A mouse and a book
My daughter is sitting behind me as I type reading a book. A book I recommended to her. This is huge, people. Huge enough to share with the world. Huge enough to postpone dishes . . . bedtime, even, though it is already 10:42 PM.

(Oops. Maybe I shouldn't admit that, especially since I didn't really notice until I checked just now so I could share the time.)

See, this sweet child is a little too much like her mother and that independent spirit is a bit too strong at times. Not that independence is a bad thing all on its own. It is the one reason I don't worry about her as much as I do my younger children. I know that no one will ever make her do anything she doesn't want to.

It's just that if mom recommends something, the recommendation is met with a shoulder shrug and suddenly she'd sooner read Bug's Dora the Explorer books than any book mom said she might like.

When I recommended Nancy Drew, I may as well have handed her The Federalist Papers. OK, so I like The Federalist Papers. I'm weird like that and hope she will be someday, too, but it is probably a bit much for a ten year old.

Who am I kidding? This child drags out Annals of the War and reads it when she doesn't have a good book about horses. Of course, that is because I told her last year that she wasn't old enough to understand it and she has set out to prove me wrong.

See how these recommendations work?

At any rate, a friend of hers mentioned something about Nancy Drew and suddenly we are looking at the online catalogs of the local library system to try to read every single one of them in order. Oh why did they have to come out with that silly movie? It has revitalized Lincoln's interest in the young sleuth and they are all checked out almost all the time.

It was just checked in! It was just checked in! We have to go to the library now, mom!
Now maybe she actually does remember that mom recommended Nancy Drew first and thus has let down her guard a little. Maybe it is because there is a dog on the cover and she needs some book about dogs to review for her e-zine. I don't know . . . and confess I don't really care.

She's reading Cracker! because her mom said she might like it.