Hey, I'm 39!

It's my birthday!

Roo told the kids they had to be nice to me & to each other all day today. And I told them we would be starting up schoolwork again today.

Mega groans at both announcements.

While I was supposed to be reading to Hugo in bed last night, and instead, having a small, pleasant, dispute over who was taking up more of the bed (because Hugo's love language is having a wrestle/tickle match), he said 'it's a good thing we're doing this now Mom, because tomorrow I have to be nice to you'.

Hugo has fallen in love with a book. He didn't even see it coming. He has had small passions - Captain Underpants, TinTin, Asterix. But this, this is big. This is so big that Hugo is carrying the book around everywhere, and endlessly asking me WHEN will the 2nd book come out (answer, 'I don't know. The website doesn't say anything about it.....'). It is a great book.

Check it out. The Ratbridge Chronicles, Volume 1: Here be Monsters! by Alan Snow. Tons of mysterious little line drawings in the book. Absolutely mesmerized my boy. The hardcover (which just came out a couple months ago) is a nice hefty tome, with one of the line drawings embossed on the cover under the dust jacket. It's a lovely, sturdy book, and Santa knew what he was doing when he left it under the tree.

Hugo was telling someone about this book and blabbing on and on in his endearing way and then he summed up: "it's about someone who has to get home and can't" - which as some of you will recognize, is one of the archetypal stories. Put a tick on that education component - "Hugo can recognize major themes in works of fiction"

It all reminds me of my first book love. I think I was 6 or 7 when my mom bought me this book and I loved it. Read it over and over again, wrote my name in it, doodled on the blank pages. And yes, I still have it.