Mommathon

You need to checkout librarything.com.  It is so cool!  It keeps track of the books you are reading and can tell you what other people are reading who have also read the books you have read.  You can also add it to your blog so others can see what you are reading as well.  It also can recommend other books based on the genre/topics of the books you are reading.  One catch, however, is that ten people have to have read the book you have read for it to give you any social data on that book.  That can happen quickly, though, last week a book I read had only been read by six people at librarything and a few days later it was up to ten.

I just finished reading this book and it was sooo good.  The narrator is a high school junior whose family has just been moved from Indiana to Mississippi in the early 1970's.  His new high school has been newly desegregated and his new best friend has a lot of secrets.  This story is funny in parts and shocking in others, but either way you want to keep reading it because you want to find out what is going to happen next.

Liam can be the king of procrastination if he is trying to get out of doing something, like going to bed.  So tonight he was s-l-o-w-l-y making his way towards the stairs to go to bed and I was beginning to lose patience with him when he says, "But Mom, I'm trying to be a sloth!"  How can you argue with that?

Yesterday we had a heat index of 108; today it is 74!

I didn't realize this was an Oprah book until I was about halfway through.  I should have known though because the book is so depressing.  The main character is a woman who is Catholic and is married to a man that treats her horribly.  To make matters even worse they live with his elderly parents who treat her like a slave and either ignore or insult her children for sport.  I think the next book I read is going to need to be a little more uplifting.

There are two types of sign-ups at Liam's preschool.  One, is to sign up to bring a snack that corresponds with that week's letter.  For example, if the letter of the week is B, then you should bring something like bananas or bunny-shaped crackers.  I would gladly bring the letter-of-the-week snack every week.  The other sign-up,however, is to bring homemade play-doh that corresponds with the color of the month.  Liam's first year of preschool I made my obligatory batch of play-doh, I believe it was purple and we even put sparkles in it.  I must confess, however, that we did not bring play-doh at all last year. (There is a certain amount of guilt that goes along with neglecting this motherly duty.) I REALLY don't like making play-doh.  I just don't like it.  Today, however, I made play-doh, thanks to Mr. Rogers.  There was a recipe for it in a video  Liam was watching:  combine in a bowl 2 cups of flour, one cup of salt and one cup of water.  Stir and add food coloring if you would like.  It makes about 8 smallish blobs of play-doh.  It doesn't get much easier.  You don't have to heat it which means you don't have to wait for it to cool and you don't have to really stir it that much. It's great; we love it!  Thanks to Mr. Rogers I can now sign-up for both snack duty and play-doh duty.

He got demoted.  He went from Sharks 2 to Sharks 1.  He graduated from Sharks 1 about a year ago, but I guess he forgot everything he learned.  Today was the first day he said he had fun at swim lessons though and that's important, too.  I do hope, that at some point, maybe next summer, he will make it through Sharks 2.  I would like him to be able to swim AND have fun.  Also, if he stays in Sharks 1 for too long, Colm and Liam will be in the same swim class.  Frankly, however, I don't think Liam cares, as long as he doesn't have to put his face in the water he could stay in Sharks 1 forever.