Just home from a successful excursion to the pediatrician. Sophia is now 11 pounds, 4 ounces and 22.25 inches long. Bella is 26 pounds and 34 inches long.
it went smoothly with a minimum of tears from both girls. Bella cried when she was put up on the scale and a few more tears when they stuck her finger to check her iron levels and lead exposure. Sophia, of course, cried at being on the scale and when she got her vaccines; but stopped crying before we left the office and fell asleep on the way home.
Bella has already had me pull the bandaid off her finger and is busy munching cheese and watching the landscaper with the leaf blower cleaning up the yard.
I’ve got a good start on the dishes and might even feel free to take a nap this afternoon, if Sophia lets me. All in all not a bad Monday.
Some of your “green” ones are on my list to read, too.
I haven’t finished Three Musketeers, and I want to read Hunchback of ND and Don Quixote.
I loved Count of Monte Cristo, by the way. It’s huge but SO worth it!
I’ve read 55—only a few for school (Catcher in the Rye, The Sound and the Fury)..some weird titles on the list, though: American Gods? Neverwhere? Anansi Boys? Do so many people start Neil Gaiman and not finish? (I’ve liked all his books, btw.)
Are the books in red—esp. Anna Karenina, Ulysses, and Brothers K—books that you think you will never finish?? Ulysses was my senior project and Brothers K the second book I ever gave to my historian husband. He ended up loving it. I am sure I would have married him even if he had hadn’t liked it. I’m sure.
Sheila,
I may finish them at some point.
One of my greatest regrets is that I dropped my Russian novel class in my junior year. It was an amazing class but it was the one elective I didn’t need to graduate. I was also taking a class on Shakespeare and doing my junior project on T.S. Eliot and something had to give. We’d started with the shorter novels like Fathers and Sons, The Idiot and Dead Souls. The second half of the semester was supposed to be Brothers K and Anna Karenina and I just knew there was no way I’d be able to manage. It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. The really unfortunate thing is that I think they’re the kind of novels I’ll have a very hard time getting through without the support of a structured class. Anna Karenina I found terribly depressing. I don’t like Anna and had little motivation to finish the book since I knew how it ends. Brothers K is just so long and dense and the one time I picked it up after graduation was on a plane ride and it just wasn’t what I was looking for.
I was supposed to have read Ulysses in grad school (my MA is in Irish studies) and did in fact read most of it. I think I’ve at least started every chapter. But the reading load that semester was huge and I was also teaching a composition class and helping to organize a conference that we were hosting. I mostly read on the trains during my 2 hour (each way) commute from Salem to BC. Many’s the time I dozed off and had bizarre dreams of continuing to read. Frankly I’ve gone in a different direction since then and it’s not high on my agenda.
Right now my attention span is understandably much shorter than it once was and there are many books I just don’t think I can manage. One of these days when I’m not neck deep in babies and toddlers I may resume a more challenging course of reading. Perhaps when Bella and Sophie are doing high school we can all read them together.
Oh wow. Dr. Cowan taught the Russian novel class I dropped out of. I am so jealous that you got to finish it. I so hated having to tell her I was leaving the class. She is by far the best teacher I’ve ever had.
Oh, Melanie, I understand! I had Russian Novel my senior year co-taught by Dr. Cowan (at Thomas More). Amazing, but demanding!! I had to start wearing reading glasses because I was literally straining my eyes. I have never re-read any of the novels and I don’t know if there will be again a time and place to do so. And yet I think of them fondly and want to believe I will read them again.