Vampires and monsters, oh my! I'm so very deep into this Twilight saga that I'm not going to be able to keep up here until it's over.

We have been quite busy this weekend, though mostly with relaxing things happening around home and catching with friends at playdates. I feel like I've spent a lot of time in my car in some ways, but in others, it hasn't been with the harried running that we tend to get into with our regular routine. Ollie made his Hitler Powerpoint presentation for our co-op for a few hours on Saturday night. We read _All the Way Home_, a book I loved more than Ollie did. We also read _Julie's Story_ about Frances's American Girl doll, and it was surprisingly well written and engaging, much more so than I expected. We read a shorter American Girl book about Molly, who we've been following a bit with our WWII class, and Ollie and I read _Missing May_, a Newbery winner that he wasn't crazy about but that I thought was okay. What's up with all these Newbery books about poor, for lack of a better term, "white trash" cobbled together families where the parents have died or abandoned the children and the themes are all about things that are very difficult for most children to relate to: 12 Step programs, quirky kids who are almost supernaturally mature, and this one, which had a heavy component of Spiritualism and seances and mediums, including several play-on-words jokes with the terms. I find myself having to explain lots of elements that the plot hinges heavily upon, even when my children are in the target age range. This was another book that it was fairly hard to imagine a lot of middle-grade or early middle school children truly loving; it was sad and the theme is just more appealing to adults (an older man missing his dead wife; the adjustments of a girl who has experienced loss after loss in her life. Obviously I don't think these are off-limits topics, but this book falls straight into the same category and thematic zone as _Because of Winn-Dixie_ and _The Higher Power of Lucky_, who other Newbery books that all take the same kind of fringes of society and the same all-too-familiar dead parents, dead or leaving guardian characters and place them in a spare atmosphere of soulful searching for place. It's hard to believe these authors didn't all collude in writing, and that the same committee isn't choosing these winners year after year.

Frances has a funky rash over a lot of her body and a wet cough. I don't quite know what to make of it. And she's whiny. Tell me something new. This time it's about wanting a sister. Believe me, I want to give her a little sister at least as much, if not more, than she wants one. And I can relate to her longing for that tiny sibling to take care of, because I wanted that more than anything in the world when I was growing up, and like her I cried tears of non-understanding at why my parents couldn't just find us a baby brother and no, I didn't want to wait until I had a baby of my own (why do you think I started trying to get pregnant at 23?). Couldn't they "just" adopt one? That's where we were tonight. We bumped into an old neighbor who moved away two years ago, and they are in the process of adopting three little girls who are relatives. I know, I know, why can't that happen in my family? And Frances, like me, can't face the reality that there aren't just orphanages right out there in America where a loving family can walk through the door and just go "shopping" and take home a baby or a three year old or a fifteen year old that very same day. She didn't want to hear about home studies, social workers, attorneys, red tape and paperwork, notarizations, not to mention travel, long waits, big and uncertain fees, and potential disappointment. Frankly, I don't want to hear about that stuff, either. That eight year old part of myself still just wants to march on down to that Baby Sale at JC Penney and pick myself up a baby. Or just bump into some goodhearted but pregnant teenager in the Target and have her promise me that baby in her belly because, as Frances put it, "she's not able to take care of it herself." Or that I could drive over to the nearest children's home and find the one with the dark curls especially fetching and instantly go off into our happily ever after. What I ended up with instead was one very angry, frustrated, over-tired, mucousy biological child of mine sobbing loudly in the backseat of my car in outrage that I was denying her this most basic wish while we were stopped in an inexplicable line of traffic for 30 minutes on the way home from gymnastics.

It is so freaking cold. And we're going to an outdoor historical park tomorrow. I'm a little disappointed because the show is going to go on, but it's going to be all indoors, most likely, which means we'll miss some of the experience that this place is so known for. I'm sure they'll do a great job, but still...if it's not going to snow and be gratifying and lovely, I'd rather it just be seasonal or slightly better so that we can get on with life. The Farmer's Almanac lied to me! Well, may not entirely...it has been a hard winter, but mostly because it has had a lot of cold days without the prize of some cozy snow days.