the two main story lines. The other sto­ry­line is about a boy and his two younger sis­ters who are on the move. They are with­out par­ents, and it appears they are in dan­ger of being split up in the social service/foster care/adoption system.

To me, this book was good. I enjoyed it. It has some good, sweet romance and a lit­tle sus­pense. It def­i­nitely held my inter­est, and if you’re look­ing for a good, quick read, I would rec­om­mend this one. If you’re look­ing for some­thing deeper or that has more char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, or if you’re look­ing for a book where you really miss the char­ac­ters after you fin­ish read­ing, I’d say skip this one for now and save it for a day at the beach!

Last night, Jason tried to turn the tv on, and noth­ing hap­pened. It died. Unfor­tu­nately, it hap­pened just in time for all the new sea­son pre­miers and right before win­ter (and lots of inside time). It couldn’t have hap­pened dur­ing the sum­mer when there was noth­ing on, huh? K is pretty sure that Grandpa will know how to fix it when he comes for a visit this week­end, but I’m not so sure.

When Jason and I talked about it, we decided that we were going to try to take advan­tage of this time. I want to read more, sew a lit­tle, and orga­nize! I know sev­eral fam­i­lies that either don’t have tvs or watch very lit­tle. I’m excited to see how my qual­ity of life will change with­out the tv as an option.

A while ago, I wrote a post about donat­ing blood while breast­feed­ing.  Recently, I real­ized that it had again been a bit too long between dona­tions, and when I men­tioned that fact to a friend, she said that it was okay, because I have an excuse (mean­ing my two boys).  Yes, I do have an excuse for not donat­ing every 8 weeks, and some­times I use it, but I really don’t feel good about doing that.

When I was 18, I went to a blood drive and wanted to donate.  I had low iron, and I wasn’t able to donate.  I was actu­ally very upset.  I tried again a cou­ple months later, and I had my first suc­cess­ful dona­tion.  When I went off to col­lege, I decided to give it another try.  I found the blood bank at our local hos­pi­tal, and I made an appoint­ment.  Again, I had low iron and was turned away.  I worked hard to main­tain my iron count, and I tried again.  After that point, I was able to donate each time I had an appoint­ment.  In Jan­u­ary of 2000, I decided that I wanted to get my naval pierced (yes, this really does relate ).  The rea­son this was a big deal to me at the time was because after a pierc­ing, I was under the impres­sion that I would not be allowed to donate blood for 12 months.  Although, look­ing at the Red Cross’ web­site for eli­gi­bil­ity, it appears that is not always the case.  I’m not sure whether this is a recent change or if it’s always been this way.  This is actu­ally news to me.  So, get­ting back to my story, I decided to make one last appoint­ment to donate blood before I got the pierc­ing and had to take a year off.

The day after my dona­tion, I was sit­ting in the university’s din­ing hall with some friends and acquain­tances.  I was wear­ing my new blood dona­tion t-shirt I had received the day before, and out of (seem­ingly) nowhere, this guy I didn’t know very well at all says to me, “Thank you.”  I asked him, “What?  Thanks for what?”  He said, “Thank you for sav­ing lives.  Sav­ing lives like mine.”  Still con­fused, I just looked at him.  He said, “I see you have a blood bank shirt on, and you have a nee­dle mark on your arm.  You just donated blood, didn’t you?”  I answered that I had.  He showed me the back of his hand.  It was marked with sev­eral scars.  He then told me that he had a health con­di­tion that required him to get numer­ous blood trans­fu­sions to save his life.  I was really taken aback.  I donated blood, because I knew it was a good thing to do, but I had never known any­one to actu­ally need blood in an emer­gency sit­u­a­tion.  He said, “So, any­way, I just wanted you to know that it’s peo­ple like you who save my life when I need blood.”  It was a very pow­er­ful expe­ri­ence espe­cially since the day that hap­pened was the day I had intended to get my naval pierced.  I chose not to do it that day.  I did, how­ever, do it a year later.  Reread­ing the story, I feel more than a lit­tle bad that that expe­ri­ence affected me only enough to delay my plans for a year.

I con­tin­ued to donate blood periodically/semi-regularly over the years.  In 2005, I got preg­nant, and I again stopped donat­ing blood.  After hav­ing K, I was nurs­ing and assumed, instead of check­ing, that I would con­tinue to be unable to donate.  I got preg­nant with A in 2006, and after he was born, I started to do a lit­tle research.  The research was prompted by a cou­ple things.  One, I had been a reg­u­lar dona­tor before my preg­nancy and nurs­ing days and I was anx­ious to get back to it.  The other thing was that a friend of mine had a baby just a month before A was born, and after her baby was born, she had a retained pla­centa.  Because of this, she lost a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of her blood, she had sev­eral trans­fu­sions, she had surgery, and she nearly died.  (Recently, another friend went through this same sit­u­a­tion but to a less sig­nif­i­cant degree.)  Again, hear­ing the story of some­one who had needed donated blood brought to my mind the impor­tance of donating.

I know that not every­one can or should donate blood.  That isn’t the rea­son for my post.  I don’t want any­one to feel guilty or pushed into doing some­thing that is not healthy for them.  How­ever, if donat­ing blood is some­thing you’ve been inter­ested in doing or some­thing you’ve done in the past but haven’t done for a while, I’d like to think that maybe this post is the lit­tle bit of incen­tive you’ve been wait­ing for.  As I said before, I’m past due for my dona­tion.  Jason and I had been using blood dona­tion time as a date, but we haven’t been able to work out (grand­par­ent) child­care to do it for a while.  I may have to just get over wait­ing for the per­fect sit­u­a­tion to present itself and make it happen.

Well, like I said last month, I don’t have a night­stand. There’s one on Jason’s side of the bed, but we don’t have books on that one either. I just have my books all over the house. There are a cou­ple in our room, a cou­ple on the back of the couch, one behind the couch, one in my purse, one on my end table, and tons down­stairs on our bookshelves.

Last month, I was read­ing The Breast­feed­ing Answer Book, Reclaim­ing Nick, and Hap­pi­ness Sold Sep­a­rately. I have made some good progress in the Breast­feed­ing Answer Book. I read Reclaim­ing Nick and the two other books in the series, Tam­ing Rafe and Find­ing Stephanie. I did not fin­ish Hap­pi­ness Sold Sep­a­rately. It fell behind our couch, and I sort of for­got about it. Whoops. I did start it, though, and it’s pretty good from what I remember.

In the last month, I also dis­cov­ered Paper­Back­Swap and Book­Mooch. I wouldn’t say that I am obsessed with them, but they are so fun! I put 20 of my books on the sites (10 on each) and so far, I’ve received 4 books with a 5th on the way. I also thought I would try a swap with any­one on here who wants a book that I’ve read, but so far no one has taken me up on my offer. Since I wrote the post, I have decided, I will just give those books away, so if you want one, let me know. If you have any you’d like to swap, I’m open to offers, but I guess it’s now a giveaway!

I have a trip com­ing up in about 1 1/2 weeks, so my read­ing list is a bit more ambi­tious this month. I have some high hopes that I will be able to read a lot on my trip. So, here is my list for October:

See­ing and Savor­ing Jesus Christ by John Piper (from Paper­Back­Swap)- I was look­ing through avail­able books on Paper­Back­Swap, and I saw this one. I hadn’t heard any­thing about it, but if it’s John Piper, I fig­ured there’s a pretty good chance it’s got qual­ity content.

Break­ing Free by Beth Moore (from Paper­Back­Swap)- My friend from col­lege pur­chased this study, and she has done it sev­eral times. I love Beth Moore, so I fig­ured if my friend can do the study 5+ times and find it valu­able, I would prob­a­bly enjoy the book.

Mid­wives by Chris Boh­jalian (from Book­Mooch)- This is a book I had heard about, but I’m not quite sure what I will think of it. It’s a sub­ject I have pretty strong feel­ings on (mid­wives and home­births). I sup­pose it could really go either way.

The Mem­ory Keeper’s Daugh­ter by Kim Edwards (from Book­Mooch)- I was in Tar­get wan­der­ing around one night after a stress­ful evening try­ing to put A to sleep. I picked up this book and read the back of it. I had actu­ally for­got­ten about it for quite a while, but when I was trad­ing away my books, I decided to look it up.

Wild Goose Chase by Mark Bat­ter­son (received from Monica’s give­away on her site Paper Bridges)- I actu­ally found this give­away last month when check­ing out oth­ers’ lists.

Water for Ele­phants by Sara Gruen (bor­row­ing it from the library)- After hear­ing about this one for so long, I decided to find out what all the talk is about.

A Tree Grows in Brook­lyn by Betty Smith (don’t have it yet, but will be get­ting it from the library and hope to be a part of Octo­ber Book Club on 5minutesforbooks.com)- I have heard about this book, but I don’t know any­thing about it. Maybe it’s time I start learn­ing what the clas­sics are all about!

The Prob­lem with Breast­feed­ing by James Akre (bor­rowed from a friend)- She said this book is a must read. I guess I’ll find out.

Don’t for­get to check out www.5minutesforbooks.com for a list of peo­ple who have shared what they are read­ing this month!

Wel­come to the Sep­tem­ber Breast­feed­ing Car­ni­val! Thanks for vis­it­ing, and be sure to read all the way to the end of my post so you can visit oth­ers who have shared their thoughts on Learn­ing to Breast­feed.

When I was preg­nant with my first child, I knew I wanted to breast­feed. I did some read­ing. I searched the inter­net for what I felt were infor­ma­tive arti­cles. By the time my breast­feed­ing class at the hos­pi­tal rolled around I felt pretty con­fi­dent. My con­fi­dence increased when I went to the class. She didn’t tell me one thing in an almost two hour class that I didn’t already know! I knew I was going to be able to do it. As a sort of insur­ance, I found a breast­feed­ing forum/message board and asked if there was any­thing else I should do to be pre­pared or informed. The answers were pretty run-of-the-mill. “Just keep on going!” “Don’t let any­one talk you into quit­ting.” “You can do it!” I knew that I was set.

When K was born, I had a bit of a sur­prise. Maybe shock is a bet­ter word. He was born nearly 4 weeks early and he wouldn’t latch. He looked at my breast. He half-heartedly opened his mouth. Then, he fell asleep. What?!? This wasn’t the plan. He was sup­posed to know what to do, because I had done my part to get informed about breast­feed­ing. Well, after three days in the hos­pi­tal, we were dis­charged. I had a nip­ple shield and a baby who ate for 45–60 min­utes every 3 hours. Not exactly fit­ting my plan.

For­tu­nately, my mom had breast­fed both myself (for around 18 months) and my brother (for nearly 3 years). She was an amaz­ing sup­port. She kept telling me, “Trust your­self. You know best. You know what is right for you and your baby.” She got up with me for the mid­dle of the night feed­ings and held K after­wards until he had his burp and could fall back asleep. She vis­ited with me when I thought I was too tired to do another feed­ing. She was won­der­ful, and that was a major com­po­nent for my suc­cess. I am sure of it.

When she left and I was home alone with my baby, I began to doubt myself, so I went back to the mes­sage board where I had asked for help so many weeks prior. I began post­ing ques­tion after ques­tion after ques­tion. I got won­der­ful sup­port, and I got great infor­ma­tion. There was one per­son in par­tic­u­lar on that mes­sage board who I still feel a debt of grat­i­tude toward. Her name was Joan, and she was a mod­er­a­tor of the breast­feed­ing forum. Sure, other peo­ple would answer my ques­tion, but I didn’t feel like I had the real answer until I heard from Joan. Over the weeks and months, I gained con­fi­dence, and I also gained a friend­ship. Joan is still one of my close on-line friends. She and I have kept in touch over the past few years, and when a friend of mine had a baby who had nurs­ing trou­bles (over­sup­ply and over­ac­tive let­down, some­thing I knew very lit­tle about) Joan was avail­able over the phone to help her out, too. I also began read­ing www.kellymom.com dur­ing any spare moment I had. I loved that web­site. It was so easy to nav­i­gate and so easy to read and under­stand. It is where I got the bulk of my early breast­feed­ing knowledge.

Almost two years later, when I had my sec­ond son, I was pretty con­fi­dent again. I had been through so much with K that I thought I should have it under con­trol. But, as almost any­one who has breast­fed knows, every baby is dif­fer­ent. With A, I had dif­fer­ent issues, and again I turned to www.kellymom.com and a sup­port­ive on-line com­mu­nity to help me get through the first weeks that were tough.

Now, I’ve been nurs­ing K for almost 35 months, and I’ve been tan­dem nurs­ing K and A for 14 months. I feel like each day I can learn some­thing about breast­feed­ing whether it be from a book, a web­site, a friend, another nurs­ing momma, or one of my kids. I think it’s one of those things where you can keep learn­ing more and more, but I’m not sure that you can ever say that you have “learned to breast­feed.” To me, it’s a jour­ney more than a destination.

Check out these blogs for more thoughts on Learn­ing to Breast­feed (updated through­out the day):

• BreastfeedingMums.com
• Breastfeeding123.com
• Hobomama.blogspot.com
• Breastfeeding.blog.motherwear.com
• KateWicker.com
• Babyfingers.blogspot.com
• StopDropandBlog.com
• NurturingNotes.blogspot.com

Right now, I have two sons.  Both are at the age where they reg­u­larly have melt­downs or tantrums when they don’t get what they want.  Luck­ily, K is get­ting to the age where he can under­stand some­times when he doesn’t get what he wants.  He doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily like it, but he can under­stand that some­times things just can’t hap­pen in a way that he wants them to hap­pen.  Unfor­tu­nately, A is still pretty young and we’re not to that stage of under­stand­ing the whys and why nots of deci­sion mak­ing.  How­ever, his tantrums are often pretty short lived, so that is a plus.

To be hon­est, this is one stage that I didn’t ever antic­i­pate.  I thought about what would hap­pen when they were both nurs­ing and how to han­dle that.  I thought about what I would do when A became mobile and wanted to take K’s toys.  I thought about what I would do when we were at the mall and one child went left and the other went right.  I just didn’t think about hav­ing them both be in the tantrum stage at the same time.  Whoops.  I wish I would have thought more about this stage so I could have had some ideas on how to pro­ceed when it arrived.  Instead, I’ve had to take each day as it comes and learn from the one before.

Right now, K’s tantrums or melt­downs tend to hap­pen when he is hun­gry or tired.  Gen­er­ally, when he starts to yell or cry, my first thought is when did he last sleep (and how was the sleep qual­ity) and when did he last eat.  If either of those is con­tribut­ing to the issue, I try to remem­ber that.  Of course, it doesn’t excuse a tantrum, but it does put the cause into per­spec­tive.  He’s pretty seri­ous about being mad, but I have to admit that I have a pretty hard time keep­ing a straight face when he starts to jump up and down and wave his arms at me in an attempt to show me just how angry he is.   Unfor­tu­nately, if Jason and I don’t catch the tantrum early or if we don’t react in a con­struc­tive man­ner, it can go on for a while.  That is def­i­nitely the draw­back of an older child’s tantrums.

A on the other hand tends to explode into melt­down mode as soon as he wor­ries some­thing might not go his way.  In fact, today, he and K were play­ing in our play kitchen area.  A thought that K was tak­ing a toy from him when actu­ally I put it on the floor instead of let­ting it fall.  A turned toward K and had his mouth WIDE open in antic­i­pa­tion of a good, hard bite.  When he saw his toy on the floor, he just sat down and started play­ing with it.  Luck­ily, the tantrum was avoided.  Unfor­tu­nately, he is cur­rently in a phase when he hates, hates, HATES hav­ing his dia­per changed.  Some­times, all I have to do is move toward the dia­pers and he starts get­ting mad at me.  He is eas­ily dis­tracted though, so once the dia­per change is over, he’s happy again.  Yay!

Right now, I don’t think that I have a “good” or 100% effec­tive way of respond­ing to either one of them.  I’m not sure if I ever will.  I do think that par­ent­ing isn’t always about find­ing the most effec­tive or effi­cient way of deal­ing with a sit­u­a­tion.  I think it’s more impor­tant to respond in a way that is respect­ful of the child and myself.  I haven’t read the entire book, but I’ve seen Har­vey Karp on a few tv shows.  His book, The Hap­pi­est Tod­dler on the Block has some good tips.  Also, Eliz­a­beth Pant­ley has a book called The No Cry Dis­ci­pline Solu­tion.  I haven’t read the entire thing, but the one part of it that suck out to me was that a child will not learn from what you are say­ing once he/she is cry­ing.  I think part of par­ent­ing is seek­ing out solu­tions and then using what works.  For us, we haven’t found a fool­proof method, but that won’t keep me from con­tin­u­ing to look!

that you just do noth­ing? That has been me lately. It’s not like I have things to do that are school­work or work from a work out­side the home job, but I have so many things I want to do, I don’t know where to start. Let me list the projects I have in my head: purge unwanted stuff from my house, orga­nize the stuff that is left, fin­ish sewing quilt I started before K was born, start (and fin­ish) quilt for A, read any of the 15–20 books float­ing around in my head on a “to be read” list, send out 2 bills for the adver­tise­ments in my MOPS newslet­ter, put that load of laun­dry in the dryer that I washed and for­got about, spend more time read­ing my bible, clean the car­pets in my house, and a few other things that I can’t think of right now. A few years ago, Jason bought this book called some­thing about eat­ing a frog. It was a book about how to get things done. I think maybe I need to read and reread and re-reread that book. One more thing for my to do list!

I have been say­ing this for a while now, and I’m wait­ing for evo­lu­tion to start work­ing on this for me, but I think it’s prob­a­bly not going to hap­pen in my life­time. I sup­pose instead of wait­ing for my extra set of arms, I could look for other solu­tions to my prob­lems. Right now, the biggest rea­son I need (a.k.a. want) that extra set of arms is because A is want­ing to be held a LOT, and I’m try­ing to plan a birth­day party for Jason for this Saturday!

Last night, we were at Tar­get, and I had quite a few things to get. Just as we were in the pop aisle (as I write this, I’m cring­ing think­ing about all the high fruc­tose corn syrup sit­ting in my base­ment!), A decided that he was done with the cart. So, I am push­ing the huge orangey-red dou­ble cart from Tar­get, hold­ing A on one hip, try­ing to con­vince K not to take his seat­belt off and to stay in the cart, and try­ing to find the side of the 12-pack that has the han­dle on it. Why, Mr. Coke Man, do you put it on the shelf with the han­dle side down or to the side? I would love to see the han­dles on the TOP! Anyway…

So, as I’m doing that, i’m break­ing out in a sweat, and my heart is start­ing to pound. I’m hop­ing that I don’t drop either A or the 12-pack of Diet Coke with Lime that I man­aged to palm since I couldn’t find the han­dle. A decides that he’s done being held, and he flips his body down toward the ground. I threw the pop on my cart, and I grabbed him securely. Then, I thought, why am I not wear­ing him???

I cur­rently own two baby car­ri­ers. One is a Kozy Car­rier that I bought when K was about 7 months old. The other car­rier we own is an Ergo Car­rier. If you’re not a baby wear­ing, baby car­rier buy­ing per­son, you might won­der just how many car­ri­ers a mom might need. Well, for me, the answer is at least one more. The Kozy is great. I really like it, but I lent it to my cousin’s wife in June, and I’m hop­ing she’s get­ting a lot of use out of it. (Hmmm, maybe need to check on her and see how it’s going) So, I have my Ergo in my car with me most of the time. A really doesn’t like to be worn in back car­ries. I think he likes to see my face and feel closer to me. He also is pretty tall, so he’s not as easy to wear in the front car­ries as he used to be. That leaves me hip car­ries. The Kozy is a good hip car­rier, but right now mine’s not here. The Ergo, how­ever, doesn’t lend itself eas­ily to a hip carry. You have to unclip the straps and rearrange them. So, I think that instead of wait­ing on evo­lu­tion to give me my sec­ond set of arms, I should buy another car­rier!

Right now, I’m really inter­ested in the Etc. Sling. A friend of mine makes these, and they are very comfy and very rea­son­ably priced. The town where I live is not a huge baby­wear­ing hub, but in gen­eral, if you see a mom (or dad) wear­ing a child, there’s prob­a­bly a 60% chance they are using the Etc. Sling that Erin made. Maybe in a week or two, I will have a new post rav­ing about my new sling! I’m hop­ing.

I love to read, and I have loved it as long as I can remem­ber. Accord­ing to my mom, I’ve been read­ing since I was 4 years old. I don’t think I remem­ber that, but I do know that the library, books, and read­ing were a major part of my youth. I used to go to the library every Mon­day after school and exchange my books. I would sit there and read until about 4:45 when my dad got off work and met me there. Gen­er­ally, in that time, I would have picked out 8 books (1 for each day of the week plus one for the time at the library) and returned the one I had just fin­ished. Once I got into col­lege, my pace slowed down, but I still read when I could. The day that I turned in my master’s inde­pen­dent study, I went to the library to cel­e­brate. I checked out 4–5 books and read for the next week straight, I think.

Recently, I’ve got­ten a lit­tle claus­tro­pho­bic with all the stuff we have in our house, so I decided that I should list some of my books on some book swap­ping sites. I listed books on Book­Mooch and Paper­Back­Swap. The idea of the sites (with a few dif­fer­ences of course) is that you list books you’ve read. Some­one else requests them and you send your books to peo­ple that want/need them. Then, you find some­one who has books you want/need and you request those books. Of course, the books I want right now are also ones that 300+ oth­ers also want, so we’ll see how soon I get them. Haha…

But, why should I save all my swap­ping for peo­ple I don’t know and have no con­tact with? Any­one wanna swap with me? I’m putting 5 books up for a swap. If you want one of mine, offer me one of yours. I’ll pay my ship­ping, and you pay yours. I’m going to list my books, books I have liked in the past (to give you an idea of what my tastes are), and books I want now. If you think we could make a match, either leave me a com­ment or e-mail me at casey at berbs dot us.

First, books I have and want to give away:

A Fam­ily Apart by Joan Low­ery Nixon– This was a book I had to read for one of my ele­men­tary edu­ca­tion classes in col­lege. I remem­ber it being a good book, and I remem­ber being some­what tempted to read the rest of the series (The Orphan Train Adven­tures). It is a book that is appro­pri­ate for kids in the upper ele­men­tary grades. I would say it would be good for an advanced 3rd grader or an aver­age fourth or fifth grader. There are some themes in the book that are some­what intense for kids of this age (orphans, family/sibling sep­a­ra­tion, fam­i­lies that do not adopt the chil­dren out of love but are look­ing for labor or ser­vants) so be aware of that if you are intend­ing to give this book as a gift or to some­one younger than 14ish (?).

A Time to Kill by John Grisham– This is a great book. It’s a crime drama. It’s about a man who kills two men who raped his young daugh­ter. This book isn’t in great con­di­tion. I got it off the library swap table. It has the library book tag on the side and the bar­code on the back. The bind­ing is bro­ken and page 117–118 falls out. It’s def­i­nitely read­able, but it’s not fresh. It’s a book worth read­ing though.

The Wit­ness by Dee Hen­der­son– I read Dee Henderson’s books The O’Malley Series and The Uncom­mon Heroes series. I really enjoyed those books. I thought The O’Malley Series were her best books though. This book is good, too, but I didn’t like it as well as the O’Malleys. I think that I got so attached to those char­ac­ters I missed them when I was read­ing this book. It’s a Chris­t­ian sus­pense book. There’s a lit­tle romance in it, too, if I remem­ber cor­rectly, but it’s def­i­nitely PG.

The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaugh­lin and Nicola Kraus– This book is light chick lit. It’s about a woman who becomes one of “those” nan­nies to a wealthy New York fam­ily. The job starts out as car­ing for one small child. She ends up becom­ing much more than just a nanny. It reminds me a lit­tle of The Devil Wears Prada Nanny Edition.

Every Storm by Lori Wick– I read this book quite a while ago, so I’m not all that clear on the details of it any­more. I remem­ber some­thing about a plane crash and that’s about it. It’s Lori Wick. That should say it all. The main char­ac­ter is sweet and maybe a lit­tle unre­al­is­ti­cally per­fect, and there’s romance in it. Also, this is Chris­t­ian fic­tion and PG. It’s a good book. It’s hard­cover in case that mat­ters, too.

Books I have read in the past and liked:

See the list above. I liked all those. I have read books by Susan May War­ren, John Grisham, Dean Koontz, James Pat­ter­son, Lori Wick, Anita Shreve, Dee Hen­der­son, Dr. Sears, Mary Doria Rus­sell, John Piper, Henri Nouwen, and Beth Moore.

Books I am look­ing for right now:

I’m par­tic­u­larly look­ing for

You: The Owner’s Man­ual by Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

Ani­mal, Veg­etable, Mir­a­cle by Bar­bara Kingsolver

The Shack by William P. Young

You can try me on Chris­t­ian fic­tion and non-fiction, but I’m not inter­ested in the Bev­erly Lewis/Amish type of Chris­t­ian fiction.

Ready, set, SWAP!

I’ve been blog­ging on this site for over a year now, and I’ve been read­ing oth­ers’ blogs for even longer. Only recently, though, have I really started par­tic­i­pat­ing in the com­ments and give­aways on oth­ers’ blogs. Appar­ently, I’ve had a great streak of luck, because I’ve won 3 give­aways in the last few weeks. So, I want to take a minute to say thanks to those blog­gers for their fun con­tests. Thank you, 5 Min­utes for Books, for the book, Shop Your Closet. I have big plans for my closet! Thank you, Heather, for the lip­stick. I love it, and I’m so glad I took a chance on the Rais­in­berry. It’s so fun. Thank you, Mon­ica, for the book, Wild Goose Chase. I have a lot of read­ing I want to do, but I think this may make its way up to the top of the list rather quickly.

I have enjoyed read­ing new blogs, and of course, there’s always an extra thrill that comes with win­ning some­thing. Hmmm, maybe some time it will be my turn to do a giveaway!