He Got the Job!

I was sitting here working at my desk when I overheard Mary and Alex playing just outside my office door.

Mary was giving Ironhide (transformer) a job interview. Her ponies needed protection from a dinosaur. She asked him questions like, "You only attack dinosaurs, right? Not ponies?"

Boy toys and girl toys can mix...

Of course before I could finish typing this a disagreement popped up once again.

Good times, huh?

Kiddie Lit

I've always enjoyed reading to little kids, even when I was a teenager and got to read to my little sister Dani.

We do quite a lot of reading at our house, and now Mary even gets to share a lot of the load. (She even makes up her own voices for different characters.)

Reading can even feel like a sport...

Once Mary got to school I started learning more about kid books, especially chapter books. I've discovered that there are REALLY, REALLY good kid books, like Junie B. Jones (that girl is hilarious).

There are some so, so kids books that don't bother me if they keep Mary excited about reading. Like a whole bunch of books about girls who  help fairies when Jack Frost causes trouble. (The author is Daisy Meadows... sounds made up, doesn't it?)

Whoopi Goldberg even wrote a few books about a girl whose mother insists she takes ballet even though she wants to be a speed skater and wear funky clothes that her mother designed. I was pleasantly surprised!

Then there are fairly obnoxious kids books like the Pony Pals... They get all preachy about animals and almost make you want to be in favor of trapping animals because they are so soap boxish against it. (I'm certainly not an animal trapper, though I wouldn't have complained if someone had trapped the large fox that came traipsing across our front lawn the other day while I was outside scraping paint off the house.) Doug absolutely LOVES (or not) reading those books. Fortunately, the author wrote about 50 gazillion different books about these girls. (Beware... don't call their ponies "horses." Apparently that's a major faux pas.)

I do enjoy going to the library with the kids though... I've discovered some really great books just waltzing around the kids section. Mary's a tad too young for some of them still, but I've enjoyed them.

One of my recent discoveries in the past few years is this:

The books have wonderful names like "The Wrath of Ezra." By the way... Ezra is a toothpick!!

The last book in the series (5) came out last fall. I was fortunate to find a fabulous sale on the first 3 at Deseret Book a couple years ago so I own those ones. Someday I'll get the last two. They're definitely worth reading more than once. If you like kiddie lit at all you'll enjoy this book. It's a similar reading level to Harry Potter so if you have kids that age go check them out (or just read them yourselves).

Anyway...

Happy Reading!!!

Is it too mean...

to give away all my children's toys or sell them on ebay or craigslist??? Part of me is willing to just trash them, but that seems a bit rash if someone else could actually enjoy them. (Or some other parent can deal with them.)

I confess the maid experiment has not been as effective as I'd hoped. I'm tired of getting paid chump change to pick up after my children. A real maid would get paid way more! (They still wouldn't be paid what they were worth probably, but still way more than I'm getting at a nickle a toy.)

And there are still toys EVERYWHERE!!!!

If anyone has any other brilliant strategies to transform my kids into toy picking up fanatics, please feel free to share them.