Time goes by so fast! In a perfect world, I’d post weekly with photos about what’s new for Ethan and what’s new for me and all that stuff that’s just so exciting for a first-time mom. But working at home is WAY harder than I ever thought it would be, and I just don’t have the time I thought I’d have, so sporadic updates will have to do.

Ethan is 14.5 weeks, which amounts to 3 months and change. He’s a whopping 17 pounds — SEVENTEEN POUNDS — and is in 6-9 months clothes, with the 12 months clothes thrown in so he doesn’t accidentally outgrow them. Obviously, he eats. A lot. Which means I’m reading a lot and/or trying to get total and complete destruction on Angry Birds, depending on if I have a book club meeting looming.

(Ethan the hoodlum)

He’s smiling and talking and laughing, though we haven’t gotten one of those good belly laughs yet.

Ethan is a super mellow baby. I’m taking him to all of my committee meetings and book club meetings and coffee with friends. I’m hoping he’ll be my little sidekick if this is just how we do things. It’ll make it easier for me to justify FOUR BOOK CLUBS to my husband.

(Ethan’s first hickey — on my friend, not me. Classy, baby!)

We’re cloth diapering and co-sleeping (though he is sleeping in his crib now that he’s sleeping through the night, but that was more of an “oh, look! He can sleep in his crib no problem!” rather than an “I’d really like him to sleep in his own bed.”) and exclusively breastfeeding. All of which I’ve become extremely passionate about, so I try to not bore people with my recitation of facts and studies that support all these things! We’ll also be doing baby-led weaning, which means I won’t be pureeing food and he’ll be breastfeeding until he weans himself, which means I might have a toddler who breastfeeds.

In my younger days, I swore I’d never do some of these things (cloth diapering, for one, and potentially having a toddler who breastfeeds, for two). When I got pregnant I tried to keep track of all those things I swore I’d never do, but I lost my list. I thought it would be funny to look back on that list in a year or two and see how many of those things I had managed to not do. My guess is there wouldn’t be too many.

Every week I go to a Mommy & Me group, which I love. I’ve met some people there who I’m hoping will turn in to friends. I’m quiet during most of the Mommy & Me group because Ethan’s been such a good baby so far that I haven’t really had to troubleshoot anything.

I’m loving being a mom. I love it even more than I thought I would!

Incidentally, the title of the post comes from this: I’d posted the bottom two pictures on Facebook, and a friend said something to the effect of, Pick your baby up and soothe him (way nicer than that, though), and I said I couldn’t because I was too busy trying to get those faces on film! Poor baby. Having to suffer so mama can laugh later. It’s a tough life!

***As I get back to blogging, one of my first tasks was to go through the drafts folder and weed out partially written posts. This post, though, is done, and there’s no reason not to publish it. So here ’tis!***

Mini-reviews!

L.A. Requiem by Robert Crais (mystery/suspense) – Recommended to me by Jen from Jen’s Book Thoughts, this is one of the Elvis Cole/Joe Pike novels. Joe Pike’s ex-girlfriend is found murdered, and her father asks Joe and Elvis to find her killer. If I was on a mystery/suspense binge, then I’d totally do Robert Crais. Highly recommended, despite a few things I found annoying in the beginning.

The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist – Picked by my book club, though this had been on my radar for quite some time. This book takes place in the future in a dystopian society where, if folks reach a certain age (50 for women, 60 for men) and aren’t needed by someone else (a father/mother, a husband/wife, or children), they’re sent to a facility to live while their organs are harvested for people with families until they finally have to give away  an organ that they can’t do without. This book gave me a lot to think about in regards to what makes someone important in society. This book was translated from Swedish, and while it definitely had a foreign feel, I have no complaints about the writing and was thrilled I had the chance to read this book. Highly recommended.

Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie – At times I felt this book was brilliant, at other times I felt this book was so utterly boring that I considered putting it down and never picking it up again. When the atomic bomb is dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, Hiroko Tinaka was wearing a silk kimono with three black cranes across the back which are burned on to her skin during the bombing. The book follows Hiroko through most of her life, from losing her fiance in Nagasaki to falling in love again to having a son who gets caught up with terrorists. Unfortunately, the boring parts were too overshadowing of the brilliant parts, so I just can’t recommend this book.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro – Just a freaking fantastic book set in the future, and there were numerous moments where I was like, Is what I think’s happening really happening? Ishiguro never really comes out and tells you This is what’s happening, which makes the book that much more intriguing. A great book for book clubs. Highly highly recommended.

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick – I loved this book. Ralph orders a bride (“a reliable wife”) and Catherine responds. Both people have their own plans for the other: Catherine wants to marry Ralph and then kill him, and Ralph, well, he’s got plans as well, though he doesn’t plan on killing Catherine. I’ve got over 40 flags tagging various sentences/passages, which for me is a sign of a really great book. Highly recommended.

Good People by Marcus Sakey – This is the kind of mystery that would make a great book club pick. A nice couple find a load of cash, decide not to go to the police, and end up running from the criminals that it belongs to. It made me think a lot about what I’d do in that situation, and how I could best evade hardened criminals. Important stuff to think about, because you never know when you’ll find a sack full of money and need to run for your life. Fantastic book club fodder, no? Pretty highly recommended.

The First Rule by Robert Crais – This was the first book by Robert Crais that I read. This is what hooked me on him. A great storyline, fast pacing, and frankly not a whole lot of violence. A lot of implied violence, but we all know that our imagination is better than actually being told what happened. Highly recommended.

The reason that I picked up A Bad Day for Sorry is because my friend Jen from Jen’s Book Thoughts told me she thought I’d like it. She hasn’t steered me wrong yet, and while this book didn’t lift my skirt up, I definitely enjoyed it.

Stella Hardesty is a middle aged, plump, not-particularly-beautiful woman who escaped from her abusive husband about five years ago, and has since started helping other women either escape their abusive husbands, or if need be, she can encourage the men to behave differently.

Reporting back to Stella was not optional, but her parolees were usually anxious to comply. First meetings with Stella tended to have that effect.

Second meetings – if a parolee was dim-witted enough to require one, put any lingering doubts to rest.

Stella’s attitude is instantly endearing. She’s a no-nonsense woman who kicks ass. And she’s not a cookie cutter mystery genre protagonist, since she’s middle aged and overweight.

Chrissy comes to Stella because Stella’s been keeping Chrissy’s ex, Roy Dean, in line, but both Roy Dean and Chrissy’s 18-month-old son have disappeared, and Chrissy needs help getting her son back. What Stella doesn’t anticipate is that Roy Dean has gotten in above his head through a stolen auto parts ring with some really really bad guys, guys who wouldn’t hesitate to kill Stella.

Interspersed throughout the story is Stella’s history with her husband, Ollie, and why she’s estranged from her adult daughter Noelle. Littlefield writes with no apologies about her characters. She puts them out there for you to like or not like, but she won’t dress them up or pretend they’re something they’re not. This is something that comes with the territory of having a protagonist who defends battered women, but it’s nonetheless refreshing to meet a character like Stella.

I did get a little annoyed with Chrissy. I didn’t connect with her the way that I did with Stella, and I didn’t think her reaction to her missing son was…frantic enough. She grew on me a little as the novel progressed, but towards the end there were times I wondered if this was the same character that Littlefield had introduced at the beginning. I guess what I’m trying to say is that Chrissy’s development felt clunky, choppy.

I loved Stella’s interest in the local Sheriff, Goat Jones. The Sheriff understands more about Stella and what she does than he outright says, so the dance they do around Stella’s quote unquote activities (some of them legal, some of them illegal, most of them sketchy) was cute.

About 3/4 of the way through the book, I noticed that Stella’s family all had double l’s in their name (Stella, Ollie, Noelle), and then I noted Chrissy has a double consonant in her name, and it seems more than just a coincidence that there’s so many characters with double consonants in their name, but I couldn’t figure out the reason or the pattern, if there is one.

This was the perfect book for me to read at this time. It was a light mystery with a great protagonist, a little humor, and a little action (well, a lot of action in the last third).

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Oh look! I remember when I used to do this.

get free booksbeing a book reviewer – Sounds cool, huh? Unfortunately, ask anyone who’s been blogging longer than 6 months: it becomes a burden. A NICE burden, but a burden nonetheless.

“olderwomen.com” trish – SCREW YOU TOO. I’m only 32, jerko.

i had emergency surgery my ex boyfriend – Uhh…you had emergency surgery BECAUSE OF your ex boyfriend or IN SPITE OF your ex boyfriend? This is where those little things called conjunctions come in handy.

why? – Because.

farts – HAHAHAHA!! Are those ever not funny? I didn’t think so.

princess bride hey lady – Yup, I can quote whole scenes from The Princess Bride.

how to cuss my parents out without them – Dude, don’t be cussing your parents out, because one day you will have an asshole kid just like yourself, and you’ll rue the day you thought cussing your parents out was a good idea.

why do people like nicholas sparks – Why do I even have to answer this question? This should be obvious. If you really don’t know why, go read the first couple chapters of any of his books, and then read the last chapter, and see if you couldn’t have predicted what would happen.

oops i peed my pants – I feel like singing! Does this make you think of Oops I Did It Again too?

summary of Geek Love – FABULOUS. That should suffice.

crack yourself up – Why yes, yes I do.

Title: Amaryllis in Blueberry [buy the book]
Author: Christina Meldrum [website] [Facebook] [Twitter]
Pages: 384
Genre: Fiction
Date Published: February 8, 2011

(A little more love to Galleysmith for the inspiration of how to set up the title, author, genre, etc.)

Summary:

In the stirring tradition of The Secret Life of Bees and The Poisonwood Bible, Amaryllis in Blueberry explores the complexity of human relationships set against an unforgettable backdrop. Told through the haunting voices of Dick and Seena Slepy and their four daughters, Christina Meldrum’s soulful novel weaves together the past and the present of a family harmed—and healed—by buried secrets.

“Maybe, unlike hope, truth couldn’t be contained in a jar. . . .”

Meet the Slepys: Dick, the stern doctor, the naÏve husband, a man devoted to both facts and faith; Seena, the storyteller, the restless wife, a mother of four, a lover of myth. And their children, the Marys: Mary Grace, the devastating beauty; Mary Tessa, the insistent inquisitor; Mary Catherine, the saintly, lost soul; and finally, Amaryllis, Seena’s unspoken favorite, born with the mystifying ability to sense the future, touch the past, and distinguish the truth tellers from the most convincing liar of all.

When Dick insists his family move from Michigan to the unfamiliar world of Africa for missionary work, he can’t possibly foresee how this new land and its people will entrance and change his daughters—and himself—forever.

Nor can he predict how Africa will spur his wife Seena toward an old but unforgotten obsession. In fact, Seena may be falling into a trance of her own. . . .

My thoughts:

When I read the description for Amaryllis in Blueberry by Christina Meldrum, I wanted to read it right away. I mean, it sounded so much like The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, which is one of my favorite books of all time, and such a great story, that I figured Amaryllis in Blueberry had to be pretty awesome too.

The story is told through alternating narratives. Each family member, and a few additional characters, get a chance to narrate different parts of the story. I think this distracted from the story, as I was constantly trying to keep track of who was who. I thought it was interesting that each of the daughters’ names started with Mary, but it made it difficult to keep track of them as individuals. Besides that, I would have liked the alternating narratives if various people had talked about the same scene. You know how there’s his side, her side, and the truth lies somewhere in the middle? I think that idea would have been particularly interesting in a book like this where the mother is neglectful of all the girls except for Amaryllis (Yllis for short), and the father is somewhat delusional and sometimes emotionally abusive.

There were quite a few similarities with The Poisonwood Bible, which is probably the biggest issue I had with the book. Has the author never read The Poisonwood Bible? Were the similarities a coincidence? I certainly enjoy when authors retell a classic story (say, Heart of Darkness or Rebecca), but I think it becomes particularly important for the author to make a conscious effort to make their story independent of the story they’re retelling. It’s quite possible that I’m mistaken on this fact, and Christina Meldrum did not, in fact, intend for this to be anything like The Poisonwood Bible. Either way, someone should have pointed this out.

I was really disappointed in the ending. Have I grown so jaded that the ending wasn’t bad enough? I couldn’t help but think when I turned the last page, “Oh, is that all that happened?” When the synopsis says, “Dick…can’t possibly foresee how this new land and its people will entrance and change his daughters–and himself–forever.” I expect some really serious consequences to their going over to Africa. The ending just wasn’t quite the devastation I imagined.

All in all, the book was okay, and I did like the author’s writing, but for me the book suffered in being too similar to The Poisonwood Bible.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars