Bookfession

I considered letting myself have a book hangover tomorrow and attempting to complete Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but in the interests of not being miserable tomorrow, and the unlikelihood that I would complete the 200+ pages I have left, I figured I'd better just do a bookfession and give myself another day or two to finish Goblet of Fire.

See? Pretty... (sick of this statement yet?)

~*~

Sorry if this is a little tough to read, I don't understand why anyone would put white print on a yellow background, but alas...

If you have difficulty looking directly at the bookfession, it says "I buy children's books... and I don't have any children"

Of course, pre-Rosalie (and even to a point pre-Brayden), I bought children's books for myself. These books will definitely be read to Rosalie when she is a bit older. Once she can appreciate and take care of my books. The great thing is too, that many of the kids books I have bought are now out of print. Edward the Emu is a really good one, and it went out of print shortly after I bought it (and if anyone has a copy of Romeo the Romantic Rat, please let me know. It is out of print and I would pay top dollar for a copy in decent condition. I procrastinated and then it went out of print)

I have also found, during my bookstore employments, that I quite enjoy young adult and teen literature as well. So I have A LOT of books that are not adult books. I think this may also have contributed to my interest in Middle Years education rather than Highschool or Elementary... some of their literature is SOOOOO GOOOOD...

...Hence the re-reading of the Harry Potter series. :)

The Storyteller

Sage Singer is a baker. She works through the night, preparing the day's breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother's death. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage's grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship. Despite their differences, they see in each other the hidden scars that others can't, and they become companions.

Everything changes on the day that Josef confesses a long-buried and shameful secret--one that nobody else in town would ever suspect--and asks Sage for an extraordinary favor. If she says yes, she faces not only moral repercussions, but potentially legal ones as well. With her own identity suddenly challenged, and the integrity of the closest friend she's ever had clouded, Sage begins to question the assumptions and expectations she's made about her life and her family. When does a moral choice become a moral imperative? And where does one draw the line between punishment and justice, forgiveness and mercy?

In this searingly honest novel, Jodi Picoult gracefully explores the lengths we will go in order to protect our families and to keep the past from dictating the future.

(NOTE: the above summation is what I believe is printed on the hardcover Canadian edition. I don't know for sure because I bought the ebook and so it doesn't have the dust jacket. Goodreads offers another description that, I feel, gives away WAY more of the plot, so I chose to post this one, even though the other description is the one that made it impossible for me to wait to read it.)


I really don't think I give Jodi Picoult enough credit.

I know that some of my former bookstore coworkers would balk at that comment. But it's true. She weaves one hell of an impressive story. She won't be winning any Gillers or Pulitzer Prizes any time soon, but she is a great storyteller (pun entirely intended). I am almost tempted to compare her to Stephenie Meyer of the Twilight series, but I think she is better than that. She is a good author, just not a great one.

The only real complaint I have about her writing is that she has become predictable in her plot twist endings. If she didn't make this a "calling card" of all of her books, I probably wouldn't have seen the one in this book coming. Instead, knowing it would be there, I read every word very carefully and committed certain plot points to memory and made a handful of predictions about how the book would end. One of them was right. And I KNEW that one was going to be right because I did "fine-tooth comb" the book, and there was one detail that I could NOT ignore. And I turned out to be right. Neener-neener. But maybe if this was your first Picoult book, you wouldn't see it coming.

The flipside to the predicted plot twist is that things that would normally be predictible I didn't see coming. At one point I actually thought to myself "OMG! There's the plot twist!" and then realized that it really wasn't a twist at all, but it just shocked me because I hadn't made that particular mental note during my reading.

I think that if Picoult was to ditch the plot twist ending in one of her future books I would totally love it, because I wouldn't see THAT coming.

Sleep Training

With the date looming of my inevitable return to work, Roland and I thought it was about time to see if we could get Rosalie to sleep through the night. Rosalie has been a pretty good sleeper for the most part. Some of this I give credit to her time spent in NICU, where it was always noisy, and so she basically transferred the ability to sleep with a bit of noise to home. Occassionally, she would let me have a full 8 hours of sleep without waking me up, but those were few and far between (but greatly appriciated though!!). Even when she did wake me up in the night, I really did not have an issue with getting up with her twice a night. I've read that the constant waking up and not getting enough REM sleep can contribute to postpartum depression and resentment towards your spouse or baby, but I was lucky enough to not have that problem. On the very few occassions where she would not go back to sleep and would scream like a Banshee, I would wake up Roland when I was at the end of my rope and he would take a turn at trying to get her to sleep. The fact that he never complained about this helped me not want want to murder him in his sleep ;)

So when we decided to change up the routine to get her to sleep through the night, I thought we would have to make some BIG changes. A friend of mine had had some great success with a method called The Sleep Sense Program (http://www.sleepsense.net/), with her son that is only 3 days older than Rosalie. She started it WAY before I had even considered trying to get Rose to sleep through the night and he was really good with it.  My friend had given me a bit of a description and the method and I figured we would give it a go.

I honestly think it was a greater adjustment for me than it was for Rosalie. One of the parenting philosophies I had based my parenting style on was that babies cry for a reason. They are not trying to manipulate you or get you to do whatever they want. They cry when they NEED something. They WHINE when they want something. So when this method required your child to cry quite a bit, I was skeptical. But once I had read her theory as to the reason that they cry, I was all for it. She explains that when babies are tired (and show all those signs: rubbing eyes, yawning, pulling at their ears...) and you put them in their cribs, they cry because they are tired and YOU haven't put them to sleep. They are trying to tell YOU that they need you to rock them, or nurse them, or sing to them, or do whatever it is you have done since they were born to get them to fall asleep. They have not learned to put themselves to sleep yet, because thus far in their lives, YOU have been their strategy to fall asleep. And with this program, it's not like you are throwing them in their crib and then ditching them. You establish a routine so that they know it's bedtime, and if you want you can stay in the room, so you don't feel like you are abandoning them, that is totally OK. I didn't because I was more of a distraction to Rosalie, so it didn't work for us. The first night when I tried to stay in the room, she kept standing up in her crib and reaching for me, so I scooted my chair over so I could rub her back (totally OK according to the book), and she just clung at me over the side of the crib and cried with her head on my shoulder. Most pitiful baby ever. So I couldn't stay after that. I wasn't helping her at all.

I don't want to say too much about the program, because I don't want to get sued or something, but it totally worked... in conjunction with this little genius contraption...

I don't know what this thing is called, I don't know how much it costs, but it is an awesome invention. I bought her crib off of Kijiji and the guy left this thing on it, and it's kind of a pain to take off, so I understand why he left it. But thanks to him and thanks to Baby Einstein!!

This is fish thing is Rosalie's method of putting herself to sleep. We've used this as a nightlight and part of our bedtime routine since she "outgrew" her sleep sheep (he was great for the heartbeat, and for the waves for a while, but then it just stopped working for her). I would turn this on right before I fed her her last feed before bedtime, then put her in her crib while it was still playing. It lights up, plays music and the little fishies rotate around it. It turns off after about 25 minutes of being on (it progressively gets quieter and less entertaining as time goes on). SO now, when I put Rosalie down for a nap, she cries for a bit (I think this is because of a mixture of not wanting to nap, and not being asleep already) then she smacks that big blue button on the front to turn it on, and then she's out cold within a matter of minutes.

Just so you can see how much light it throws out. The light on the wall is peeking through the curtains, but the light on the crib is from the fish thingy. Not too bright to keep her awake. 

I have a feeling that rather than a blanket or a stuffed toy, this contraption may be transferred from her crib to her toddler bed, then her toddler bed to a real bed, then from that bed to her collage dorm. Whatever works! Right? ;)

I Caved...

I bought The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult today.

I finished reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban last night (this one, not quite as pretty as the other ones, a bit more ominous, but it's suitable for the book), and I decided I couldn't wait any longer. I went to Costco on Thursday and they had the hardcover there, and I was this close to buying it, but it was $3 more expensive than the ebook, and I decided I'd rather have the ebook... in hindsight, maybe I should have just gotten the hardcover and then given it away, but alas, my decision has been made.

Thanks Meghan for your advice when I posted the blog post entitled Book Dilemma. This is helped me come to this decision without entirely losing my sanity... mostly... ;)

Pregnancy Is Contagious

Now, I know that Pregnancy is not ACTUALLY contagious, but I understand where the phrase came from.

I'm not sure if this is just a stage in my postpartum life, but every time I see a new baby, or hear about someone giving birth, I go in to a I-want-another-baby-right-now mode. And in truth, I do not want another baby yet. I am 100% not ready. And I don't feel that it would be in Rosalie's best interests to have another child while she is still so young. I'm sure other parents could manage it, I don't believe I can. I also love the stages that she is developing right now. I couldn't imagine missing those things because there is a smaller, more dependent baby in the house. No siree. Not ready for another one yet...

But then I see the pictures! The itty-bitty babies, with their wrinkly skin and button noses made perfect for breastfeeding... Their weights in the single digits in pounds... their sleepy little faces...

I am getting to the point where I am going to start losing a lot of what I had when Rosalie was first born. I am closing in on the end of my Maternity Leave, which also means breastfeeding will be ending for Rose and I, I won't be home every day, all day with her... all of this also prompts the feeling of wanting to start it all over again with a new little one.

A birth that happened this morning prompted me to watch The Business of Being Born on Netflix, and made me remember my birth experience, and think about what (if anything) I would change for next time (right now all I can think of is not going to the hospital so soon, or hopefully being granted a midwife). Honestly I had a pretty awesome labour and birth. It didn't go perfectly according to plan, but the epidural and the birth position was all that was changed from my birth plan. As far as the position goes, they talked me into semi-reclined, I wish I would have just adapted my squat (there ya go, I guess that's another thing I would change). And maybe if I had asked for bililights earlier, or hung out by the window more she wouldn't have developed Jaundice as bad and we could have avoided the whole NICU experience... Really the first time you go into something like that you really have no idea what it's going to be like. What the pain is like, what the healing process is like, just how it differs in general from what you expect. But the second time around you'll know what to expect. It will still be different of course, just like every baby is different, and it probably won't be any easier, but there won't be as much of the unknown.

So I suppose if I nit-pick enough, there were a few things I would change, and next time I will be going in with a different perspective. And I have absolutely nothing to complain about. Compared to the women in this documentary, I had a perfect birth. And I came out with a perfect baby. And that is really all that matters.

Filler post #3

Haven't read anything new, what I really want to post about I don't know if I ever will because I can't keep a level head even when I think about it, everything else is boring...

So Boofession #3!

"Love" seems like a bit of a strong word. I have done the big ugly cry in books where bad things happen to characters I really like. And if one of the Big Three had died in Harry Potter I would have lost my mind (should that have been a spoiler alert? Oh well, if you haven't read Harry Potter yet, you're behind the times anyway...)

Interestingly enough I think I get more attached to TV or movie characters than book characters. I had the hugest crush ever on Greg Sanders on CSI for a long time, didn't much care for Eric Szamanda (the actor) when I saw him in interviews though, he seemed kinda dumb. And right after Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl came out, I would have jumped Jack Sparrow in a heartbeat. But Johnny Depp didn't really do it for me in any of the movies I saw him in after that (except the next few Pirates movies) and I don't really care for Johnny Depp himself either... but in that pirate costume, OH BOY! Hold me back! Hehehe.

The Virgin Cure (and a bit of a Harry Potter update to follow)

"I am Moth, a girl from the lowest part of Chrystie Street, born to a slum-house mystic and the man who broke her heart."

The Virgin Cure begins in the tenements of lower Manhattan in the year 1871. A series of betrayals lead Moth, at only twelve years old, to the wild, murky world of the Bowery, where eventually she meets Miss Everett, the owner of a brothel simply known as "The Infant School." Miss Everett caters to gentlemen who pay dearly for companions who are "willing and clean," and the most desirable of them all are young virgins like Moth.

While Moth's housemates risk falling prey to the myth of the "virgin cure"--the belief that deflowering a girl can heal the incurable and tainted--her new friend Dr. Sadie warns Moth to question and observe the world around her so she won't share the same fate. Still, Moth dreams of answering to no one but herself. There's a high price for such independence, though, and no one knows that better than a girl from Chrystie Street.


I found that I thought this book was good, but not great. Which is also what I thought of McKay's previous work, The Birth House. I found the format of a first person narrative, with newspaper articles, letters, and comments made by another character, injected into the book made it lack flow and ease of reading. This worked somewhat to my advantage because it made me quit reading earlier in the evening, but had I read this book 5 years ago (It was just published in 2011, so completely impossible) I would have been driven nuts by these little break-ups at the end of each chapter. 

I also found that a lot of detail was put into the work, and there were lots of points and information that I was sure would be important later in the story, only to have them never referred to again. It was a bit disappointing.

Otherwise, I thought the story and characters were very compelling. The portrayal of innocence within a life of poverty was extremely enlightening and an interesting perspective on life and values, material or otherwise. I also felt I learned a bit about soothsaying and fortune telling back in it's hayday. What I really enjoyed was the direction that Moth was taken in, and how I think that ANY reader would have done the exact same thing had any of us been put into Moth's shoes. I like that genuine feel to the story. I never thought "Why on earth would she do that!?" or "that is completely illogical" or anything of the like. I suppose that also might be paying tribute to McKay's ability to create her characters. She knew Moth very well, so that the audience never questions the decisions she made.

~*~

Slight Harry Potter update:

I said that I wasn't going to read anything else until I finished reading all of my beautiful Adult Hardcovers of Harry Potter. I made an exception for The Virgin Cure because we went on a roadtrip to Alberta and one of the reasons I wanted the eReader was so that I wouldn't have to worry about damaging my books during travel. So the eReader worked well for this. I got the Virgin Cure from the library, and it was great.

So, just for the record, I finished Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets right before I left for Alberta (isn't it pretty?... I will probably write that every time I post a picture of any of the books :P), I had to finish the Virgin Cure before I set off on reading Prisoner of Azkaban, so that will start tonight. Although I was tempted to get the eBook for The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult, but I have restrained myself for the time being... but I might read that one between Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire... we'll see. I'm still checking the library website every day to see if they get any copies of the eBook. If they do, it will be my next read most definitely.