Autumn

Yesterday, for the first time, there was just a hint of crispness in the air. Not much, but some.

For the first time this summer, it doesn't seem ludicrous to be wearing a long sleeve shirt. I went walking outside and wore a sweatshirt the entire time. I considered the possibility of eating mashed potatoes with dinner (Bart would protest that the weather has nothing to do with eating mashed potatoes for dinner - I think he'd be happy to eat them when it's 110 degrees outside). My AC has not yet turned on today.

And for the first time in her life, Ella wore feety pajamas. I think she liked them almost as much as I do.

Tell Me What to Read: Round 15

Today was the first day the air has felt cool! (By which I mean 75 degrees, of course. Oh Texas, you make it so easy to love you).

Which means October is nearly here and thus I need reading material for next month. You know, for the moments when I'm not reading Janette Rallison as fast as I can.

Eat some soup or a pumpkin baked good and also, suggest something for me to read in October:

1. Comment with the title of one book you think I should read (any book you want). One title only, please, lest my brain explode.
2. I'll select one comment at random and announce it on the blog within the next week.
3. On the off-chance that I've already read the book you select, I'll contact you and ask for a follow-up suggestion (make sure there is a way to contact you either by blog or email).
4. I'll get a copy of the book and read it by the end of October.
5. I'll write a review of it here. Even if I hate the book, I will not hate you.

Nightshade City by Hilary Wagner

8 of 10: Nightshade City was so far superior to what I expected. This book about an underground rat city ruled by a tyrant was just really well done.

So, I actually kept looking forward to reading about rats. Yes, I am as surprised as you are. Of course, I just reread Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh this year with the third graders at my schools, so perhaps I was already inclined to be thinking favorably about rats (an animal that in real life makes me truly sick to my stomach).

The action takes place mainly in the Catacombs, an underground rat city that was taken over eleven years ago by an outcast rat named Killdeer and his cronies, most notably Billycan who is an escaped lab rat.  Together they've killed off most of the rats who were outwardly loyal to the previous government.

Now they demand that all the citizens pay a Stipend of food every week which they use to feed the "Kill Army" which is mainly made up of orphan boys (orphaned because the parents have been killed off or starved to death, generally). You can imagine that life in the Catacombs is getting pretty unpleasant.

The two Nightshade brothers have been without a guardian for sometime now, but they've managed to conceal that fact for a while, but when it's discovered and the military comes to draft them, they take off for the surface (called "Topside") where they discover the entrance to another rat city.

The city is run by Juniper, a rat thought dead since the takeover eleven years earlier, but he's indeed alive and well and planning to attack the Catacombs in order to free the inhabitants (he also believes that most of the Kill Army orphans are not really loyal to Killdeer at all and as soon as they are offered a new life, they'll take it).

Things are moving fast, though, because Juniper is determined to rescue his only remaining family member, a young niece named Clover who is about to be married to Killdeer.

This book is the first in a planned series (the Nightshade Chronicles), but this book doesn't necessarily serve as a "set-up" book - you dive right into the action and only passing reference is made to things that I'm assuming will be fleshed out in further books (why do the rats live up to 80 years? what exactly caused Killdeer to be exiled? what was the deal with the Nightshade brothers' famous and beloved father?).

Nightshade City has drawn comparisons to Redwall (oh, how I loved those books as a child) and the Gregor The Overlander books by Suzanne Collins. I haven't read the Gregor books (Bart has and really loved them), but the Redwall comparison made me think these books would skew a little younger than they do.

And while I can see many older elementary school students enjoying them, I think it really would go better for a middle school audience - it's an adventure story, yes, but this book had far more complexity than that would imply. There was so much political maneuvering among the rats and family relationships and difficult decisions to make that you could really have a lot of great discussion about it. The writing was much better than I'd anticipated. This book really was quite masterful. I am amazed to be saying these things about a book about rats and earthworms, but here I am, doing just that.

There is some vague references to Killdeer's affinity for women and the distasteful fate that awaits Clover after she's named "The Chosen One." It is not at all crude or even that noteworthy, but I could see some kids picking up on it and questioning what exactly they're referring to.

I do wish authors would stop naming characters all very similar names, though - Julius and Juniper and Vincent, Victor, and Virden? I mean, really. Am I just dumb or something?

Copy received from Blue Slip Media

Two Months

Dear Ella,

Before you were born, I took a picture of myself for the last 13 or so weeks of my pregnancy. Your Aunt Merrick did it every single week, starting from the week she found out she was pregnant.

Likewise, she started taking a monthly picture of your little cousin from month one. It took me two months to get my act together enough to do the same thing (how long can I blame the move for everything I'm failing to do?). Welcome to your life - sometimes I'm a little slow. On the other hand, I've fed you every single day thus far, so, on the whole, I'd say we're good. You win some, you lose some.

As far as babies go, though, we feel like we won in a big way. Almost daily, your dad and I say to each other, "Can you believe that this is OUR baby? We get to keep her!" I'm sure when we were driving home from dinner last night with another couple that lives in our apartment complex and you cried (loudly) the whole way, they were also thinking "THEY get to keep her."

You feel like so many different babies to me - there is the swaddled, snoozing Ella, and the awake and serious Ella, and the awake and smiling Ella, and the screaming little toad Ella (you really do look like a little toad to me when you scream - you pull your legs up and scrunch your eyes shut and your mouth is so wide across your face).

And I love them all. Even the toad.

Mommy

Happy Days Will Come to You All Year

I have now been 25 for over a week. And I feel exactly the same!

My birthday was lovely - Bart and I went out to lunch with the baby (for FREEEEEE).

When Ella and I got home, there was a note from FedEx stuck to my door saying that they'd tried to deliver a package and that it was waiting at the apartment office. I called down to the office and they said "Yes, we have it. It appears to be food."

I knew immediately what it was - a few weeks ago, a box arrived claiming to have chocolate covered strawberries in it, but it was actually just a recycled box, full of something much less chocolaty - I had called my dad trying to figure out what the deal with the box was, so he knew I THOUGHT I'd received a box of goodies only to discover it was full of a soup tureen instead. So this box, I knew, must actually be filled with Shari's Berries. And it was. My dad is terrific.

Bart had arranged to have Ralphie watch Ella, so I dropped her off, picked Bart up at work and we went downtown and had a delightful dinner (which we spent mainly talking about how cute our baby is and looking at pictures of her on our cell phones - what pathetic first-time-parent souls we are).

After dinner, we headed to south Austin to catch a pre-screening of Secretariat for which BlogHer and Disney had offered free tickets to Texas bloggers and happily, one of the dates just happened to be on my birthday. We got our hands stamped with extremely non-official looking purple rubber stamps and then got to sit in the "press" section (which consisted of the two of us and another young couple, and was guarded by an old guy wearing jeans and a cowboy hat. I love Texas).

As we left, I told Bart I hadn't enjoyed a movie so much since Iron Man, back in 2008. I didn't expect it to be particularly funny (the preview doesn't make it look particularly amusing), but it was hilarious. The audience was terrific too, so that made it even more enjoyable. It was completely clean, intense at times, and moving, too. What more can you really ask for? (A free bucket of popcorn and some candy. . .that's what more I could have asked for, but I've chosen to move on with my snack-free life).

When we arrived back at Ralphie's, we snuggled our baby to within an inch of her life and then all inhaled the strawberries together while I opened the gifts from my parents (which were, as usual, excellent).

(My favorite comment of the evening came from Ralphie's oldest daughter who, seeing Ralphie kiss Ella, said "Why are you kissing her?  She's not our baby.").

Oh, birthdays. I'm still young enough to wish you came twice a year. 

A Rose By Any Other Name. . .

Hmm, well. Here is a post I am slightly embarrassed to be writing.

Once upon a time, we decided that when we had children, we would call them by pseudonyms on the blog. We got pregnant, we found out it was a girl, and we decided on a name for the blog.

Except, then, within just a few days of her birth, Bart commented on how much he liked the name and. . . perhaps we might use it for another daughter down the road.

"Too late," I said. "I'm not switching it now."

But as weeks went by, he kept mentioning it. My mom commented on what a nice name it was. I'd liked the name from the beginning, but hadn't really considered it for a real-life name, but now every time I wrote it on the blog, I thought about how much I liked it.

And finally, eight weeks after her birth, we decided we needed to make a call one way or the other. If we wanted to keep that name on the table for future daughters, we needed to pull it from the blog and rename our current baby quickly. The longer we waited, the more awkward it would be.

Which is why last night, we spent a long time sitting on the couch and suggesting possible blog names for our little baby.

So, if you'll all indulge me, here is Ella:

It's possible, of course, that if we had another daughter we'd choose another name for her, but at least we'll have the option. And that's a nice feeling.

You are all good souls to put up with this ridiculousness.

(Now off to edit the last two months worth of posts and hide (but never delete!) your lovely comments on those posts)

Naming a Baby

People have commented on my name all my life. Sure, it gets misspelled frequently (I got an insurance letter yesterday with it spelled "Jansenn") and for some reason people who didn't learn to read phonetically often pronounce it "Janice."

But I'm also always the only person with that name around, I never have to use an initial after my name and generally once someone learns my name, they don't forget it.

So there was no question that my children would not be getting names that were in the top ten most popular names.

My criteria was as follows:

1. Never been in the top 1000 most popular names on the Social Security website
2. Be easy to pronounce from the spelling
3. Not have a made-up spelling
4. Preferably be a last name

Ella's real name fit all those criteria (in fact, a student at one of my elementary schools last year had her name as a last name).

We picked it out four or five years ago and have never grown tired of it. I think I was the one who suggested it and Bart immediately agreed that it was a keeper. Once we found out she was a girl, the naming debate was over, although we did have some discussion about a middle name (we had originally decided to give her my middle name, but then I started having second thoughts. Eventually, we ended up sticking with my middle name for her middle name).

And the reason I don't use her real name on the blog is partially for safety reasons and in larger part because I want to keep her out of the clutches of Google.

When you Google my name, my blog is the first result. That's fine with me since I've written everything on this site. But Ella doesn't have a say (at least not now) in what I write here and I don't want her life to be that easily accessible to anyone who can type a name into a search engine.

If she wants to write about herself someday and use her real name, that's her decision. But it's not a decision I want to make for her.

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

4 of 10: Little Bee nearly killed me. I can understand why some people like it (or even love it), but it just didn't do a lot for me. 

This book is WILDLY popular. Currently, it's sitting in the 28th spot on Amazon's best sellers list. I tend to like popular books, so this is not a strike against it for me - I have no feelings of superiority about liking very obscure books.

And then I foolishly went and searched for it in my Google Reader and the reviews of several friends and bloggers that I respect and admire were gushing with praise for it and I felt like a complete illiterate for not caring for it ("Where are my Twilight books??! I cannot be bothered with books that don't include unrealistic love triangles and sparkly vampires!").

But really, this book? Not for me. Not for me at all. I listened to it on my iPod and it took me forever to get through (forever = two months). 

The official blurb is all mysterious:

"We don't want to tell you what happens in this book. It is a truly special story and we don't want to spoil it. nevertheless, you need to know enough to buy it, so we will just say this . . . Once you have read it, you'll want to tell your friends about it. When you do, please don't tell them what happens. The magic is in how the story unfolds."

 Oh brother. Why am I such a cynic? I have no idea. . .

Anyway. The basic, apparently book-ruining premise is this - Little Bee is a refugee from Nigeria (I will probably never again be able to say Nigeria without pronouncing it the way the narrator did) and she's been in a detention center for two years in England. When she gets out she goes to the home of Sarah and her son Charlie. Sarah's husband has recently died, but they knew Little Bee, having met her a few years earlier (how they met would be telling).

The story alternates between Sarah and Little Bee, and switching between the present and the past and eventually you learn how their lives are intertwined.

I could have liked it - there were themes that, played out differently, could have moved me or captured my attention - but it just didn't. It was too contrived, had too much of an agenda, and too full of sex and swearing.

Oh well. Back to my regularly scheduled teen romances.

25

It's my birthday today. I'm 25 years old.

My life is so different than it was a year ago.

One year ago, I woke up alone because Bart was traveling (it was the first of 13 weeks he would spend away). Today he works close enough to home that I could pick him up for lunch.

A year ago, I was an elementary school librarian, commuting south every day to teach 6 classes. Today I'm a stay at home mom.

And a year ago I wasn't even pregnant. Today I have a nearly two month old baby.

A year ago, I felt like I was always looking toward the future - toward the next weekend, the next vacation, the next raise, the next nicer apartment. Today, I am happier with my life than I can ever remember being.

It's going to be a good year.

Art

There's something about me that you may not know because I don't like to brag about it.

I am a brilliant artist.

Oh wait, that's not me. That's my sister Merrick. I am about as artistic as a jar of mayonnaise. 

Do you remember this baby?

 
She was less than 48 hours old in that photograph.

Merrick came for Ella's blessing bearing gifts. Specifically this one:

I sort of can't believe I'm related to someone who can do this. I was going to post a photo of the portrait I did of Ella, but I couldn't get the stick-figure arms to be the same length. Oh well.

Just One Wish by Janette Rallison

8 of 10: Perfect light reading - funny and clean, with a nice romance. I loved every crazy second of Just One Wish about a girl determined to make her six-year-old brother's dream of meeting his hero (Robin Hood) come true before he goes in for surgery.

This is one of those books where the cover put me off. I mean, I've been hearing about Janette Rallison for ages (a quick search of my Google Reader uncovers 92 references to various titles by her), and yet I have never picked up one of her books.

Then, for some reason that has already escaped me, I checked out How to Take the Ex Out of Ex-Boyfriend at my library and read it in a single evening. Bart kept giving me odd looks as I sat on the couch, feeding the baby and giggling outloud because, oh it was funny.

I'm fairly certain that Janette Rallison is to 2010 what Sarah Dessen was to 2009 for me - I think I'll be reading all her books as quickly as I can get my hands on them.

Which brings us back to Just One Wish and it's unfortunate cover. I knew the book was about a sibling with cancer and combined with that cover it just seemed all too serious and probably one that would depress me (I've already read Ways To Live Forever and this book just seemed like more of the same).

Oh, how wrong I was.

Annika is seventeen and her little brother has just been diagnosed with a brain tumor and will be going in for surgery in just a few days. Anxious to ease his fears about the surgery, she tells him that she found a genie in a bottle a long time ago and still has two wishes left, the last of which he should use to wish that the surgery will go well.

She is certain he'll use the other wish to ask for a Talking Teen Robin Hood figure which she has managed to get a hold of (it's pretty much the most sought-after toy at the moment). She's all ready to whip it out and prove that the genie is real and thus his last wish about the surgery will come true and then he wishes that the real Robin Hood will come and teach him how to shoot a bow and arrow.

Well. That's going to be a little more tricky. But Annika is not about to be stopped - she will just track down Steve Raleigh, the heartthrob guy who plays Robin Hood on the popular TV show, convince him to come back to Las Vegas to meet her little brother and all will be well.

It's only going to require ditching school, lying to her parents, and driving to California. Not to mention breaking into the set, stalking Steve Raleigh, and - last but certainly not least - convince him to come back with her and spend a few hours with a stranger that has cancer. Easy peasy.

The end of the book goes for a little bit more of a thoughtful finish which seems maybe a tad out of place when the rest of the book has been a slightly (or extremely) madcap, but it also kind of works. It gives the book a weight it might not have otherwise and keeps it from being nothing more than sheer fluff.

I'm already scouring the local library catalogs so that I can get a copy of all her books because they are just the perfect feeding/rocking a baby to sleep books.

Now I just feel silly that I waited so long to pick one up.

Copy checked out from my local public library

P.S. The winner of Nightshade is Lisa. Send me your address and I'll get it in the mail! I wish I had a copy to send to everyone - thanks for commenting!

A Child Like Mine

My whole family, including my grandparents, came to Texas for Ella's baby blessing.

My Grannie (she's the second on the left) made the dress and bonnet I wore for my own blessing 25 years ago. Two years later, Merrick wore it and two years after that, Landen wore it too. On Sunday, Ella was the fourth baby girl to be dressed in it.

My aunt sent me an email over the weekend and shared with me a little poem that her grandmother, my Grannie's mother, wrote some 65 years ago:

Babies are born from day to day,

Fresh from their Maker's kiss.

Babies are born from day to day,

But never a child like this.

This is the song the mothers sing

To a melody half divine.

Babies are born from day to day,

But never a child like mine. 

          Jean Gordon Lauper 1945 

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

8 of 10: Look, Mockingjay is still a good book. It's just not anywhere as good as the series started out. 

This will be full of SPOILERS,so proceed at your own risk.

Set about a month after the end of Catching Fire, Mockingjay
begins in District 13, where Katniss and her family and friends are living with the rebels and plotting the downfall of the Capitol.

The rebels believe that they need Katniss to be the face of the rebellion (the Mockingjay, as it were) and that the other districts will join District 13 in overthrowing the Capitol. Katniss has no desire to do so, especially with Peeta still in captivity, but she eventually takes on the role.

Having read The Hunger Games twice (once on audio with Bart, which makes me far more critical of a book because I'm wondering what he's thinking), I still stand by my 2008 review - I think The Hunger Games is just about perfect in terms of plotting and pacing. There was such a nice balance between the high intensity violence of the Games and the quieter, sweeter moments where Katniss remembered her old life, and then the scenes with Peeta.

This book didn't really have that - it was pretty much violence and action the whole way through (if there were pauses in the violence, it was for Katniss to hide in a corner and be depressed. I can't blame her for feeling that way, but it doesn't exactly make for gripping reading). 

And that was the biggest weakness in the book for me. Early on, when the rebels are making propaganda movies starring Katniss and it's clear she is not a good actress, Haymitch asks the assembled group to think of a time when they were genuinely moved by Katniss (rather than just impressed by her costumes or skills). People mention several - when she took Prim's place in the Games, when she sang for Rue's death, when she drugged Peeta so she could go save his life. Those moments, where she is so human, are missing for me in this book. She never gets a chance to be truly likable or a really sympathetic character.

And, speaking of Haymitch, whenever I recommend The Hunger Games to someone (which is frequently), I say "I know that it just sounds like a horrible premise, but really, it's a great book." And much of that is that I think a lot of The Hunger Games is quite funny. Peeta and Haymitch, in particular, bring a lot of lightheartedness to the first two books. And this one? Not very funny. Haymitch gets about two good lines and that's about it. If there was ANY book in this trilogy that could have used some laughter, this was it.

Also, I felt like nearly every chapter had that Dan Brown cliffhanger technique, which I find quite annoying, but I never actually felt any real suspense - it felt pretty manufactured to me. The other books had things that really took me off guard or were legitimately tense, and this one just didn't have this. Also. . . everything was kind of straightforward in terms of taking down the Capitol. I was quite shocked - there were casualties yes, but I was kind of envisioning a bloodbath and it wasn't exactly like that (I'm not saying I WANTED a bloodbath, mind you). The only thing in the book that truly caught me off guard was when Peeta came away from the Capitol so changed by his torture.

Another thing - when Rue died in The Hunger Games, there was such a nice moment of closure, where Katniss sang for her and it was just really moving and I may have been a bit teary, especially when I listened to it on CD. In this one? The two or three major deaths were so abrupt and there was no reflection about those deaths, that I didn't feel any emotion at all. And this is coming from someone who was depressed for days when Sirius Black died or after Fred Weasley didn't survive the series.

Which, if we're speaking of deaths, I was sure that either Gale or Peeta was going to die, but they both make it out alive. I have preferred Gale throughout the series, but I thought her rationale for choosing Peeta was pretty convincing. On the other hand, I refuse to believe that Gale would have just gone so quietly away without a fight for her. I mean, really?

It sounds like I hated this book and that's not true; it's a good book. But my expectations based on the first book especially were really high and it just didn't quite meet up to that. If you've read and enjoyed the first two, though, you'll not want to miss this one.

Based on a few conversations and many reviews in the blogosphere, it seems like a lot of people are hung up on why Katniss voted yes on having one final Hunger Games, but I feel certain that she only voted yes in order to make sure that Coin was at ease and that she'd be allowed to go out with her bow to kill Snow. I'm particularly convinced of this because of what she says about Haymitch just after she votes yes and he has the deciding vote: "This is the moment, then. When we find out exactly just how alike we are, ad how much he truly understands me." She needs him to carry the vote for yes so that she'll have her opportunity to kill Coin.

Also, is it weird that it just thoroughly delights me that the titles of these books go from three words (The Hunger Games) to two words (Catching Fire) to one word (Mockingjay)? Oh, okay, then.

Book purchased by me (thanks to a kind gift card from Smalldog), so I guess not really purchased by me at all.

Image Overload

When Ella was six days old, my darling friend Bethany (who is not only a lovely person but an incredible photographer) came over and took some really gorgeous pictures of Ella.

You know they are a real friend when you let them move your couch to get some better light and you aren't even horrified to let them see all the dust balls that live behind it. (Actually, the fact that I'm mentioning the dust balls probably means I'm still horrified by it, but ah well. I shall move on with my life).

And then we made her drag her small son and camera out to the (very warm) beach and take some pictures of us there.

I tried to make it up to her by giving her all our Cinnamon Toast Crunch that I bought for 25 cents a box before we moved. I am nothing if not very generous.

Nightshade by Andrea Cremer

9 of 10: My kind of fantasy book (no maps!) - not too weird, enough action, and romance - Nightshade was just the right book to get me back into reading after having a baby.

We boxed up every book we owned and mailed it to ourselves in Texas. This was the only book I left out and so, on the five hour plane flight while Ella slept (bless that little baby's heart), I read.

I hadn't done much reading since her birth, consumed with the move and the whole "new baby" thing and this book suddenly had me aching to get to the library and start reading again. I looked forward to every time Ella needed to eat, so I could read another twenty or thirty pages.

Look, I know as well as anyone that vampires and werewolves are getting to be a hard sell these days. The letter that came with this book even mentioned how everyone is sick of vampires and I thought to myself, "Um, yeah. And werewolves TOO."

And then I loved this book in spite of myself, so I guess the joke is on me.

Calla is a werewolf. More importantly, she's an alpha. She and her family belong to a pack called Nightshade; when she's 18, she'll be married to Ren, another teenage alpha of the Bane pack. Their union will mark the formation of a new pack, which they will lead. The wolves are Guardians, the warriors for the Keepers (each pack has a Keeper who is over the whole pack, even the alphas).

Calla likes Ren well enough and isn't opposed to their union. She's torn between her attraction to him and her dismay at his reputation as a teenaged womanizer. They're cautiously making steps toward bringing their packs together, but she finds it hard to not be swayed by Ren's good looks and obvious flirting with her, so she tends to put up a pretty cold front. Her own romantic experiences are pretty much zero, because an alpha female is expected to be totally pure and Calla has toed the line in that regard.

Where she's failed to toe the line, however, occurred during one of her regular patrols. A human boy was on the mountain that houses a sacred cave and was attacked by a grizzly bear. Calla, breaking all Guardian rules, saves his life by having him drink a little of her blood and then returning him to his truck at the base of the mountain. If her actions are discovered by the Keepers, it is likely she'll be killed.

And then that human boy, Shay, turns up at her school (which is half Guardians and Keepers and half humans who know something is weird about their classmates and keep their distance) and obviously recognizes her. And even more strangely, he appears to be connected to her world somehow, even though he's a human. The Keepers go so far as to tell the pack to watch out for him and keep him safe.

Calla takes this responsibility seriously which means Love Triangle Alert!

There is a lot going on in this book. Calla starts finding out more and more about the history of the Guardians and the Keepers and she's troubled by some of what she learns. There are the all sorts of relationships that are being held together by only very fragile ties and power struggles from every direction.

I am someone who rarely rarely guesses a plot twist (Bart ALWAYS guesses them), but this one I saw coming a mile away. Did that lessen my enjoyment? Not even a little.

The relationships in this book are stellar - the secondary characters are just as real and intense as the main ones. I particularly loved Calla's younger brother, who is part of her pack and a just downright lovable guy.

One review of this book said it was a really well-balanced love triangle, but I am afraid that it's not going the direction I want it to. I strongly strongly prefer one of the boys, but I won't tell you which one it is - human or werewolf. I'm hoping that, in the end (and oh yes, of course there will be more books in this series), she'll end up with the one I like more.

The cover on this one strikes me as a bit strange. It's beautiful, yes, but it also makes it seem more. . .I don't know, magical/mystical than the book really is. Calla's no ice queen - she's a warrior, through and through, and I don't think this cover reflects that at all.

Usually I don't like to post about a book too long before it comes out (this one makes its appearance on October 19, 2010), but I'm really looking forward to this one and also I'd like to pass along my copy to someone who is interested.

So, leave a comment before Wednesday, Sept 8th at midnight and I'll randomly select a winner and send you my copy. It'll be fun!

Advance Reader Copy provided by Penguin

Circular Logic

When I was little, my dad used to tell me about how his dad (my granddad) would tell him, "You won't know how much I love you until you have children of your own." And then my dad would follow up with: "And you won't know how much I love you until you have children of your own."

My mom flew out to Boston to help us with the baby and the move about a week after Ella was born and she said my dad had said to her, after he'd seen Bart and my various posts about Ella over the past week, "Tell Janssen we were just as much as in love with her as they are with their baby."

Now that it's been nearly six weeks since her birth, I find myself telling Ella the same thing. "You won't know how much I love you until you have children of your own."

I never knew I could love a baby this much.