Kids’ books….it’s complicated.

I’ve always let the kids pick out their own library books, throwing a few of my favourites in the mix and keeping them away from the “A” section (because those Thomas books are way too long, and let’s face it: they freaky).  I usually flip through to make sure there’s no previous damage (you aren’t getting another penny from me, SPL) or that they’re not too wordy.

But maybe I need to spend a little more time sussing out the books, or at least pre-reading them.

Wednesday night’s story: Sammy the Spider goes to school.  Awesome, because soon, B will be…Going to School.  And spiders rock.  Did you know that Sammy the Spider is Jewish?  Which is cool, but raises certain questions that I just don’t know quite how to explain.  One of which being,  “Do I get to wear a hat when I go to school?”, followed by “Why are those guys wearing those hats?”   Uhh….that’s me in the corner.   I see, after coming to the end and the booklist, that most of Sammy’s other adventures are a little more clearly defined, such as Sammy’s First Hanukkah and Sammy’s First Shabbat. I am totally open to sharing religions, I just need to do a little research myself, because Moms know Everything.

Tonight’s selection, a wonderful little tale called One More Wednesday. Great.  A simple tale, with a moderate amount of words, a great wrap up as we’ve read 3 stories so far and I’m getting a little tired of hearing my own voice (ha!!).  I knew the story started to take a turn when the little bunny couldn’t visit Granny one Wednesday, because she was in the hospital. Next up, Mommy bunny’s on the phone and then started crying, because: GRANNY DIED.  Whaaaaa?  I was tempted to make something up, because, please can we go back to asking about the Jewish “hats” because I don’t want to go down this road!  Some kind of warning, somewhere on the book would have been nice, like way before I got to page 5 when Granny was never coming back.  (um, spoiler alert.)

So yeah, while I really try to stay away from reading commercial-type books like Dora the Explorer, it might be a safer choice some days as you can be sure all Abuela is going to be doing is serving up some rice pudding and won’t up and die on ya…

I was a really good mom before I had kids: reinventing modern motherhood

Wow. I have read a lot of books about parenting in the past 2 years…wait – let me re-phrase that. I have started to read a lot of books about parenting, sometimes skipping ahead to the crucial parts (i.e., how to get your baby to sleep alone) and then being disappointed to learn that I’ve already screwed up (“Never nurse your baby to sleep.” Dammit!); sometimes feeling like a failure just reading the “About the Author” and giving up.

I read this entire book in just two sittings – and I felt like it was finally a book written for me! A real person! (Note – I didn’t say “mom”…)

I especially felt like the end wrapped it all up in a single thought – that we get so wrapped up in being/doing/providing the best for our kids that we don’t realize that kids learn most from our actions:

“Our children are watching us. They’re seeing our stress, our anxiety, how we
beat oursleves up. We’re teaching them that good enough is not good enough.
We’re showing them that anything less than perfect is not OK.”

Although one of the tenets of the book is to resist recruitment to the Mommy Wars and stop all the judgement, I really loved the Dirty Little Secrets woven throughout…and I found the chapter on husbands/partners especially relevant.

Now go read it yourself…you can also check out the website at http://www.iwasareallygoodmom.com/