Laura Ingalls Wilder

I have been reading Farmer Boy, and now The Little House in the Big Woods to the kids. I absolutely loved all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books when I was little, and I collected the whole set as i got older. They are books I can read over and over, comfortable and warm like an old jumper. Simon is especially enjoying them and is fascinated by the life that Almanzo Wilder lived as a boy growing up on a farm in the 1870's. Reading the books out loud adds another dimension to them, once you put voices to the characters they seem more easy to relate to, despite their old fashioned language. And, even though some things have changed (like children being seen and not heard- personally I think that has a lot going for it sometimes...) these books prove that times change, but people don't. I especially like the chapter in Farmer Boy where the children are so excited about Christmas that they wake everyone up at 3.30 in the morning by mistake. Their mother and father get up out of bed anyway, to join in the fun, but with that slightly resigned air of parents everywhere.

Simon went back to school today and seems all better. Ruby got sick on sunday night with a similar coldy-flu kind of thing, though she is much improved today. I'm also sick with the same thing, just a general feeling of rotteness. If I was in paid employment I would have no qualms about having a sick day today, I am feverish and aching and exhausted. But as I am just a mother I get no such thing. The kids still need to be dressed and fed and taken to school and picked up, and Ruby needs to be entertained and fed and taken to the toilet and cuddled and sung to, because she is not 100% either. At least she napped today and I shut my eyes for half an hour and felt better for it. Oh, I can't wait for bedtime.