Thursday, April 2, 2009

Dusty Books and Mobile Babies

Recent studies have concluded that 45% of parenting is containment-based. We are expecting that percentage to increase dramatically over the next few weeks as Alexander has learned how to crawl forward. *insert applause here* Not elegantly, but effectively. Nice work, boy.

What was once the ‘reading room’ in our house is now the playroom. So in an effort to make it baby friendly, I’ve got to get our big bookshelf out of there. There is no need for 98% of these books to be easily accessible, much less on display. As I was boxing up my old books, I was almost embarrassed by how silly and egotistical it seemed to even have them out on a bookshelf. I’ve moved four times in the last 8 years, and many of these books traveled from bookshelf to bookshelf without ever even being cracked open in the last decade. They were like intellectual trophies just collecting dust and taking up space.

Why on earth would I (a) keep them and (b) display them? Am I hoping to have a dinner party and be given the opportunity to say “Oh yes, the Regional Atlas to Bone Disease changed my life. I never looked at syphilitic osteomyelitis of the skull in the same way?” Yeah, that book was from grad school. Grad school was over ten years ago. I think it is time to move on. Plus, any dinner guest who is impressed or intrigued with such conversation should be escorted to the door immediately.

I have no idea why I kept these books on shelves for so long. It must be some sort of neurosis. Well, I should be on a couch talking to a therapist about this… not you, dear Blog reader. There is probably some sort of medication I can take for this problem. A once-daily drug whose ad features a librarian running in slo-mo through an open field. Mmm… pharmaceutastic…

Anyway, the point is Alexander is more mobile and we are trying to babyproof the playroom.

In other news…I finished our 2008 family yearbook. Almost 700 photos were deemed bookworthy – and I thought I was being selective. That’s an average of 1.9 photos a day. I wonder how many pictures will be in our 2009 yearbook. We expect the average photos per day will go up due to you-know-who.



Yep, that’s the guy. He can’t help that the camera loves him.

Yar.

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