Abridged Books

I am writing this on my faithful AlphaSmart 2000. Our computer has died. This is not unexpected, considering the circumstances - a glass of wine, a three year old, an inevitable big spill. And bam, its fried. So I’m temporarily out of commission, but writing this anyway with plans to post later.

Can I come?
No.
But I want to! (you can see where this is heading)
Well, we don’t always get what we want.
Otay. (complete happy surprise!)

I shouldn’t have been happy so quickly. The boy brought it up again two minutes later and then started his screaming and whining. Ahhh another day in the life of a three year old.
Shelly’s absolute worst thing that can happen to her is being left behind. Even though she can crawl really well now, it still isn’t fast enough to keep up with Archer, or anyone else, for that matter. So, when she’s left behind, she tries to follow but cries the whole time, just to remind you that she doesn’t appreciate being left out of the fun.

Archer has been so willing to help take care of her lately, he jumps at the chance to get her bottle, or feed her, or give her toys. Usually, anyway, when he’s in a good mood. Sometimes, if he’s laying on the floor and she crawls over and climbs on him he whines and says, “I don’t want her by me!” But sometimes, the best times, he says, “Look, Shelly wants me! She loves me. I love you Shelly!” Before I had kids I was under he impression that Dr. Seuss was one of the best children’s book authors out there. Now that I have children, and am asked to read and re-read and re-read, I’m not such a big fan of Dr. Seuss. Yes, the books are amusing, original, imaginative. But some of them are SO LONG. And at night, when all I can think about is getting Archer to bed ASAP, so that I can go to bed ASAP, I dread the Dr. Seuss rhymes. I’d much rather read a book about colors or numbers, since those are definitely shorter. Anything that has lots of words is definitely not something I look forward to. Which is funny because in general I like to read long novels. But something in me just doesn’t have the patience to read the same eternally long books a million times over. And so, here is my confession: I abridge. I read only half the sentences on the page, or summarize, or skip pages (when I can get away with it). And as long as we’re on confessions, I have another one for you: One day we were going somewhere in the car, and pointing out birds to each other that we saw as we went. We stopped at a light and Archer pointed out a bird that was walking across the road. “What kind is that?” he said. And I didn’t know, so I said, “it’s a roadrunner.” I was just goofing around of course, but now, whenever we see that same bird, in our yard says, “Look, a roadrunner!” And even though I was kidding when I first said it, I now feel like I lied to him about the bird, since he remembers what I said and believes me.