These Here Parts

There is baby stuff all over the apartment. 
We try to tidy it all up but you really can't beat it. First, there's so much of it even though we've tried to keep it paired down. And second, it's a matter of necessity - blankets double as wraps and drool catchers. Toys are clean and safe for their destinations (the mouth, always the mouth!) and keep that little hand from yanking your hair out. His hand, not yours. Seriously, Felix grabbed a big chunk last night and ended up with several sad looking strands in his tiny fist. Now I'm finally understanding that ponytail that so many moms sport round the clock - it's not only convenient (and a slight laziness), it's preventative! Keep the locks away from the baby so you can keep them at all. 

So even though this baby owns this house now - and owns us for that matter - I am still finding a way to carve out some simple pleasures. Namely (as I mentioned previously) reading. Glorious reading! I've missed it so much. I read all the time. I'm always looking at news and blogs on my phone but it had been a good while since I had finished an actual book. Now I'm on a kick and I'm so happy about it. Not sure how everyone else reads but I tend to go through waves and patterns. Usually I'll go through a period of a specific genre, typically non-fiction and then every few books, I'll pick up a novel or two. I think because I've been reading in shorter spurts (due to, ahem, some else's schedule), I've been big on the non-fiction. It's the kind of genre you can drop and pick up without worrying about forgetting about plot/character details. Recently there has been lots of Malcolm Gladwell because the man is such a brilliant story teller. Then there was The Natashas by Victor Malarek, which is slightly dated but so haunting that I couldn't put it down even though it's ruined a bit of humanity for me. And now I'm in the middle of the book featured above that was trapped under a coffee and look, a toy! It's Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá which is so enthralling that every other page has me raising an eyebrow. It's also pretty funny and I highly recommend it.

In the second picture is the softest, sweetest elephant that was a gift for our little man from one of my best friends, Amy McCulloch. Amy lives in London, England where she is Commissioning Editor at Harper Collins Voyager. She reads even more than I do and is the person who I credit with making fantasy fiction cool - to me at least. She sent us Game of Thrones way before it launched on television with a note that read, "This is going to be big, trust me!" But the biggest news is that Amy is herself a writer and has just landed a two-part deal for her own fantasy series, The Oathbreaker's Shadow (find a brief synopsis of the story here) which will be published by Random House in Spring 2013 but you can pre-order it here or here or here. I'm so proud of her - she's been working on this since we met years ago and I've seen firsthand how hard she's worked on it and how passionate she is about the story and about her writing process. She's the hardest working person I know, so incredibly smart and creative. I can't wait to turn every page.


Follow Amy McCulloch on twitter and check out her author facebook page.

*I hadn't intended to turn this whole post into an ode to books and writers but there you go. You write what you love. I snapped that shot of the elephant not realizing Amy's literary connection to this whole entry but it just so happens that it fit perfectly. I still can't figure out the perfect name for him. I suggested Dorian Gray to Chris one night as we were putting the baby down but he thinks that the reference is far too cryptic and depressing for a child's stuffed animal. I have to agree but now what to name that little fellow?