Long time, no see! I’m back with a round-up of all the books I read last year, with a thought or two about each. Happy reading about reading!
FICTION…
Author: Elizabeth
Wife, mom, dabbling blogger. Trying to balance the never ending laundry and the never ending requests for snacks and snuggles from my little people.
Goodbye, 2023!
I feel like I’ve been so busy this year. Kids are growing and time is flying. Hardly any time or brain bandwidth for blogging. But here is a glimpse into what I’ve been up to all year.
We’ll start with baking….
Books of 2022
Nearly six months after finishing the last book on this list, I finally found enough time and motivation to finish up all the blurbs about why I chose to read each book and a final thought or two about each.
There are some really good ones in here. I hope my commentary helps you pick out your next read! …
How to Feed a Gecko When You Really Hate Crickets
Context #1: Why I Hate Crickets
In the Summer of 2012, there was a drought in Oklahoma. It was so dry that a certain parasite could not survive. Said parasite usually eats many, many cricket eggs in the early summer, but this year, all the crickets hatched in late summer. When I arrived on campus to begin my senior year of college, and on into the fall semester, basically until it got cold enough to freeze, I learned firsthand what a “plague” of insects is like. There were so many of them on the sidewalks that one could not physically avoid crunching them while walking or biking across campus. They swarmed around street lights at night. They somehow came into apartments through air vents. And the smell of their rotting corpses wafted across campus from the mass graves that happened to be created each time exterminators came through with pesticides.
One evening….
…but ya gotta have friends!
In which I talk once again about investing in one’s community, such that one can reap the benefits of said community, because it’s kind of a soapbox of mine, and I’ve not been on it lately, so here we go:
It was Rest Time on a Sunday. Justin and one kid were out running errands. One kid was watching TV. Two kids were napping. I made myself a cup of coffee and sat down on the couch with my book. A friend texted me, regarding how several families met at the park after church that day:
“We should do this more often!”
Yes, please!….
LTFP
(Leave Time for Poop)
Or, “You just can’t make this sh** up.”
I was going to be on time. I really was. Everything was ready, the diaper bag was packed, snacks and waters and wipes. We were actually going to get to the parking lot with enough minutes to unload the car, walk at a 3-year-old’s short legs’ pace, and be where we were supposed to be right on time, without hurrying, rushing, worrying, or needing to pray for green lights.
And then, as I picked up the baby to carry him to his car seat, an unmistakable smell reached my nose….
Miryamisms (age 6)
My precocious seven-year-old said a few hilarious things while she was six. If you’ve heard my importuning about this before, you’re about to hear it again: If you have a kid in your life, make a google doc in your phone that you can access at a moment’s notice, put the kid’s name as the title, and use it to record all their funny one-liners and surprisingly deep insights with the utmost exactitude. You’ll thank yourself, perhaps through tears of laughter, at the end of the year.
Click to visit the post to read the quotes!
Luke at Four
Hello, there! It is summer: smack dab in the middle of it. It’s hot. Also, the most ironic thing I’ve ever written was in my last post, when I said, “I think everyone is done being sick now.” The universe certainly took that as a challenge. I cannot even begin to explain the torrent of covid, strep throat, pink eye, ear infections, and other unidentified viruses we have experienced over the past two months in this household. So many plans canceled. So much sleep lost. So many doctor appointments. I am thankful for the age of the video visit, for those visual-diagnosis ailments, at least.
I don’t dare….
Young Baby Plus Sick Toddler
…equals I have been getting absolutely nothing done. For all of February and half of March, I’ve been achieving bare minimums, but barely. We dipped into some freezer meals (which is why I bothered to freeze the freezer meals, so, Thank you, Past Me, for doing that, at least). I like to meal plan and make my grocery lists in [usually two separate] uninterrupted chunks of focus. When I am interrupted, it takes me significantly longer to do these tasks, because I’ll forget where I was and have to redo a few steps. When I don’t have any time when I might not be interrupted, I just….
Birth Story, #4
Where has the time gone? At 7 weeks old, my sweet little guy is more than halfway through his “newborn” time. I’m trying to soak up all the snuggles.
But today, I have his birth story for you.
You know, I never was into birth stories until I wrote my first one (about my third birth experience), and then I got interested in what different details women choose to include when telling theirs, as well as all the very different ways a birth can go. I’ve retrospectively written about births #1 and #2 since then as well. If you’re not a birth story person, feel free to skip. Details are more or less uncensored. FYI.
–
This was my shortest full-term pregnancy yet….