I’m so behind, and still catching up after my last day of school on June 24th. June was weird. I did some writing I’m tremendously proud of, had some disappointing news, packed up my library for its renovation, and said goodbye to my aunt. I chopped my hair short at the beginning of the month and am still adjusting.

We had a great 4th of July weekend, and this week I’ve really just been focused on my annual projects around the house and settling into H’s summer routine. She’s doing her school’s summer camp, plus therapies 4x a week, plus dance class. She’s moving from the toddler room (and our beloved toddler teacher) to the primary room at school, and three of those therapies are with brand-new speech and OT folks. It’s a lot of changes for a small human, and this was our first full week with the whole routine.

I have an endless list of projects for the summer, like I do every year. There are 3 quilts I want (need) to get done, and I’d love to finally paint our downstairs bathroom. Adam just reorganized the garage last week, and I tackled the laundry. It was climbing the walls after being neglected for most of June.

But what I really want to do this summer is read. I’ve kind of retired from YA books, I’m just not enjoying them anymore. My reading list of books for grownups is huge, and I’m trying to dive in. Have you read Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes? Loved it, just finished it so I could read its sequel Finders Keepers. 

And I want to read more with H. Tonight she decided instead of sitting on my lap in a chair for bedtime stories, she would go ahead and get into bed while I read to her. We read Sleep Like a Tiger and A Sick Day for Amos McGee from her Caldecott collection, and then she wanted one of us to stay and sit with her like she always does. Usually she just wants quiet company. But tonight she wanted me to keep reading, so I picked up Winnie-the-Pooh and just started reading without showing the illustrations.

I’ve been wanting to start reading chapter books aloud to H for a while, but she didn’t seem interested when I tried. In fact she’d kind of been rejecting storybooks full stop in favor of board books and color and vocabulary books. But maybe she just needs to switch from lap sitting to crawling into bed for a good story. Who doesn’t like reading in bed?

Because she was totally into Winnie-the-Pooh, and she listened and commented intently. I read to her for about 20 minutes before she fell fast asleep, and it was the most fun I’ve had reading to her in a while. I just signed her up for the public library’s summer reading program and logged tonight’s minutes.

And now…I want to start a summer reading program for adults. Anyone interested? Like if I made signups and came up with prizes if you read X number of hours or books this summer? I am so good at prizes, you guys.