What's in a (nick)name?

So, Macy likes to play veterinarian and Dr.'s office. We were in the play area a few months ago and I was lucky enough to be the vet to Macy's "little lamb with a hurt leg."

As we were playing and pretending to bandage the little lamb, Matthew kept crawling around getting in the way. Trying to include him and not stick him in the play pen again, I let him be my assistant. Enter Dr. Vinny Boombots (ya know... Rodney Dangerfield's hypothetical physician).

As we continued to administer care to make believe critters and as Matthew continued to interfere, Macy said, "Viddy! Viddy! What are you doing?!?" (she put her own twist on it) I thought nothing of it until...

A few days later Macy referred to Matthew as Viddy again randomly. Somehow a nick name that was meant to solely entertain me while playing with my daughter had stuck. Poor little Viddy. All 3 of us call him that now.

I guess Matthew has outgrown Little Man, Peanut, Tiny Love and Bam Bam. Viddy seems like a name that will stick around if only for entertainment's sake, which is fine with me. Just sayin'.

Learning things never taught me nuthin'. And books is the worst.

So, I've not been one to read much fiction, or much else for that matter. This was not something I was proud of. "Hi. My name is Kelly. I'm not a reader." "Hi, Kelly."

The non-reader in me became very aware of what I had been missing one day at Panera when several girlfriends were discussing the books they were reading and wanted to read. Pride and Prejudice. The Fountainhead. War and Peace. (okay, so Pride & Prejudice was the only one really mentioned that I can remember). I had nothing to contribute. I was totally quiet for over 5 minutes. Yikes. I felt embarrassed. After all, I AM a college graduate. I know how to read. So, why wasn't I? The only reason I could come up with was laziness. I love TV and would rather spend my down time watching recorded episodes of Dave or Conan... obviously not challenging too many neurons to fire in the ol' gray matter!

I have a friend who is a lover of good books. To challenge myself, I challenged her to find a good fiction page-turner for me. She placed the everpopular Twilight in my hands. I was excited until I noticed it was 500 pages long. Zoinks! So I buckled up and drove to Forks, Washington with Bella and enjoyed the ride. Me and a packed house of 17 year old girls and other Twilight moms celebrated this book by going to the midnight premier last night. It was pretty good. The experience was fun (even though I was fighting coughing fits the whole time) going with friends who had read the book and hearing the girls gasp when Edward was finally introduced to the screen. You couldn't pay me to go back to high school.

My plan to expand my vocabulary further and keep my brain from turning to mush is to read Tell No One by Harlan Coben next, which has also been recommended. I will probably begin the 2nd Twilight book after that.

I've enjoyed many nights of falling asleep while reading a great story. If you have any suggestions for great fiction or memoirs, please let me know! Until then, I'll be catching up on Dave and Conan and reading like a real bonafide grown up! I'm just sayin'

Little Milestone

The day has finally come and gone: Macy's first day of Pre-K. She was so excited she could hardly go to sleep last night and got up an hour early this morning. She will go to 'school' 5 days a week. I'll try to stay busy, too.

She got to meet 9 new classmates and she loves her new teacher, Mrs. Forrest. On Mondays, she will have music and on Wednesdays she will go to chapel.

I'm curious as to how chapel will go. She already loves church so much and we read a preschooler devotional each night and have conversations about God a lot. Tonight we read about how it is important to do good things so that people will know we love God and He loves them too. Just when I thought she was staring at the huge pink poodle toy on her bed, her little head dropped. I asked her what was wrong and she said, "But I do bad things."

I made sure that she knew that everyone does bad things, and that she does lots of good things too. I guess we better get ready for some serious questions from our little scholar soon. They DO grow up fast-in many ways... I'm just sayin'