Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Being able to honestly say that the family reunion was fabulous is a beautiful thing, folks, because it was for my hubby’s side of the family.  I am seriously blessed in the in-law department–they are fun and easy going, and they LOVE kids.  (Of course, our teething toddler was being a stinker and kept JUST wanting Mommy, but they kept trying!)  There were activities and games and treats and snacks and kids swarming everywhere–28 between the ages of 1 and 16, to be precise.  We had a blast.  (And then we came home and had a rough couple of days, because my kids can be pretty monstrous after a series of late nights in a row–which is why it doesn’t happen very often. Thankfully, we survived.)

I missed yesterday because we were celebrating my son’s birthday with out-of-town family, and we’ll be spending a great deal more time with that family this week; I will therefore leave you with four things I love about my son and excuse myself from posts for the rest of the week.

1)His eyes.  The combination of blue, blue eyes and looonnngggg dark lashes is to die for.

2)His grit.  If he’s in the right frame of mind, he can stick with a project far longer than many children can do at barely four.

3)His sweetness.  He’s still a four-year-old boy, but he gives surprisingly gentle hugs to babies and toddlers.

4)His dimples.  Oh, the dimples.

Until next week, folks.  Happy Independence Day!

Not everyone can boast of creating a new form of poetry; Marilyn Singer, however, did just that.  She has three books of “Reverso Poems,” which are poems that are read top to bottom and then bottom to top, changing nothing but punctuation.  It might sound slightly odd, but it’s kind of an amazing way to show two points of view, if the poet is skillful enough, and Singer is.  True, some poems are incredible while others are just interesting, but the fact that she makes them all work is phenomenal.  Two of her collections–Mirror Mirror and Follow Follow–use characters from nursery rhymes and fairy tales, while Echo Echo works off of Greek Myths (Arachne and Athena are one of my favorite pairings). If you love words, you’ll want to read all three books.

Yesterday.