Our Reading Spot

Teaching My Little Bookworm is hosting a great link-up for posts about reading areas in our homes.

We have an entrance that we never, ever use in our house, and we’ve turned it into M’s "reading spot”.  I set up a fabric box to hold all the library books we check out, there’s a backrest for sitting on the floor, a chair, and a couple of stuffed animals.  Sometimes it gets used as an overflow area for toys too (as you can clearly see), but I try to keep it fairly tidy and inviting.

This morning M was very, very quiet as I worked in the kitchen.  You know how that normally means trouble, right?  Well, I went to see what he was doing and found this: (It’s as if he knew I wanted to do a post about this.)

I loved seeing this! 

He has a very full bookshelf in his room too, which holds the books he owns.  We normally check out 10 to 15 books from the library per week.  You can keep them for 3 weeks, and at one point I counted 40 children’s books from the library.  I felt a little… well, weird about having so many library books, but now that I’ve read some blog posts about this, I’m thinking we are pretty normal. It is a lot of reading, but we all enjoy it so much! 

Have a beautiful day! :)

Thursday Thinking – A Mother’s Work

Recently I sat and listened as a friend went on and on about how competent another friend of ours is… she really has her act together, works hard, and does a lot for others.  She (the absent friend) is a great person, great friend, and an excellent teacher at a local elementary school. 

This conversation was in no way intended to make me like “less”, but in a way it did.  I wasn’t being compared to the other friend, but I was comparing myself to her in my mind.  It is most likely my own sense of insecurity, inadequacy, etc. that made this conversation have such an effect on me.  I felt like a complete failure in comparison.

Those of us who are stay-at-home-moms, I think, are susceptible to those feelings of inadequacy from time to time, especially when we think about how everyone else seems to really “have it all together”. 

This friend of mine (Miss Wonderful :) ) is not married, and does not have children.  We are at two completely different stages of life.  There is just no fair comparison to be made.  And since we are all different, I’m guessing that applies to comparisons with everyone else too!

G.K. Chesterton wrote a book in 1912 titled, What’s Wrong with the World. It’s a series of essays about the times in which he lived.  Some of it is outdated, but much of it still applies.  I like to read a portion of it from time to time, because it always gives me food for thought. 

Yesterday I ran across the following passage, and wanted to share it with all of you, hoping it provides you with the same encouragement that it gave me (REMEMBER, it was written in 1912!):

“[A woman is surrounded with] very young children, who require to be taught not so much anything as everything.  Babies need not to be taught a trade as to be introduced to a world.  To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in the house with a human being at a time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren’t. …when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question.  For I can not with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. …How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe?  How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone?  No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute.  I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.” (What’s Wrong with the World, by G.K. Chesterton, p. 97)

Have a beautiful day! :)