Look At Your Own Risk, It's Grimm

Michaela is a reading fool. 

I think she may have read 7000 pages just since the beginning of this year. 

I made that number up, but a lower number didn't sound high enough, and a higher number just sounded ludicrous. 

She can be found buried in a book if she is not otherwise engaged.  This here is a whopper of a book, too. 

It's the Grimms' fairy tales, at least one of the editions; I got it at the library, thinking it was cool because I really wanted her to read the "real" fairy tales, not the watered down versions.

Can we say "engrossed"?

She reads while she eats!  She can't get enough.  She's read through a lot of the American Girl books (I'm not sure what I think about that-it's fun reading for her), and she loves Magic Tree House, although she is way beyond those books as far as her ability.  Again, it's fun for her.  But the other day she tore through a book I checked out for our section on Japan in history, "The Boy and the Samurai".  I had the intention of reading it with her, but she's already done with it. 

I love it that she is such a reading fanatic.  I remember reading like a crazy maniac too, around the same age.  I loved books in a series (Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden and the Black Stallion books) but I read poetry (Christina Rossetti-we have the same name, how cool!), and I loved the Rats of Nimh for example, as well as other works of fiction (like a book called Magic Elizabeth which you can't really find anymore except for mucho dinero on Amazon, used, but which I discovered in a box at my parents' that they had set aside for me to go through, and can I just tell you I screamed I was so excited?!). 

I love watching her read.  She curls up in one of our chairs ("the green chair") under a blanket, and enters into another world.  But in a good way.  She could stay that way for hours if I were to let her.  In fact, my mom told me about a conversation they had on the phone the other day about travels (we are far away from them)...Michaela was talking about how she could at least read on an airplane ride which helped (as opposed to Eliana who could not read and had a really hard time just being able to go back and forth between the two of us for three hours), and that she could read for three, four, five, or even six hours!  And based on what I've seen these last few weeks, I believe it.

Baby Love

Eliana loves to push babies around in the doll strollers we have. 

Even when the babies are big, she will keep on pushing...

It's hard work, but she has such a nurturing heart, she's committed to it. 

I am grateful for how close they are.

Baby Steps

People keep asking when we are moving...and I keep saying,"We're moving?"  Just to freak them out.  It works.

We are moving, even if it is a little at a time.  I don't mind the slow process; that way there's the chance to put things away as you go along. 

Christian and Michaela took on the task of packing books today (and for those of you who know us, you know we have some books).  At least most of them are in Mike's office and don't need to be transported!

They packed about five boxes, so we can at least say we're on our way! 

A Question for the Masses

(or the five or six people who might read our blog...)

Where do you put your clean laundry when you take it out of the dryer? 

Do you fold it right away and stick it in drawers and closets immediately?

Do you put it in a basket and leave the basket in the bedroom floor for a week?

Do you put it in a basket and add more clean clothes to the basket as you do your laundry?

Do you pile it on the bed and other pieces of furniture until putting away the clean laundry becomes such a dire necessity that you must take the hour and a half that should have only been fifteen minutes and put it all away at once?

Am I the only one with this issue?

I must know.

Choose Your Own Title: A Big Job or A Nutjob

Today I got a little taste of what it will be like to live in a large house...and have to clean it!  Mike took the kids out to lunch and on a little adventure (maybe more on that another time!) which gave me the opportunity to head over, armed with broom, mopper, wipes, and trash bags, and get started on what I can now see is (going to be) a very big job. 

My hope is that once I do the "big clean" that I can keep up with zones daily and weekly. 

Please, stop laughing.  It is not polite to make fun of me when I'm being so sincere.  Actually, you can laugh because I am laughing too.  This will be a real challenge for me, considering I have never in my life had a cleaning schedule, ever.  Clean the top of the fridge?   Nope.  Dust under large items of furniture?  Once a year.  Wipe down blinds?  Uh-uh. 

What is super ironic about that information is that I'm obsessive-compulsive about germs and dirt.  I freak out about other people's germs, sick germs in particular.  Also about poop germs, animal poop germs in particular.  And then there's dirt from outside, dirt that might have sick germs or poop germs in it in particular.  (Yes, I know I am cuckoo.  Mike knows too, and he still keeps me around.)  These things give me anxiety attacks.  I get hot and my pulse quickens.  I just want to get away from it as quickly as I can.

But our germs?  They don't bother me as much.  It's kind of like when your own kid sneezes on your hand, you wipe it on a tissue and go about your business; if someone else's kid sneezes on your hand, you gag and want to hurl, and wash in hot, soapy water immediately.  Sorry I said "your" and "you"-that scenario probably doesn't apply to you normal people at all.  It's just weird old me again.

At any rate...I actually had fun getting some cleaning done, but I didn't get as much done as I had hoped.  It's quite nice that we don't "have" to be in the house by a particular time, or out of our current one immediately.  Maybe this can be an orderly process after all.