You know you've made it when you've been moulded in miniature plastic. - Cate Blanchett

Monday evening, 6 pm.
Simon refuses to eat the ziti, even though I assure him that it tastes the exact same way the spaghetti does. I curse Dan under my breath for either not knowing or not caring about this preference and taking the leftover spaghetti rather than the ziti for lunch. (This is the difference between mothers and fathers – I would have known to take the stupid ziti. Dan’s a grown man and doesn’t much care what form of pasta he ingests. Simon, on the other hand…) Si instead eats an entire can of pears for dinner. (Jude eats the ziti – I have my own in-house version of Jack Sprat and his wife.)

Tuesday morning, 3 am.
“Mama! Mama! I neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed yyooooooouuuu!!!!!”
I wake out of a sound-ish sleep to find Si dancing frantically in my doorway.
“I have to go to the bathroom and I need to hurry! Help me!”
My mothering instinct kicks in (or my don’t-wish-to-scrub-the-bathroom-floor-at-three-in-the-morning instinct, hard to tell) and I leap out of bed, grab the child, whip off his underwear, and plunk him on the toilet just in time.
Unusually he wishes me to remain in the bathroom while he does his thing. So I sit on the edge of the bathtub and discuss Thomas the Tank Engine with him, accompanied by various loud and rude bodily function noises. Finally, he feels much better, and I make a mental note to NEVER ever feed the child pears ever again.
He climbs back into bed– oh who am I kidding – he is sleeping on the floor these days, his preference, I just hate to admit that my child sleeps on the floor when he has a perfectly fine and comfy bed. So he climbs back under his comforter and quilts and asks me to stay a bit. All right. Because even though I am hugely pregnant, I sometimes feel guilty that I am too impatient and not affectionate enough with my older son, and so I feel compelled to crawl into his floor-nest and hug him to me. (He is so not a snuggler. Jude curls right into me and wraps his little arms around my neck; cuddling with Si is somewhat like trying to cuddle with a box of Legos or maybe his Wiggles radio.) Also, he wishes to discuss with me, in great detail and with enthusiasm, the Moomintroll book we started reading that evening before bedtime.

“Mom, what is Moomintroll?”
“Uh…a troll.”
“Why did he want to sleep with Snufkin instead of Sniff?”
“Because Sniff snores.”
“Ooooh! That’s the Sniff that snores!”
Silence. I pray he is asleep. Nope.
“Mom? Are Moominmamma and Moominpappa just Moomintroll’s parents? Or Sniff’s and Snufkin’s too? “
“Si, I haven’t the foggiest. I just started reading the book too. Now go to sleep.”
“Mom? Can I take Frog and Toad to school with me tomorrow?”
“Simontroll, it’s time to sleep.”
Finally he simply runs out of steam and goes to sleep, probably because I promise him an entire chapter of Moomintroll when he gets home from preschool tomorrow, but now I am wide awake. Which is my right and just punishment for allowing my boy to eat an entire can of pears.

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I just checked out of my library Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow and DM Thomas’ The White Hotel both upon the recommendation of a coworker who I like very much (and who is way smarter than me). After I finish Outlander (soon, soon), I felt like I had a gazillion books lined up but I guess I didn’t really. And I am not that thrilled to go back to Son of the Circus so perhaps I’ll postpone that for a bit. I am scheduled for vacation in three weeks, so for a week away I need at least four books to take with me. (Because you have to account for moods, etc.) So I have to start thinking about vacation reading possibilities as well. Last year I read Cloud Atlas, The Perfect Storm, The Bitch in the House, and a new issue of Brain, Child. So you see, I really do run the gamut on vacation. (Although I learned my lesson year before last and refuse to read shark books at the beach. Close to Shore was a really good read but I was terrified to get in the water. ) Some of the other time travel suggestions will probably make it into my luggage - The Garden of Iden looked particularly intriguing and fun. Maybe the second book of the Outlander series. Possibly Slammerkin, Vanity Fair, or maybe some Rushdie. Or maybe I will just go wander B&N (or the library) and splurge.

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Gina, Sarah Louise, and I watched “Washington Square” on Saturday evening. At first we thought Jennifer Jason Leigh was just laughable but as the movie progressed, her character developed and matured in subtle and beautiful ways. At the end of the movie, I can only say I admire her acting ability after all, even if the last movie I saw her in was “The Hitcher”. The toothsome Ben Chaplin plays the love interest, but alas, I knew going into it that it was based on the Henry James novel so I knew not to expect a happy ending. (Although I recently read Edith Wharton’s The Buccaneers, which strangely did end happily – something I never in a million years expected from Wharton, James, or others of that period and ilk.)

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Snippets:

I want to go to this.

The Booker Prize longlist will be announced tomorrow. That should give me some vacation-reading fodder. And never fear, I will share my opinions.

I wanted to love Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell but I just could NOT get into it. Maybe it too will take a trip to the shore with me. I can't be the only person who doesn't get it...can I?

OK, I want to see a picture of Barbie the Librarian. Could she possibly be as cool as the action figure based on Nancy Pearl? And what would her accessories be – obviously the glasses, and maybe a book – like the ALA’s Guide to Reference Books; perhaps a subscription to ProQuest or Lexis Nexis? Maybe the companies could do some sort of product tie-in.

I’ve always kinda dug Struwwelpeter, so I need to check this book out. I agree with the Bookslut people, though – I like the UK cover much better than the US cover.

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My husband’s very sweet and fairly rich college roommate and his family are coming to visit next Sunday. So we are in the throes of frantic house-fixing-up, in Dan’s desperate hope of fooling them into believing that we do not indeed live in a hundred-year-old house we got for a steal and which needs years of work. Andrew is the nicest guy in the world, and his wife is great, and I love their kids – they all will not care, but Dan…now. Having attended a very prestigious university, and regardless of the fact that I try to hide his alumni magazine from him, he suffers from an inferiority complex because he has not recently been named chief of surgery at Johns Hopkins or written a best-selling critically acclaimed novel, or invented the next greatest thing in microchips, or been appointed to the President’s cabinet. So I take a deep breath, having long ago reconciled myself to *my* personal mediocrity in the face of *my* alumni magazine, and try to fix up the house for the guy. Because I love him, and because I personally think he’s done some amazing stuff and is an amazing guy. But what the hell do I know? I’m just married to him.