Mother's Daybook - Birds and Books edition

Spotting - Birds! We had been spending so much time outside last month that I worried starting up school again cut into that but nope, its been the weather more than anything limiting us. But on the days we did get out, we've seen some really cool stuff. A box turtle, a wild turkey, and my favorite bird spotting - a pileated woodpecker. We see downy and red bellied at our suet feeder quite often now but I'd never IDed a pileated so that in itself was neat. But this guy was so engrossed in an an anthill he found that we didn't care that we were only 6 feet or so away from him. And yes, we were close enough to see his mustache and I'm pretty sure it was a HE. He was flinging the ants and eating them up. Then when he finally did fly off, we went up and saw the ants scurrying around to fix their home and close up the holes he had made. So neat!

The wild turkey was also a fun spotting. We were only stopping in at the nature center to return something before heading off to hike elsewhere but I decided to take advantage of the couches and air conditioning and feed Norah by the bird watching area. The only things there were a bunch of squirrels and a blue jay but after a few minutes Lucy asked me what the big bird was.  When I said "it's probably another blue jay," Lucy replied "no, it's big!" And, truthfully, I wasn't really paying attention because every time she talked, Norah would sit up and want to see what was going which meant I was paying attention things other than that the birds on the feeder. I quickly looked and told her I didn't see it and I could tell she was getting frustrated by my inability to spot what turned out to be the GIGANTIC Wild Turkey right in front of me. Oops. But it was fun to watch it interact with the squirrels. They didn't want to leave the feast but also didn't want to get too close to the turkey so it looked like the turkey had a invisible shield around it.

Being - Restless. I mentioned a bit of that in my recent book review but I also feel restless when it comes to ideas. I like to always have at least one project type thing I need to be researching or reading about or thinking about and I feel restless when I don't have anything. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that's always, or even mostly, a bad thing but right now I'm feeling like I really just need to rest and be. And its so hard for me. I don't need to plan or prepare. I need to do the things that need to be done, day in and day out. That's not nearly as interesting but ever so important. And hard. Very hard.

Reading - I need some light fiction. I've got two classics I'm reading right now and a couple good devotional type ones but I need some things I can read with a bit more speed (probably to take my mind off the issue above ;-), preferable hard copies since I am making an effort to take real books outside so the kids see me reading instead of looking at a screen. I tried picking up a book (Jane Steele if you must know - but I don't recommend it) from a popular blogger's summer reading list recommendations, I've come to the conclusion that this particular blogger and I just don't have similar taste. Which is sad because she writes really great reviews that make me want to read all the books she recommends. But then I read the books and I don't like them ;-( They are just so - modern. I'm also sad because I have a whole list of books I want to read but they reason they are still on my "to-read" list is because the library doesn't have them. Because they are old. Time to put in some ILLs I guess. But waiting several weeks for a book then reading it in 48 hrs is also sad. All of this is so frustrating and books are not supposed to be sad or frustrating! Books are fun, gosh darn it. #endrant

On a much happier book note, Lucy is so excited that I am finally reading her the next Little House on the Prairie book. I had stopped us after On the Banks of Plum Creek and wanted to wait until she was a bit older for the next few but we're planning on a trip north later this summer and have decided to visit a couple Little House tourist spots on the way so I've relented. I mistakenly told her when we still had a couple chapters to go on a previous read-aloud and she could hardly contain herself. So we are listening to On the Banks of Plum Creek on CD in the car and reading On the Shores of Silver Lake and I hope to get us through Long Winter before we stop in De Smet.

Once I finish them, we might even listen to them on CD too. As much as I love the idea of audiobooks, Lucy and I both struggle at times with them (I'm too impatient to read new books this way with my limited audio time, she seems to struggle with comprehension if its a new story - but we also don't have the quietest car/house at times) but we love these. We just finished the part in Plum Creek where the badger stops Laura from going to the creek and luckily Norah was asleep because both big kids were completely silent until Lucy finally says "Oh, its so scary!" and let out a sigh when Laura finally runs back home. See, books are fun!