book therapy

today we just laid low. i got a box of books for me & owen last week to read together and these are a few of our favorites:

eric carle's brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? is just gorgeous anyhow, and after owen's delight in the classic caterpillar on board book i thought he'd enjoy this. we've been trying to get the coloring thing down--drawing and not eating crayons--and it's been more successful since i got the massive roll of art paper from ikea and i just tape it on the dining room table. of course he still colors the table mostly... but all this to say that the best part of coloring is that owen will shout out colors: YELLLLW! GREEEEEEEn! BLUE! RED! and so he was pretty prepped for this book. also it works beautifully for signing.

this book, chicka chicka boom boom was one we read for the first time today on recommendation from our friends b&w. it's a sing-song clever take on the abcs which owen is absolutely obsessed with. it was hard to get him past the first page, as with seuss' abcs, with the alphabet but once we got the rhythm going he was singing CHICCCBOOM and laughing at all the letters jumbled up after the fell out of the coconut tree.

but this book. . . well, it's clearly the winner. the first page starts:

Trains are great at speed, speed, speeding,
Through tunnels rumbling, over tracks rattling,
All aboard, at stations stopping.
Choo choo. Clickety-clack! Off they go!

the pictures are fun, the words rather poetic and by the end (and the third read this morning) owen was practically shrieking CHOOOOCHO and shouting ZOOOMZOOO and singing DINGDINGDING.

so that's my impromptu book-review of some new (to us) toddler books. elmo's window book is a big hit of course but mostly owen just likes to open and close the clock with mice running behind.

today, then, really felt like a sunday. we spent most of the morning rotating through books and hanging out in our jammies until 2 taking breaks to watch blues clues (bue cues! buuuuuuue!) and enjoy the overcast weather with the dog. a good sunday kind of quietness and slowness, but we could feel the emptiness without michael here. we all seemed to snuggle in together, even the dog and cat. i think we were all letting each other know we're going to work it out doing the things we know best and somehow there was some kind of pact that we (all four of us) were going to be kinder and gentler and patient-er.