books, books, books

I remember when I was little falling asleep with a book in my hand. In the car I would read in the dark catching as many words as I could between street lights and when we ran out of street lights I'd be so let down. I remember my first book light, I could read all the way to where ever. I LOVED READING. I still do. I can remember feeling the wind blow through my hair as I stood on a prairie, if only in a book. I remember solving the mystery before the end. Choose your own adventures, I always tried to go back and find that same path, never could. Even now I read as much and when I can. Last week I read an entire book in a day. I'm a quick reader. The book last week, it helped that Abbie loves the library and books as much as I do.
Bed time is 8:00, we do our best to stick to that, but most nights if you check on her close to 10:00 she's still reading. I know she can't read, but she's reading a tall stack of books. She'll just about clear off her shelf if you let her. If she's read a story more than once she remembers it and will tell it to her animals. Kids books, board books, toddler books, we read her Alice in Wonderland, and now we are working on Gullivers Travels. When we were reading Alice she decided her name should be Alice, I'm hoping she doesn't as us to call her Gulliver though.
I hope it opens as many memories for her as it does me. I hope she can find the same sense of escape in a book as I do. I don't have enough breath to read her enough stories to make her tired of listening, I just don't think there are that many. Her new favorite is storynory.com I'm not sure if I should feel guilty about it or not. Our ipod is full of someone else taking Abbie to all these magical places, stories without pictures but I know she's making the pictures in her head. Sometimes she'll even tell me one of the stories. After she's in bed and tucked in, we've read her our stories she asks for the ipod. Sometimes I go in and we listen together and for one brief moment our day we are both in some magical other world together. I hope she's never too old to listen with me.

today we made bagels

Abbie loves to cook. She likes measuring and cutting and mixing and mashing the dough as she says. Today we made bagels, cranberry walnut whole wheat bagels. YUM. Those are my favorite kind at panera, well they are white there, but you know. We also made Valentines for her friends. Simple ones that you could tell Abbie made pretty much on her own, she even wrote her name on the backs of all 18 of them.

The hardest part of this whole mess (me being out of work) is that I FINALLY have the chance to spend some time with Abbie and take care of my family & house and myself and is causing quite the conflict in my head. One day I'm feeling guilty that I'm not earning real money, the next I'm thrilled to be able to move slowly and do the morning at Abbie's pace. Head to story time, bake with her, read with her, color with her, have dinner ready when Rick gets home, laundry done and all the rest of the things that go along with staying home. Today Abbie brought me her piggy bank full of coins and said here mommy you can use this instead of a new job. Every night when I head to bed and pull back the covers she's hidden a different animal to keep me company when I sleep. I'm so fortunate to have this time to spend with her and I'm doing my best to remind myself of that.

snow day and stuff

so mostly pictures. I took Abbie to the park one day lats week. I think she had fun.

and I made this today while she's napping. A tote for my knitting needles/crochet hooks. It folds over and rolls up. I'd seen something similar in a store for 30 or 40 bucks and it wouldn't hold so many needles!