Bibliophile

I am so stealing this from Soupy. I've been thinking that I need to make a list of books I need/want to read, so this shall help get me started. The most popular gift to give me is a gift card to the nearest Barnes & Noble (I am currently in the possession of two from my latest birthday). I love to wander into the store knowing I will walk out new stories in hand. But I often find that all those books on my mental list escape me when I am going up and down the aisles, and it is only later that I remember the books I meant to get. Several are on this list. Thirty seven down, sixty three to go.

"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. "

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien; I am such a nerd, but I love these books. I get lost in them
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling ; I heart this series, it's not just for kids and it just wraps you up in another world. Love Harry Potter!
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible --some
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare -- perhaps not the complete, but quite a few
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden; I am mildly embarrassed to admit this, but I read through this under the pretense that I was really reading a true to life memoir. I was pissed when I got to the end and realized it was a work of fiction. Still love it though.
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown; I don't generally enjoy modern or mystery books, this is an exception to the rule
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery ; what little girl hasn't?
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens ; on more than one occasion, always for school
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ; starting this one tonight!
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom ; heard many good things about this one but have never made time to read it myself
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo ; true, it can be longwinded here and there but this is still one of my all time favorites. If you can't handle the book see the play!

Stone soup

Sure, he can say no to cheese but rocks? Yes please.

The Wedding

I think this will be a short on the words big on the pictures kind of post. We had a very successful weekend, much more successful than the last time we attempted to attend a wedding. Then again, BL was the best man so we really had to make this one work. The MR beyond impressed us with his staying power. The first day was a little rough (and clingy), but the day of he spent a whole four hours of well behaved attendance at the wedding before retiring to the hotel with his Nana. He befriended all the little people he encountered, which was thrilling considering he doesn't get a whole lot of baby contact as of late. He also zoomed around like a mad man, had some cake, went up-down-and up some stairs again, and danced like a little goober. It was a really wonderful weekend and I am so very proud of my little man.

Congrats are in order

Go on over and congratulate Kristine on the birth of her beautiful baby boy Parker. Welcome to the world little one!

Here comes the flood

Not really, just in the literal sense. And I have more photos of the kiddo and water, so it works. We have a busy, busy weekend ahead of us. Tomorrow we will be heading out mid-morning and won't be back until Sunday, we've got a wedding that needs attending. BL's best friend (and his best man) is getting married on Saturday up in Redmond and BL is returning the favor by standing in as his best man. These guys have been best friends since they were wee little boys, so it should be a lot of fun and a very meaningful event for BL.

Being a part of the wedding party aside from just being a wedding guest means we need to be there early for any attendant pre-wedding festivities and rehearsals. Hopefully the MR manages well through all of this, I have the feeling he will be needing to endure some unusual changes to his schedule and there will be lots of new faces.

I am pretty much convinced that MR loves water in all forms now. We were just wasting time in the front yard tonight watching my dad water the plants when MR decided he wanted in on the action. He ended up stripped down to his diaper and shrieking with delight while he got hosed down. It's the little things I guess.

Wordless Wednesday- Clean Bean

Dada Day

So BL now officially has two Father's days under his belt. This one was significantly different from the one last year, but I think he enjoyed it nonetheless. This time last year the kiddo was still a wee worm of a baby, and I am pretty sure BL just spent the day reveling in the pure freedom of not dealing with a newborn and/or pants. Seeing as we currently live with my parents he had to wear pants this year. But I digress.

We had to split the day up a bit since we had not just BL to celebrate, but our two fathers as well. BL took the some time earlier this past week for himself so that he could have his own "Father's" day where he just got to veg out and eat junk while playing his video games. So having to share today wasn't too bad.

We spent the first half of the day with my family, going out to lunch at a restaurant on the Columbia River. Fortunately we had another gorgeous day here, so it was lovely to have a view of the water and some sunny skies to take a walk out under after our meal. We have been trying to encourage our kiddo to walk as much as possible now when we are out in public spaces, especially since he now has a proper fitting pair of shoes. Can you believe the kiddo wears a 6 1/2 wide shoe? He really is a big boy.

Lunch was good with a our little patron, we are pretty fortunate that all it takes for a good visit is his own share of grub and free access to a cup of water. There was also a little two year old boy sitting behind us, so he was happy to share some toys with his new friend as well.

The second half of the day was spent with BL's family, where we went and caught a movie and then had Mexican food for dinner. MR missed the movie but caught up with us for dinner. Again a very good little boy, and all it took was some beans and chips. We'll see what that looks like later.

I am glad we got to have a day to pamper BL because in the midst of everything crazy in our lives he always manages to take care of me and the kiddo. It's nice to return the favor. He is everything and more than what MR and I could ask for in his father. A great husband and a daddy to boot, Happy Father's day indeed.

Water water everywhere

Thank the gods, we are finally starting to get some sunny, shiny weather around here. True the temperature and climate has been worlds better here than it ever was in Spokane. Still, there have been far to many rainy days of late than should be acceptable in almost mid-June.

Today we have a couple of videos featuring the MR interacting with different forms of water. BL and the MR came to visit me for lunch Friday and we ended up having an impromptu picnic next to a little fountain in a park. MR was pretty thrilled with it and was equally pissed when we told him it was time to go. The pictures (and video) were taken on my phone- not too shabby. The video is pretty low-fi but this is what you get when filming via phone.

Then today we took a walk down a local nature trail pretty close to where we live. In one of our various incarnations as Vancouver residents we lived directly across from this path, we have many fond memories of it and were glad to be able to share it with the MR. We even ventured down into the creek that the trail follows. Again MR enjoyed the splashy goodness. He mostly enjoyed finding rocks to "gift" to me, then dropping them back in to watch them sploosh.

Catorce

Fourteen months old. Seriously? My baby, my boy, is fourteen months old now. He looks older and acts older, and I can't help but feel a little older myself lately with all the energy this guy expounds. Up the stairs, down the stairs, inside then outside. He's everywhere, and I am always trailing a few steps behind him. I love, love, love what a sweet little adventurer he has become. I can't think of anything cuter than when he kicks his heels into our hips as if to say 'Giddyup!' so that we will help him chase the other parent in his favorite game of tag. He does everything with a little extra thought now, most often with some form of premeditation tinged with impishness. He's such a goob.

He had his first big fall the other day. Every once and a while the kiddo will end up in our bed by the morning, and when this happens I will quietly ease myself out from next to him when I leave for my morning shower. I know that if I say something to BL to signal my absence either BL will make a noise and wake the MR or the MR will wake at my voice itself. So I have been playing an unsafe gamble that BL will be aware I am gone and/or MR will not stray to close or over the edge. I lost that bet the other morning when the kiddo did get too close to the edge and did roll off. My poor baby now has a few small bruises on his little cheek to show for my carelessness. Sure I didn't actively contribute to his tumble, but I also didn't work proactively to prevent it. I also know that this is only a sign of bumps and bruises to come. *Sigh*

Happy fourteen months, my big bruiser boy.

It's apparent you're a parent

...when the phrase, "Let's get that spaghetti out of your crotch now" comes out of your mouth and nobody raises an eyebrow.

Mister has a new favorite food

Missed connections

So this was supposed to be a post full of wonderful pictures from the wedding we attended today, with the three of us all dressed up and enjoying the company of friends. We did get all dressed up, we even got ourselves into the car, made it half way to the wedding site and... the kiddo had a meltdown. The poor guy, his mouth is a major construction zone at present. Not only does he have several molars growing in, but today we spotted his incisors poking through as well. So he managed well enough with our dressing him up and strapping him in for the ride, but enough was enough and he just let loose. We took into consideration the fact that we were still about an hour away from the wedding location, that we would really only be staying for an hour there, and then would have to face the two-hour drive back with this sad, sad little man. We turned around, which honestly didn't bother me. I enjoyed getting all dressed up (new dress and everything), and I would have enjoyed the outing, but the wedding was for one of BL's old friends not mine. I left the call up to him as to whether we continued on or turned around, but he too could see that the cost to MR (and us) was just not worth it. The saddest part of it all was knowing how much BL had been looking forward to catching up with old friends and sharing his sweet little boy with them. It's wonderful how proud BL is of our little boy, and I wish he could have had that opportunity. So no pictures, and no catching up. We came back home, traded our fancy duds for some comfy pajamas and just spent the rest of the day curled up with our kiddo.

Wordless Wednesday- Aloha