Happy Valentine's Day!

Wordless Wednesday

Mer. Cold.

Can we cut the super cold weather??

Ok, that kills mosquitoes and other super annoying so insects so maybe I need to change the question - can I leave this place while it has super cold weather to kill all the bugs??

There. That's more like it.

But the answer is no. Not this year.

Last night I noticed that we left for dance class and it was still light outside. I can tell the days are getting longer - or should I say there's more sunshine, which is fantastic because we need to spend some more time outside. Summer is so easy when the kids can just go outside in the backyard and just be outside. Plus the fresh air makes everyone happier and definitely more tired at night, but more dirty. HA!!

It's that time of year where I'm dreading the winter because I've run out of things to do, people have stopped shoveling their sidewalks making walking the dog a ridiculous chore (I actually went out and salted the street one day because I was tired of slipping and sliding walking down to the car), and I hate getting all the winter stuff on/off. It just makes getting out the door with young kids such an annoying thing. Though Baby Chewie has learned how to put on his jacket and boots, it doesn't mean that he actually WANTS to.

Most of my problem is that I don't want to wear boots anymore - I have several pairs of awesome shoes that I really want to wear but I don't want them covered in gross Minnesota winter crud from the streets. And I'd really like to just walk outside without wearing a jacket for once.

GAH. But we get all four seasons and fresh snow is just so lovely. I shouldn't complain too much because with climate change, at this point, who knows what will happen - we may get colder before the extreme heat. I'm not sure, but I need to start paying more attention so that I can start to plan my garden too (because there's Phil, I'm going to need to move a lot of my plants to the front yard. He demolished a few butterfly friendly ones that I'm in mourning of).

So enough with the complaints and on with the week. Happy Wednesday!

Wordless Wednesday

Accountability

I've been trying to work out daily since December in the early morning.

I haven't done it all days - I feel like every 2-3 days my body straight up shuts me down and says, nope, not today! So I have skipped morning workouts to get my sleep and then did them later in the day - but then I feel like I've lost part of my day to get things done and I rush and rush to clean, cook, get the kids' shit together (and get my shit together!). 

In this I've also realized that I really LIKE lifting weights and working out so I really don't want to miss a workout. I think they're fun - I have also noticed that I've had to buy bigger weights...so yay!!!

When I miss a day, I realize I'm pretty darn cranky and I just feel anxious or like I should be doing something or getting more steps in or frankly, just moving around more. 

So I thought I'd share my sweaty selfies because I think it's important to share my accountability. I WANT to workout and I need to make sure that I somehow keep track of everything I do. Also, Phil is totally on my team. I think he's been in every one of my sweaty selfies since November!!

Book Review: Two Children's Books

The Crocodile Who Didn't Like Water by Gemma Merino

Baby Chewie loved this book from the library this past week. Originally I reserved this book because Baby Chewie is taking swim class and he was not a fan of putting his face in the water. I was on a hunt to find books to help him get over his fear of putting his face and nose in the water. As it turns out, this crocodile really didn't like water because SPOILER ALERT he wasn't a crocodile. The illustrations are quite lovely and I like how the story progresses. It's easy for a 3.5 year old to follow along with the pictures. 

Baby Chewie says, "I liked the dragon and his sneeze!"

The Great Day by Taro Gomi

This book is so much fun to read and such a fast and easy read. I really appreciate the fact that people of color are the prominent family and that makes me so happy to share with my preschooler. I really try to make sure that we include books like this because it is so important for kids to see different people and see the way that families of all colors, shapes, sizes live. The little boy wakes up first. The little boy eats breakfast first. The little boy gets hurt first. The little boys cries first. The boy washes up first. Baby Chewie is in a phase right now where HE HAS TO BE FIRST and this book completely spoke to him. He knew exactly what the boy was feeling and Baby Chewie enjoyed reading this book over and over again. I really liked it too - the words matched the pictures on the page very well and the illustrations were bright, colorful and simple to understand. 

Happy preschool reading!!

Bubbles for Phil

I was watching an Instagram video of dogs popping bubbles with their teeth and immediately wanted to see if Phil would pop bubbles. And he does!

If The Monkey blows bubbles, then both Phil & Baby Chewie jump for the bubbles. It's like two kids in a candy store. I'm really excited to try the bubble machine this summer!!

5 AM Workouts

Book Review: Red Clocks by Leni Zumas

Ooh. This book. This one got to me and at the same time I rolled my eyes so hard.

The characters in this book absolutely thought that laws do not apply to them. But then they all learned the hard way.

No abortions. No IVF. And adoption is possible to 2-parent households.

So there it is. That's the basics of this book. Then you can guess what happens with the plot - a lovely teacher is single and and 42 and she wants a baby so she goes for IVF. It doesn't work. Then she finds out a student is pregnant. The teacher wants to adopt the baby but just can't find the right words to say when the opportunity arises to ask for the baby. 

A woman wants to leave her husband. She tries to have an affair but honestly, she finds the biggest dumb-dumb of a man so that obviously doesn't work. 

The local healer gets arrested because a woman claimed that she was pregnant and asked for an abortion. (Turns out the woman was beaten and being abused by her husband).

There's quite a few storylines here. And they're all really sad. I'm not sure I agree with the reviewer who said they love this book with their whole heart (A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, that book is AMAZING and lovely and that book has my heart). I say this because I've read better books about women-hating culture - Vox is another good read where women cannot speak more than 100 words per day. Which, fuck, that would never happen here. I would probably be burned alive on a stake after a week trying to save my daughter from the same fate. 

But I digress. I did like this book - but I felt there were lots of story lines and they all intertwined with one another in such a way that this story would only work in a small town, which thankfully is the setting. The author also glosses over the complacency and inattentiveness to the news and media - how people just let things happen to them and say that the new laws won't affect them. It's really interesting how the author pushes her characters forward with life through everything that women and families now CANNOT do. 

There's a short blurb on the resistance in this book, I wish there would have been more dedicated to the resistance and underground helpers working to get women abortions (or IVF too). It didn't seem like that was such an important area of the book and I wanted more about that, or to have the main character join it or somehow do SOMETHING. Which I think is also a point the author was trying to make - people let other people make changes and make laws and didn't stand up for what was right and what they believed in. People stood by and let misogynists take over government and let the women-hating go on. 

SOOOOO...if you need to get fired up about saving Roe v. Wade, read this. If you need IVF and you think that men don't hate you - read this. In my opinion, the government needs to stay out of the doctor's office when it comes to personal choices like choosing to do IVF or having an abortion. Whatever you want to do...do it...without worry that you're going to be thrown in jail.

I don't feel that I can say "Happy Reading" for this one considering the topic of the book, but I can for sure say that if you're interested in women's fucked up literature, then this is a book for you.

Book Review: Normal People by Sally Rooney

I really enjoyed this story, about two teens growing into themselves and then through their time in college. I was concurrently reading a Tana French mystery which also takes place in Dublin. I confused myself a bit and had to look at all of these places on a map to try and picture where all the different places are - especially Trinity College and then the different parts of Ireland. Much like America, the Irish can tell where people are from in Ireland because of their accents. It's like the "Ya, sure, you betcha" that sticks out if you're a Minnesotan. This definitely comes into play in later parts of the book when the two are in college.

First, the two friends have a different relationship from what most people would deem as normal - Connell and Marianne ignore each other at school but are definite best buddies outside of school. They have a romantic relationship. Marianne is convinced that Connell would be embarrassed that he's with Marianne. He eventually asks a different girl to a dance and breaks Marianne's heart.

Then they go to college.

It turns into the opposite - Marianne is the popular one and Connell is not. She pulls him into her circle and she has some asshole friends (which eventually she figures out in the last few pages of the book, because of course when you're a teenager you don't know you have asshole friends). They're together off and on. They each have different lovers and date other people.

One thing that I think irritated me the most was that Marianne's character wasn't as well developed as Connell's character. I kept wanting to know WHY she was the way she was and HOW she got to be the way she is. The little bits of background stories basically told nothing - only that her family wasn't that great. Finally towards the end of the book we got more information but yet that didn't make up for all the lost information in the beginning. Marianne comes from a rich and wealthy family where she fits in better at Trinity College. I think the readers needed MORE information - and more insight into what the characters were thinking and why. Connell isn't exactly a dummy but he is a young male which means that he thinks a heck of a lot more with his penis than his brain. In the book, he thinks more with his brain than his penis - and Marianne thinks more sexually than what most people would think. Is this wrong or bad? Nope, absolutely not! But it seems that Marianne's character development is really poor and some background stories may have been added as an afterthought instead of being included in backstory to help the reader understand Marianne's thoughts along the way. This isn't something that totally detracted from the story, just an observation.

To note Marianne has an abusive relationship towards the end and this is where the reader gets more background information. I also enjoyed reading about Connell's mother and her background - I just wish that Rooney would have written more background information about Marianne's parents and family to round out her character.

Rooney seemed to give up the information about Connell without a care - his story seemed to pour out but Marianne's seemed a bit harder to write, possibly? I'm not sure. Both characters had their flaws which make them more human and relatable. 

I really enjoyed Marianne's realization of who her friends were/are at the end of the novel when she's speaking with a friend that moved away. The friend she was speaking with said something that suddenly made something in Marianne's head click - it was like a switch flipped and she figured out why she was miserable or why her friends seemed not to be her friends. That really made Marianne's character grow and mature - but I wished that realization had come a bit sooner in the book and maybe had a different outcome at the end? I'm not sure how that might play out.

If you're interested in a coming-of-age book that takes place NOT in the USA, and has a slight Romeo/Juliet feel, this is probably the book for you. Overall I give it 4 stars, but just wished that Marianne's character was a little more developed and had more information before the last quarter of the book. It was like reliving high school and my first year of college all over again - to a certain extent! HA!