(If I can get a lit­tle help from my tech­nol­ogy mas­ter hus­band over the week­end, I will replace this sen­tence with the Spring Read­ing Thing button.)

Kat­rina at Cal­lipid­dar days is host­ing a read­ing chal­lenge!  Check out her page to find out how you can be a part of the challenge.

Because I love to read more than almost any­thing else, when I have an excuse to read more and read LOTS it gets me very excited.    The Spring Read­ing Thing goes from March 20 to June 20.  I am already par­tic­i­pat­ing in the TBR Chal­lenge, so my list for this chal­lenge will include those books, too.

Gen­er­ally, I am plan­ning that each book will take me about 2 weeks (although it has proved to be much shorter in the past), so for this chal­lenge, I am aim­ing for 2 books per month.  One is from my TBR list and one is a new book.
Here is my list:

1.  Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet

2.  Moth­er­ing Your Nurs­ing Tod­dler by Norma Jean Bumgarner

3.  Mem­ory Keeper’s Daugh­ter by Kim Edwards

4.  Fire­fly Lane by Kristin Hannah

5.  How Wean­ing Hap­pens by Diane Bengson

6.  How to Talk so Kids Will Lis­ten By Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish

This is prob­a­bly pretty opti­mistic for me, but I’ll take any excuse to read more!

This is a monthly car­ni­val from the won­der­ful peo­ple at 5MinutesForBooks.
You can par­tic­i­pate pretty much how­ever you want as long as your post is some­what related to books. You can post a pic­ture of your list of books to be read. You can review a book you read last month. You can make a list of books you hope to read this month. You can list the books you hope that Santa will leave under your tree or in your stock­ing. It’s really up to you! It’s def­i­nitely one of my favorite posts of the month. I enjoy going through the other posts and read­ing what oth­ers are rec­om­mend­ing and read­ing. Gen­er­ally, I try to visit every web­site listed. I don’t always leave a com­ment, but I think I usu­ally get through all of the peo­ple who leave their infor­ma­tion in the Mr. Linky in the first 3–4 days after the car­ni­val is posted.

So, on to my read­ing list. Since Jaosn and I are not get­ting each other Christ­mas presents, I don’t have a large list of books I’m hop­ing to unwrap in the next sev­eral days. I have a few though that I have been work­ing on for a while and would like to fin­ish. I also have a cou­ple I’ve been mean­ing to start for a while.

To fin­ish:

Eat. Pray. Love by Eliz­a­beth Gilbert– I find this book inter­est­ing, although I almost exclu­sively dis­agree with every­thing she says in her Pray sec­tion. I started it quite a while ago, and it’s been my slow and steady book for those times when I have a short amount of time to read. Her chap­ters are short and eas­ily manageable.

In Defense of Food by Michael Pol­lan– It seems a lit­tle ridicu­lous that we need to defend food. Pol­lan traces the his­tory of the nutri­tion­ism move­ment and the desire of peo­ple to know exactly what they should or should not eat to a point where it’s bro­ken down into nutri­ents. Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.

To read this month:

Some­thing Bor­rowed by Emily Griffin

Some­thing Blue by Emily Griffin

and hope­fully any of the four Book­Mooch books I’ve got com­ing in the next cou­ple weeks!

Through the years, I’ve always loved read­ing. I’ve read more some years than oth­ers. This seems to be a pretty good year for me, but I’d always like to have more time for read­ing. Some day, it will hap­pen, right? Please?? Any­way, for a long time, I found a lot of sat­is­fac­tion in read­ing a lot of books. I read vora­ciously. I read every­thing. I read any­thing I picked out. In the past year, I have found that I don’t find as much sat­is­fac­tion in that as I used to. Now, I’m really look­ing for a book that means some­thing to me. Maybe since my read­ing time is much more lim­ited, I want each book to be an expe­ri­ence. I want to take some­thing from it. I want to be a dif­fer­ent per­son because of it. I want to know the char­ac­ters. I want to appre­ci­ate the style. I don’t sim­ply want to fin­ish it.

This is part of the rea­son that I was so dis­ap­pointed when I spent an evening read­ing a book from our local library the other day. It had the promise to be SO good! When I read the back, I was hooked. I brought it home, and I wanted to devour it. I knew that I would fin­ish it all in one evening. Unfor­tu­nately, after about the first three or 4 chap­ters, I started skim­ming. Then, I started really skim­ming. By the end, I was pri­mar­ily read­ing only the first and last page of each chap­ter with a glance to the other pages. Then, I read the end­ing, and I thought “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!??! That’s how it ended??? Ugh.”

Now, for those of you who are won­der­ing what the name and/or who the author of
this book is, I’m not going to say. What? Yes, I know. The thing is that books are so indi­vid­ual. A person’s tastes are so dif­fer­ent. I don’t want to say that a book is ter­ri­ble and have peo­ple not read it because I didn’t like it. I am per­fectly will­ing to give rec­om­men­da­tions of books I enjoyed and con­sid­ered to be good, but I don’t think it’s fair for me to label a book as “bad” for some­one else. I love books and writ­ing and read­ing too much to do that for anyone.

Heather at Not a DIY Life tagged me for a book meme.

These are the rules
1. Grab the near­est book.
2. Open the book to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sen­tence.
4. Post the text of the next two to five sen­tences.
5. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book or the intel­lec­tual one. Pick the Clos­est.
6. Tag five peo­ple to do the same

The clos­est book I have to me is called Artemis Speaks: V.B.A.C. Sto­ries & Nat­ural Child­birth Infor­ma­tion writ­ten and com­piled by Nan Koehler. I have no idea what I’m going to get on page 56.

“Most obste­tri­cians use tech­nol­ogy defen­sively in VBAC labors, in spite of the fact that there is no more jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for rou­tine inter­ven­tion than in any other labor. If a hor­i­zon­tal scar sep­a­rates, it does not cause mas­sive hem­mor­age, so there is no need for pro­phy­lac­tic IV. The uterus usu­ally con­tin­ues to con­tract nor­mally, and an elec­tronic fetal mon­i­tor will not pick up a scar sep­a­ra­tion.“
There you have it. I did want to break rule #5 by the way, but I didn’t do it.

I’m sup­posed to pick 5 peo­ple to do this meme, but instead I’m going to say if you do it, leave a com­ment and I’ll come read your meme.

It’s time for my favorite car­ni­val! It’s the 5 Min­utes for Books monthly “What’s on Your Night­stand?” car­ni­val. Yay!

This is so hard for me. I have so many books I want to read. I have told my hus­band sev­eral times recently that there are just too many books and too lit­tle time. Last month, I spent most of my read­ing time read­ing the Twi­light series by Stephe­nie Meyer. It was okay. Yes, that was a lot of time to allo­cate to some­thing that is just okay. Gen­er­ally, I’m not the type of per­son who sticks with some­thing and fol­lows it through if I start to lose inter­est, so I decided that I was going to read all 4 books no mat­ter what. Also, I was curi­ous. I liked some of the char­ac­ters, and I liked the first book quite a bit, so I wanted to see how she wrapped it up. It seemed to me like there was a LOT of room for another book in the series and that it wasn’t really wrapped up. I know the movie just came out, but I don’t go to movies so I most likely won’t be see­ing it for quite some time if at all.

This month, I’m back to my pile of books from Book­Mooch and Paper­back­Swap. I’m also think­ing a lot about home­school, par­ent­ing, and breast­feed­ing tod­dlers, so maybe I’ll read some of those types of books, too.

Do you have any home­school­ing, par­ent­ing or breast­feed­ing books you’d recommend?

This is a quote from the book of 2 Samuel in the old tes­ta­ment of the bible. Through Octo­ber and Novem­ber, I was attend­ing a bible study at my church study­ing the life of David. One of the day’s home­work was about this verse. “and David was danc­ing before the Lord with all his might.” At first, I read over it and blew past it. Then, when I went back, I thought about how it must feel to be doing some­thing with all his might. Then, I thought about how he was prais­ing the Lord with all his might. To me, that sounds like a very beau­ti­ful pic­ture. Although, I’m sure to some of those around him, it prob­a­bly looked more strange than any­thing else.

One of the ques­tions in the study was “When was the last time you saw some­one doing some­thing with all their might?” or some­thing sim­i­lar. I thought about it for a while, and I really didn’t have many exam­ples. The one thing that came to mind was think­ing about how ath­letes cel­e­brate after win­ning a cham­pi­onship game. See­ing them jump­ing and scream­ing and cry­ing and just lay­ing on the ground in awe is what came to my mind. Then, I won­dered when was the last time I did some­thing with all my might. I apol­o­gize in advance to any­one who thinks this is more than they want to know. The last time, I did some­thing with all my might (here’s your last chance to stop read­ing) was child­birth and push­ing. Most of you other moms who have been through labor know what I’m talk­ing about, right? That was great, because it was for my kids. Of course, I would do all that I could for them.

So, again, I was think­ing, think­ing… This month, I com­mit­ted to NaBloPoMo. I missed two days, but I have def­i­nitely blogged on days when I would rather have skipped. I men­tioned at the end of last year that Jason’s sis­ter is doing a pho­tog­ra­phy project that involves tak­ing a pic­ture every day for a year. She’s shar­ing them online at her Flickr account. It’s called Project 365. It got me wish­ing that I had some sort of neat project that I could com­mit to like that. I’m actu­ally still wish­ing that, and since it’s com­ing to the end of the year (can you believe it?!?!?), I’ve started think­ing about it again. Unfor­tu­nately, last year, I didn’t do much about these thoughts. I’m hop­ing and pray­ing that this year, I will make a com­mit­ment to some­thing. I’d like to do some­thing mean­ing­ful and chal­leng­ing. For a year? Maybe not. I’m not com­mit­ted to a year, but I would like to do some­thing that stretches and chal­lenges me. Maybe, I can do some­thing with all my might.

This is a blog car­ni­val from 5 Min­utes for Books. It’s held the 4th Tues­day of each month, and it’s a blast! I get a lot of great rec­om­men­da­tions and a few new blogs for my feed reader each month by click­ing through to oth­ers’ posts.

What

Last month, I set forth a nearly impos­si­ble read­ing goal for myself. Instead of read­ing all the books faith­fully on my list, I got side tracked. I read the first two books in the Twi­light series, Twi­light and New Moon. I will be com­pletely hon­est this month and I’ll admit that right now the other two books are the pri­or­ity on my read­ing list. I’m wait­ing for Eclipse to be returned to the library and then I’ll read Break­ing Dawn right after that. Right now, I’m read­ing Eat. Love. Pray. and I have to admit, I’m not lov­ing it. I’m def­i­nitely look­ing for a diver­sion. So, if any­one knows who has that copy of Eclipse that is 2 weeks over­due, tell them to take it back! Nor­mal read­ing plans of way too many books in way too few days will be resumed next month.

A cou­ple months ago, I found Paper Bridges through a car­ni­val from 5 Min­utes for Books. I clicked around her site and found sev­eral inter­est­ing posts. One of them was a book give­away. I entered and won this book. She has another book give­away going now. If you have ever heard of or read For Men Only or For Women Only, you might enjoy hav­ing this book even if it’s not directed at you. If you have (or will soon have) a teenage boy, you def­i­nitely will enjoy this book. Click on over and check it out!

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!

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!