on the fourth: piggies and a princess

Sometimes I just don't want to get out of bed in the morning. The house is darkish and coldish and most days I'd rather stay put.

I remember one day recently when I didn't know if I could get up and do it all over again. You know the drill. All the getting of things for the little people. All the helping with stuff. All the listening to too much bickering and not enough kind, loving words.

I might have even said out loud, "Ug. I can't do this again." And then as quickly as I'd said that, a word popped into my head.

READ.

Read what? I'm sure there's lots of stuff I read throughout the day that I don't need to be reading (all those stupid blogs that just make me feel like I'm not doing a good enough job, written by those moms who pop out of bed, ready for the day!).

Read more with my kids.

That's it. We read every day. Mostly it's at bedtime or in the afternoon when our tanks seem to be running on empty and I'm just watching the clock tick-tocking away. And the kids seem to be done being around each other. And I seem to be done being around every living thing. When's dinner? When will Daddy be home? Is it bath time yet? Is it time for bed?

So when the kids woke up I told them that if I said "STORY TIME" that meant they had to stop what they were doing, run to their rooms and pick out a book to read together. Cate was thrilled. Oh, goody goody goody! She might have even hugged my leg. You'd think the poor kid is deprived or something.

We read lots of books that day. Piggies is a book that Dan and I bought when we were on a little trip to Santa Cruz the summer before Danny was born. I told him I picked out that book for him when he was still in my tummy. He smiled. And then we moved on so that I wouldn't receive any follow up questions (about the baby in my tummy stuff, not about the book)



The Paper Bag Princess is one of my favorites. It's even got a page missing. It's been loved.

Princess Elizabeth is going to marry Prince Ronald but he gets kidnapped by the dragon (after the dragon burned down the kingdom and left Elizabeth with only a paper bag to wear). Elizabeth manages to trick the dragon and get Prince Ronald freed.

He's not very nice to her though, since he's shallow and she's wearing a paper bag and all. Danny's favorite part is when Princess Elizabeth tells Ronald at the end, "You are a bum!" He deserved it. He was acting like a total bum. I think that's just the clean version of what the adult Elizabeth would have called the adult Ronald...if you know what I mean.

And then Cate climbed on the counter and kissed the book after I took a picture of it.

She's crazy.



I'm thankful that my kids like books and that we have oodles of them to read.

Reading books instead of bickering makes me happy. Pretty sure it makes my kids happy too.