The end of The Little Bookworm

If you didn't know I ran a fairly "successful" book blog for many years, 6 to be exact. And Wednesday I officially shut it down. I hadn't blogged over there since May and I've only blogged sporadically since I had Button. I always thought I'd go back and pick it back up but the truth is I got out of the habit of book blogging and dealing with that whole world. I started it as an outlet for all the books I was reading without understanding that there is a whole community. And then I got involved in that community and met some wonderful people and generally had a good time. But like most things, I just couldn't get up with the pace and I stopped reading altogether for a long time. I've always been a reader so the fact that I didn't want to pick up a book was alarming to me. I know it had more to do with having a newborn and a school-age child than the idea of having to review but the truth is that was a contributing factor. And if your hobby is stopping you from doing something you love, then it's not a good hobby anymore. Still I tried because I loved it and I still doing on some level. It just started to feel like more of a burden than a hobby. So after not blogging or even looking at it for 3 months I decided to just call it quits. One day I might pick it back up. After all my consistency is here is not always the best but I keep coming back (for 7 years now). But as I said over there, today is not that day. I'm thinking one day in a year or two that I might go back. But for now I'm happy that I made it official.

Good Habits

I started working out again a few weeks ago. But this is not really about that. Because the 5 people who read this are probably like same song, same verse. I've been through this before. I'm not saying it's going to stick. I'm not saying it won't. I just need to try. It seems to be going well though. MyFitnessPal and I are BFF now. My plan is not to change anything in this new routine until it actually is a routine. That's where I trip up most of the time.

Anyway. Bub woke up early the first day I started again, and asked if I was exercising. I thought, okay this is good. He can see me trying to create a good habit. After all, like it or not, pretty much everything I do is an example for my kids. Sometimes I get tired of being that example. I just want to eat 6 cupcakes and curse like a sailor. But choices and all that. I really want my daughter to see me creating this good habit too but I'm not going to wake her up at 5:30 in the morning. I'm not crazy.

He starts school tomorrow so our routine is going to revert back to that. So I have to see how it all works together. Still I am making no goals, no concrete promises to myself. I'm just going to try.

140 decibels

My daughter is loud. She is loud in a way that BT and I are not. He pointed it out to me one day. "Have you noticed how loud is she?" And then I did. It's not that BT and I are incapable of being loud, but we generally are not. I suppose she comes by it honest anyway because his family is loud and my father's family is loud though I didn't know that loudness was a genetic trait. Bub, I would say, falls in the general regular loudness scale, when he is excited, etc. But just regular talking, not so much. But she is just very outspoken and at top volume. I asked if she knew what an inside voice is. "No," she said. I told her it was when you are inside so you talk quieter. She thought about it for a moment. "No," she said. No, that's okay, apparently I'm cool with using an outside voice at all times is what I assume she meant. It seems though she is not like this with everyone. At daycare they are surprised when we pick her up and she exhibits her most three year old behaviors (me first! me do it! NO ME!). They think she is a quiet, sweet, angel baby. She has them snowed. We know the truth at home.

Potty trained

I wrote back in January that Button was 95% potty trained and I'm honestly not sure when it happened but one day I realized she was 100% trained. I hadn't changed dirty underwear for quite sometime and just like that I had two regular undiapered kids. It's pretty amazing. I can't say that I did anything amazing to facilitate this other than constantly remind her to use the potty and when she had an accident say over and over again that "it's okay but big girls use the potty and where does poop go? In the potty." It's been my constant refrain for a long time. Her daycare teacher had a lot to do with it and she was amazing. Mostly I think it was Button's constant need to be like big brother that did it.

I feel like we had a lot less struggle with Button than we did with Bub but that's hardly apples to apples. Bub = first born boy, Button = second born girl. I'm not saying that she hasn't had a few setbacks now and again. When she's sick she tends to wet the bed and she had a hard time at my in-laws' new house since their toilets are really high and she couldn't go by herself. But things like that are too be expected.  I'm just happy for no more diapers ever again!

Free style summer

I never knew how much parents looked forward to summer until my kid started school. Although I'm guessing that same statement might not apply to stay at home parents. But it does for this mom. No more homework or car rider lines or worrying about AR tests and conduct grades and unexcused absences! This summer is going to shape up much like last year with Bub at summer camp at Button's daycare. He has a good time there. We don't have any summer plans for vacation or anything. We could never quite work it out. I'm calling it our free-stylin' summer since I think we are just going to see how it goes. The kids have swim lessons later in June and that's the extent of our current plans. We visited BT's parent's new house in Florida for Memorial Day weekend and I think we'll go back either before Bub goes back to school or for his fall break.

Bub's last day was Wednesday so my dad had him yesterday and I have today. He is going to start summer camp on Monday and I thought I'd give him a couple of days off before he started that (and save that money to be frank). I ended up keeping Button home and we are going to the public library's summer reading kick-off to have some fun over there and sign-up for the program. One of my plans this summer is to have at least 15 minutes of quiet reading a day. I'm looking forward to having a quiet summer in general.