In Trouble from Reading

My reading, once again, got me into trouble this morning.

I took Nathan to a nearby town to run some errands, and we stopped at their library. Nathan loves this stop due to the children's room complete with train table, crayons, stuffed animals, computer games, etc. Usually I can just walk him through the front door and he heads for the children's room like a carrier pigeon.

There were only a few things I wanted to look for, but (wonder of wonders) I got side-tracked by a historical fiction book about Helen of Troy. I stood by the shelf for 15-20 minutes before I finally came to my senses and remembered I was a mom with a toddler on the loose.

Nathan, thankfully, was still in the children's room. Unhappily, there was evidence that he hadn't been in the children's room the whole time: a couple aisles in the children's book section had 20+ books pulled out of the stacks and spread on the floor.

When Nathan came to see what I was doing on the floor (revisiting my ability to alphabetize books by authors' last names), I told him to sit next to me. Bad idea #2 - he immediately started wailing without giving any thought to the pervasive silence around him.

The books did get re-shelved (I hope I shelved them close enough to where they were supposed to be), Nathan's crying quit, and we got back out to our vehicle in one piece and (miraculously) no further crying.

-Now I must go. I just heard a sound from my parents' front room that had the unmistakable sound of a bin full of matchbox cars being emptied onto carpet. Amazing how your ability to distinguish sounds improves when you become a parent...

Service with a Smile

As Trent said this evening, no one tells you that having a child will provide you with an indentured servant--Nathan happily (nay, proudly) set hot pads, bread and utensils on the table for me, put the phone back in its cradle, then helped clear the table after dinner--brought me the salt and pepper, then put the hot pads and pot holders away in their drawer and closed the drawer. (This was with requests on my part, but still...)

I made a quick run to Wal-Mart for some yarn, and he carried one skein of it up to the counter for me, pushed it onto the counter, and then carried the bag of purchases out to the car for me.

It's pretty darn stinkin' cute to see a 2-yr-old trying to hoist a bag up high enough to keep it off the ground, making his slow way across the parking lot with the aforementioned bag banging into his knees.

He was so pleased with himself and seems to love the concept of "helping."

I wonder if I could somehow get him to scrub the floors...

Reading

Ah, the joy of books... I was warned while pregnant that I should read as much as I could before the baby was born, because I wouldn't have time to read after that.

Amateurs.

I have since come to believe that we find time for the things we want to do most. Is exercise your thing? You'll get up at 5 a.m. to go walking (and other people, myself among them, will consider you demented). Cooking? You'll somehow manage to juggle any insane schedule and still perform culinary experiments. For me, that priority is reading. I'm assisted in this pursuit by Nathan being relatively low maintenance. I can read in the living room and Nathan will play happily by himself for an hour or so. I can read when he naps (from 1:30/2 until 4:30 p.m.) and again after he goes to bed (7/7:30 p.m.).

Recent books I've been reading run the gamut from autobiography to fiction to mystery to spiritual growth stuff. I read Nicole Baart's first book that comes out in a few weeks and was happily surprised by quality fiction that happens to be written by a Christian; she's sacrificed no iota of craft for the sake of selling tripe. Since Nikki's a friend of mine, it was a huge relief to tell her honestly how much I loved the book and that I want to purchase a copy to have on my shelves for the quality of the writing all by itself. -Even better: I know how to get my hands on the sequel before it's released from the published, unlike having to wait another year as most of you commoners. Mua-ha-ha...


Next up - Ravi Zacharias' memoirs, Walking from East to West. I've seen this out for a while, just hadn't purchased it yet. I finally bought it and devoured it, journaling much, thinking even more, and feeling challenged on every page. Ravi's words, manner and very life present a call to me to be who God made me to be. Not a "better" Christian, a greater financial success, a "better" homemaker or any other area of my life; but fully surrendered in every area of my life. Highly, highly recommended.



Just for fun - Jasper Fforde's books--any of them. Literary references and light humor prevails, but for all the thought and original plot work in his fiction, every single one of them has been a treat to read from start to finish. Can't wait for the most recent Thursday Next book to come out in paperback so I can add it to my collection!


Aside from reading, I'll be honest--I've been battling. Shortly after Nathan was born, my mood did a fairly steep nosedive. I don't know if it was post-partum depression or not; doesn't that eventually go away? I went on anti-depressants during that first year, and I'm still on them. Anytime I go more than a few days without them, my thoughts spiral downward. It isn't that I have suicidal thoughts or anything like that; I just lack the energy to do anything--or even care that I'm not doing anything. My thoughts turn all circumstances into something that's my responsibility or my fault, and trying to turn off obsessive thought patterns exhausts me.


I hate being dependent on medication. My background is a can-do mentality, the whole "suck it up and get it done" attitude. If only I'd try harder, I could make myself get over this and not have to take meds. I mentioned this to my mom, and she responded, "That's right, and all those people with diabetes should just try a little harder and they wouldn't have insulin problems." Her point is valid. It's just that physical ailments seem so much more objective than a serotonin level deficit.

-For now, at least, I'm caught up on my meds and am able to function at normal levels. Hooray for the little things in life!