It's a Healthy Addiction...Right?

So I've never made it a secret how much I adore books. I don't judge those of you (who now include my husband) who read books in an electronic format or listen to books as mp3 files, I am just not one who enjoys those formats at all. This should be pretty obvious from one of my previous posts that showcases our insane double-stacked 6'x6' bookshelves!

My oldest and dearest friend, Becks, shares my love of books and she has definitely read more than I have - I blame her crazy-long daily commute on a train to work - but still, it's impressive. So if we're keeping count (and of course we are), it is January 24 and I am in the middle of my 14th book of the year.

Yeah...it's a healthy addiction, right?


I've been fortunate to find some books I've been really excited to read at our local library, not to mention have about 3 hours of downtime when I work on Fridays at my daycare job while the kiddos are napping. That equals a TON of reading time each week! I am also 100% sure that I will have next to no free time to read once Baby Knives arrives in June, so I'm getting all the reading in that I can in while I'm not incredibly sleep deprived and the 24-hour restaurant to a newborn.

That brings me to my next bit of news...we found out this week that we are in fact expecting Baby Knives (a girl) rather than Baby Waits (a boy) and I am so excited! I am one of 3 girls and don't know much about raising little boys...although I've never been a parent so I'm sure I know next to nothing about raising a little girl. However, I'm feeling at least one step ahead since we have the same basic "parts"!

But, back to the books - I am reading "Planting Dandelions" by Kyran Pittman. I hadn't heard of the author before and it was one of those recommendations I saw on Goodreads that looked like it might be up my alley. I absolutely love it and recommend it to every mom I know (and strangers too!).

I haven't made it a secret that it's been a rough few months for two close friends of mine who have unexpectedly lost their baby girls and a quote from this book made me well up thinking about them all over again. It's one of those paragraphs that just jumped off the page at me and made me want to jump in a plane out to the midwest and hug the ever-living crap out of them. I can't know what to say to help comfort them, I in no way understand such a devastating loss, but I wish I could at least be there to hug and cry with them. And, of course, to smack those who speak to them in ridiculous cliches (see below).

It is almost impossible to extract meaning from hardship without employing hackneyed cliches. There was a point that year where if I heard another variation on "That which does not kill us makes us stronger", I was going to scream. Sometimes, that which does not kill us can beat us up and leave us in a ditch.

I hesitate to bring up gratitude, because I know there is someone reading this who is in that ditch today, who'd like to tell me exactly what to do with my gratitude, but there's no way around it. There is nothing like fear for distorting perspective, and nothing like gratitude for restoring it. I'm not talking about the false gratitude that denies that you or anyone else is suffering. Nor the shadowy kind of gratitude that depends on the truism that somebody, somewhere, is always worse off than you, nor the timid thankfulness that doesn't dare ask more from life than basic survival. I mean really appreciating what is in front of you right now, even if you don't know if you can count on it tomorrow.

If you have a chance, check out this author and let me know what you think. As for me, I've spent enough time blogging - back to reading - I only have 5 months left!

2012 > 2011?

Well, it's that time of year again. The time of year when all the bloggers of the world start pontificating and reflecting on the past year. To be honest, a lot of this year has been a blur for me, but I'll try to hit the high points:

1) My husband got a new job after being laid off for almost a year

2) We were able to move out of the upstairs of his parent's house and into our own apartment

3) We celebrated our 1 year anniversary

4) We panicked for a good 3-4 weeks after finding out (surprise!) we're having a baby in June 2012

5) We got to welcome a few new little ones into the world and congratulate friends who became new parents

This year has been difficult in many ways, in addition to the above blessings, and many I'm sure I forgot to mention...

- My niece, Reagan, developed a seizure disorder (she's almost 2)
- Dear friends of ours experienced a horrible loss of their newborn baby girl

I really can't list anything else after that last one...last night we found out another one of my good friends lost their baby girl, only 2 weeks before she was supposed to be born. The struggle of trying to understand what the hell is going on and how there could be any "good" come out of such horrible tragedies is overwhelming. I can't imagine the pain of a loss like that and there are no words I can say to make it better...not the easiest thing for a writer to realize...

My prayer for 2012 is that it will bring healing and hope to so many of my friends who are hurting, grieving and struggling to make sense out of tragedy. No resolutions this year for me, only desperate prayers for guidance and peace.

For the Love of Books!

Since the surprise news of a new little one joining our household in about 6 months was sprung on us, one of the things at the forefront of my mind was, "the second bedroom is a hole! where are we going to put this kid?!" Thankfully when we moved into this apartment about 6 months ago, we opted for the 2 bedroom model.

However, being avid readers with no extra money for decent bookshelves, we've been using the second bedroom as a storage room largely for boxes upon boxes of books.

We did manage to eventually wedge a full-sized mattress set in there for when we have friends crash with us on their way to the beach, but it really wasn't much of a guest room space. Now that Baby Knives is on the way we'll be using that room as her (can you tell I'm hoping for a girl??) space.

We were in desperate need of bookshelves. After much consideration and shopping around, we got these fabulous IKEA shelves as an early Christmas gift from my in-laws and I couldn't be more thrilled! My husband is slightly less enthusiastic since I was almost worse than useless in helping assemble them and it took him about 2 hours to piece it together. Damn allen wrenches!

However, now that is completely assembled and full of books, he's much more excited...so am I! Since he worked so hard assembling the beast, I took over unpacking ALL the boxes of books, sorting through them to make sure I could shelve authors and series together.

Needless to say I got completely overwhelmed at least 5 times in the 2-day-long process and had to close the door in denial of the mess lurking behind it!

I finally was able to get about 3/4 of our book collection shelved and boxed up a ton of books to give away and the last 1/4 of our collection was re-boxed and will go back into storage until we eventually move into a bigger place and can get another behemoth IKEA bookshelf to store them.





























I cannot adequately express how much I love the bookcase...and also love that it is the first thing we changed/added to Baby Knives' room - what kid needs a crib or dresser when they have hundreds of books lining the walls?