What's New

The author of Giant Speed Bump and Love You Already honored me with an award recently (thanks!), and the award asks that I mention 15 new blogs that I'm reading. Unfortunately, I've been having trouble staying caught up with reading my "old" blogs, so I'm not going to be able to come up with 15 without being creative. But I do have a few somewhat newbies to show off.

• Our Little Surprise and The Adventures of Andy and Eli are both authored by my new friend (and J's ex-girlfriend from high school!), Jennifer. Check out her blogs if you're in the mood for some adorable pictures of a newborn baby girl and 2 super cute boys.
• Just Another Day in Paradise is one of my new favorite blogs because we have a lot in common and her posts are a lot of fun to read (I love her writing style). She's embarking on some exciting, high-tech IF treatments, so go give her some support if you have time.
• The Last Best Hope is another fairly new blog that I've been enjoying, and she is just starting the adoption process. I got to see her profile recently, in pdf form, and it is fabulous!
• As a result of participating in the recent Open Adoption Roundtables, I have started reading a few birthparent blogs. I'm not sure why I never did before, but I suspect that I was intimidated. I'm so glad that I started reading, however, because one particular blog has captured my interest. birthmomtalks is about a month away from her birth daughter turning 18 and the possiblity that she might be able to meet her after a closed adoption. I am very grateful to her for being the one who recommended the book The Girls Who Went Away to me. It is one of the most captivating reads I've come across in months, and it has given me an increased empathy not only for birth mothers and adult adoptees, but also for anti-adoption advocates. It made me realize that, because the adoption culture has been changing recently, there is a kind of generation gap between members of the adoption triad from the mid to late 20th century and those of us who have entered the adoption triad more recently. It will always be difficult for us to understand each other's feelings and motivations, as with any generation gap, but this book was quite enlightening.
• Baby Steps to a Baby Dream is another fairly new blog that I started following and she just matched with an expecting mom! Yay!

In other NEWs, Evie participating in our library's summer reading program. I found out that the library lets all kids sign up, ages 0 through high school. They challenge preschoolers to read 100 "Juvenile Easy" books over the summer, in 5 lists of 20 books. Each completed list earns the child a free book and the fifth list earns a special prize (a childrens' music CD). At first I rolled my eyes a bit that we couldn't count Evie's home library and had to check out all 100 books from the library, but in the end I'm glad we did. Evie discovered some new favorites among her 100 books, and I would like to share her recommendations with those of you who have babies her age. Hopefully your library will have them, too! (You'll notice that the "touch and feel" and "lift the flap" genres are heavily represented in Evie's favorites right now.)

This is My Duck (and he says "quack, quack!")

That's Not My Penguin (there are many books in this series, and Evie seems to love all of them that we've read so far, including "That's Not My Lion" and "That's Not My Monkey.")

Baby Faces (she LOVES watching me imitate the babies' faces)

Peekaboo Playtime (this is one in a series as well, and Evie seems to love them all, especially because the flaps are easy for her to lift by herself)

(and one of my new favorites, although Evie isn't interested yet)

Good Dog, Carl (The baby in the fish tank! Classic! Great illustrations.)