A love stronger than kitten hugs

Hw do you know you've got a love that's truly special? When you love to give that person hugs more than you love kittens.

While I worked at the library, I stumbled across a gem of a picture book. It's called Prudence Wants a Pet. It's absolutely adorable. I laughed out loud the first time I read it to the boy. So, I think today's doodle is a little more for me than for him. He likes to listen to Prudence, but I think I enjoy the story more than he does!

Feed your curiosity

A few weeks ago, the boy read an entire book to me for the first time. It was an amazing moment for me. The book nerd in me has always loved that he enjoys being read to, and now, I'm hoping he will enjoy reading to himself just as much. The first book he read was The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. A few days later, he read a Curious George book to me. I had to help him with the big words, but he read the majority of it on his own.

I guess I should have drawn Peter since The Snowy Day was the first book he read, but George was one of the first characters he recognized from stories. I think the cartoon series helped with that immensely, but we read a lot of George books.

My little one loves experiments and figuring out how things work. I think George might be his spirit animal. 

Let the wild rumpus start!

The boy is a very wild thing, even on his best day. The more exhausted he is, the wilder he becomes. It seems to defy nature, really, the bursts of energy when he should be sleeping. Take, for instance, a dark Monday morning, long before sunrise, when he's asking me (repeatedly) if he can get out of bed yet. We've instituted a rule that states he must stay in bed until my alarm goes off. How I birthed such a morning person is beyond my comprehension.

I mentioned last week that I was going to feature storybook characters in my doodles this week. I figured Max was the perfect way to start the week.

I hope you all had a wonderfully wild Monday as well!

Do kids these days even know what groovy means?

There's this storybook character. He's blue and very chill, and says things like groovy. He's also a cat. My son loves him. He was his first favorite storybook character. If you haven't met Pete the Cat, you should. At least the first three books anyway. They're filled with repetitive, catchy little songs. The boy's favorite is probably Pete the Cat and his four groovy buttons. Yup. Groovy.

The Pete I packed in the boy's lunch today isn't blue, but he does have an awesome pair of sunglasses. I hope he helped my little man have a groovy day. Have a great weekend!

To the moon and back

My doodle yesterday got me thinking about Guess How Much I Love You. It's an adorable book about a father hare and his son. The son tells his dad how much he loves him, and the father always loves him back a little more. I haven't read it to the boy in a while, but I think it's time we revisited it.

With the story occupying my thoughts, it was impossible to consider anything else for a doodle today.

While Guess How Much I Love You is not my absolute favorite book to read to the boy, it definitely ranks pretty high on the list. I think I might doodle some favorite story characters next week. It will be fun to see how many the boy recognizes. For the record, he didn't recognize the bunnies.

Guess how much I love you

So the good news is that the fire alarm did not go off this morning. The bad news is Little Man still had a bad case of the grumps. I felt like it was an especially good day to remind him how much I love him.

The boy and I like to play a game that goes something like this:

Me: Did you know I love you all the way to the moon and back?

Boy: Mama, did you know I love you all the way to all the planets?

Me: Wow, that's far.

Boy: Yup.

The distance changes, but he always chooses something in space. It never fails to make me smile. It also makes me think of the book Guess How Much I Love You. If you've never read it, you should. Every bunny (or boy) deserves to be loved as much as that little nut brown hare.

I felt like the boy needed some extra love today. This little dino has a lot of love to give. Maybe next time I'll have to make it a bunny.

I'm Gonna Wreck It!

We got off to a bit of a rocky start this morning. In the middle of sketching today's doodle, the fire alarm in our building went off. I scurried around the apartment gathering pants for the boy, jackets for both of us, and shoes. Then we headed to the parking garage to wait.

Our apartment complex is above retail shops. There are many new businesses, which means, many fire inspections and alarm tests. They give us advanced notice for those. However, with all of the new construction, the alarms are set off frequently due to sprinkler heads being knocked off, too much dust from sawing or drilling, or any other number of things that trigger our apparently sensitive fire alarm system. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to know that should there be a real fire, the alarms will go off with no problem. I just wish there weren't so many false alarms.

Needless to say, we were a bit pressed for time once the alarms finally stopped blaring and we came back inside. I hastily finished the doodle, and packed a lunch that was almost entirely out of the pantry. I usually like to have more fresh foods in there, but there wasn't time for that today.

We made it to school on time, but just barely, and I did manage to send a doodle in with the boy.

I hope tomorrow morning is less harried. At least there wasn't a fire, right?