Nightstand (October 2017)

3 years (and 3 days) ago, I wrote my Nightstand post from a hospital bed while trying to stay pregnant as long as possible.

Today, I write celebrating Tirzah Mae’s third birthday – and our longest healthy pregnancy yet.

My reading life has undergone some pretty significant changes in the past three years – but I’m still reading (even if it’s mostly picture books that aren’t listed here!)

Books for Growing:

• Learning to Talk by James Christopher Law
  Part of the “Johnson’s Everyday Babycare” series by Dorling Kindersley, this short glossy book describes normal speech development in infants and children and how parents can facilitate healthy language development. Nothing groundbreaking, but I think it’s still a helpful resource for parents who are wondering “is my child normal?” and “am I doing what I should do?”
• Free to Learn by Lynne Oldfield
  An introduction to the Steiner Waldorf model of early childhood education – a model that focuses on free play (without trying to force “education”), encounters with nature,
  and regular rhythms of life. I found Steiner’s discussion of rhythms to be particularly helpful in organizing my family’s daily routines. This book by Oldfield is a nice introduction to the method.

Books for Knowing:

• North America’s Favorite Butterflies: A Pictorial Guide by Patti and Milt Putnam
  We picked this up while I was browsing the adult nonfiction stacks because it fits Tirzah Mae’s exacting criterion for titles meant for grown-ups: it is small and it has an orange cover. But unlike the many such books we have brought home from the library, this one managed to sustain both Tirzah Mae AND her mother’s attention throughout the entire 3 month checkout period. We’ve spent many an afternoon poring over the full-color photographs of butterflies and reading the accompanying text describing a bit of the behavior or habitat or habits of that butterfly.

Books for Enjoying:

• Big Appetites by Christopher Boffoli
  Another book that fit Tirzah Mae’s criteria for checking out, this particular title is a series of photos of tiny toy people set amongst larger-than-life food. Each photo is accompanied by a title and a wry subtitle. So a picture of tiny men pushing around cherries and pitting them is titled “Cherry Pitters”, with the subtitle “The team was driven by their desire to negate years of PR damage from cherry-flavored medicines.” Moderately amusing.

Don’t forget to drop by 5 Minutes 4 Books to see what others are reading this month!