Exhausted Mama Needs Sleep!

Can I just say that I am pretty sure I've never been so excited for Christmas break. Last night I had my parents pick Braylen up at 12:45, yes that was a.m. This has been going on for almost a month, and I'm about to lose my brain. I'm hoping that over break we can get onto some sort of schedule, if that is even possible. Here are tips that I looked up that don't work for little Braylen:

• Baby massage: baby massage is great. I know that if someone were to give me a fantastic massage, I would fall asleep right away without even a thought in my head. However, Braylen is apparently not into relaxing with some lavendar lotion.
• A schedule: It is impossible to get your baby on a schedule when he does not want it to happen. I'm so excited for a bedtime routine, he seems to relax and falls asleep, then twenty minutes later he wakes up as though he has just slept 20 hours. I wish I could sleep for 20 hours.
• Gas drops: Let's be honest, these only work if your baby is gassy. As Jim would say, "this baby is the devil incarnate." He is so drama.

Maybe I should try checking out some sleep books from the library. Not that I think at this point anything will work.

Things I keep telling myself:

• This too shall pass: I know it won't last forever. I mean, Ava only didn't sleep for the first two years of her life. Surely Jim and I have gotten to be better parents since then.
• At four months, his cute little baby booty is crying it out. Sorry Bray, you are the cutest little boy, but once that glorious moment comes when you are four months old, you are learning to self-soothe.
• Karma hates me. I'm not exactly sure what I have done sometime in my life, but I must have done something becuase never have ever had a child that liked to sleep. And, I like to sleep! I love to sleep! In college I slept all of the time. I blame my husband. He's got the energy of ten people.
• There has to be some resource out there that can help. I just haven't found this miracle person/thing yet. I will just have to keep looking.

Two glorious, amazing, stupendous weeks off. What's in store: maybe sleep, maybe a little book ordering, maybe some present opening? All I know is that none of these can come fast enough.

Drowning Mama

Sometimes as a working mom I feel like I'm really hitting it out of the ballpark, like really hitting grandslams, but other times, I feel like I am just drowning. Currently I'm drowning. Little baby (the one in the middle, yes, they are all babies) is just not wanting to go to sleep before 2 a.m. He is killing me. So every day I pray that the library will be busy. The busier the library, the busier I am , and the faster my day goes by. Then I don't have to even think about the fact that I'm so tired that I wish I could just put a pillow under my desk a'la George Costanza. Keeping us most busy is our holiday trivia of the day question. Today's question: Who are all of Santa's reindeer and you must spell them correctly? I love reading all of the various spellings the students come up with. I think my favorite was Vixen spelled: Vietzen. I think they thought I was trying to trick them. Me? Never!
I was really hoping to do the presentations on ebooks all day, and I am still trying to figure out a way to get students more interested in downloading ebooks, either from us or the public library. I will keep brainstorming. I did get to put together incentives for January and I cannot wait to roll those out over Christmas break.

Every Day by David Levithan

“Every day I am someone else. I am myself-I know I am myself-but I am also someone else.”

I can honestly say that I have never read a book by David Levithan, and he has many well-known books such as Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist and Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List (both collaborated with Rachel Cohn) When trying to write a review for this book, I wasn’t sure how to begin. This book blurs the lines between who we are as a body and who we are as a soul. A is the main character of the book. He is only A, a name he gave himself, to remind himself that he is someone. A soul, a spirit, a person who is passed around from body to body each day, a never ending cycle of being someone that is not him, and until now he has been alone. Then he meets Rhiannon, Justin’s girlfriend, and for one day he is able to love and laugh and be himself. That is when his world changes forever. Rhiannon is the first person to learn his secret, the first person he really loves. Through Rhiannon he is able to truly show who he is.

I found myself drawn to A, wanting this torture to end for him, and I was a little angry at Levithan for putting him through this unhappy life in a situation that may never end. I found myself, as a mom, sad that A never had parents to love him or hug him, but I guess this is a life other people have had, his is just a little stranger.

Through his book, David Levithan makes us question what love really is. Is it a gender, a physical attraction, or is it with heart that we really love someone? He makes us question who we are. Are we merely a body; are we merely a mind; are we both? Beautifully and seamlessly written, Every Day is a book that makes us think long after we put it down, and Levithan I am really hoping for a sequel.

Mrs. Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Okay, can I just start off by saying that Ransom Riggs is probably one of the most awesome names ever created. You know a book will be good when the author’s name is something cool like Ransom Riggs. As a fellow double consonant named person I understand how important your career choice is, and I highly failed when I became a librarian as opposed to becoming something more fitting for a double consonanted person like a news reporter or an author, as Ransom Riggs has done. Author names aside, if I were to judge a book by its cover (come on you know you do it too), I would read this book cover to cover in a matter of days, which is funny, because I did. Just look at that cover, how could you not want to read a book by Ransom Riggs with a picture of a girl levitating on the front cover.

To the actual book itself, even if you do not like to read, Mrs. Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is a great book because it is peppered throughout by black and white, somewhat disturbing images that Ransom Rigg’s actually used from collectors. The fact that these pictures are real makes the pictures even more disturbing. The story to go along with those pictures doesn’t disappoint. Jacob is the main character, who leads an extremely ordinary life until something extraordinary happens to him (yeah, it’s cliché I know, but it’s true). Jacob has listened to the stories from his grandfather’s childhood all of his life, stories that include a girl who floats, a boy who is invisible, and an old smoking bird that watches over all of the peculiar children. As Jacob gets older, he begins to see the ridiculous fantasies that his grandfather has told him throughout the years as just that, fantasies. However, once Jacob’s grandfather dies and Jacob is put to the edge of insanity, he learns that maybe the stories his grandfather told were actually not that fantastic; maybe those stories were true, and the children and the bird do exist somewhere. And, maybe it is up to Jacob to save them all.

The book is quirky and suspenseful, and I’m not going to lie, it may have made me a little scared of the dark, especially when I am still getting up with a ten week old every three or four hours. Mrs. Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is just as amazing and entertaining as Ransom Rigg’s name, and even sleepless nights, an unclean house, and three children couldn’t stop me from reading this book.

 http://www.amazon.com/Miss-Peregrines-Home-Peculiar-Children/dp/1594744769

What's going on in December at my library

After eight weeks off for a not nearly long enough maternity leave, I decided to get some fresh ideas rolling in the library. Today was going to be the day that we started the new December incentives and I had to get to work early. I had bags packed, cups of milk in the fridge ready to go, and everything was going swell. We even got to the sitters ten minutes earlier than normal (and I'll be honest, getting three kids out of the car and into daycare is no easy feat). All I was thinking was, "I AM THE MOST AMAZING MOM EVER!" Then, as I was getting Emma out of the car a cough attack hit, and right at that moment she decided to projectile vomit all over the back of the car, the splashes, of course, hitting me. Mom of the year figured it was just the cough and took her in anyway. She ended up going home thirty minutes later with dad (thank God, I can't take another dock day!), and I went to school with the smell of puke on my outfit.

However, the December incentives have started off nicely. We are usually pretty busy with classes coming and going, but the month of December is a month of giving, so the library is just going to keep on giving. We are so sick of looking at the two dollar fines our students have incurred from late books and we are out of tissues, so only for the month of December we are letting our students bring in tissues as a way to take care of the fines. I'm the nicest librarian ever, right. I guess I'm feeling all nice because I've got my little chunker at home and babies just make everyone go all soft (even if they were vomited on this morning by the cutest of little pukers).

Latest Displays

I Love me some pinterest! Here are two displays that I recently did in the library that were inspired by pinterest, and I can keep them all winter long. Whoot, Whoot!