The baby is three weeks old today, can you believe it? He smiled at
me this morning, a big, real, eyes-lighting-up-in-recognition smile
when he focused on my face. Scott was there to see it. It was one of
those moments where you wish life came with a freeze-frame button so
you could stay in that flash of time for ages.

Scott went back to work today after two weeks off, sob, and my
parents, who flew in for a short visit (yes, my mom was just here
helping before and after the delivery, but my dad hadn't seen the baby
yet), went back home this evening. We are missing them already. And of
course this means that tomorrow, for the first time, I am on my own.
It's a day full of stuff to do, too: big kid stuff, running around.
Should be interesting…

Speaking of big kid stuff: It's time for one of our favorite activities of the year: the Journey North Mystery Class. We have done this fascinating project four times, either alone or with a group.
This year, another mom in our circle of homeschooling friends has very
kindly offered to host the Journey North gang, what with my being three
weeks postpartum and all. Jane is extremely excited. Truly, this
geography project is one of the highlights of our year.

Our Shakespeare Club took a two-month hiatus for the holidays and my
delivery, and we'll be maintaining a low-key pace during the ten weeks
of Journey North so as not to overload anyone's schedule. But my Taming
of the Shrew kids will be working on their scenes during the break, and
we plan to get together now and then to rehearse. Jane spent this
afternoon walking around muttering Katherina retorts under her breath.
We're doing a couple of scenes, which means a couple of Kates and
Petruchios. Fun fun.

Haley S. sent me the link to Academic Earth,
a WAY COOL site full of video lectures from top university professors.
Thanks a ton, Haley. I'm psyched about the Nabokov lectures, having
recently shuddered my way through Lolita for the first time.

Gosh, I read a lot in January. Eight novels and two nonfiction
books. For the first half of the month I was too pregnant to do much
BUT read, and during the second half I was snuggled up with my sweet
bairn, under doctors' orders to take it easy. I've been working on a
"books read in January" post, mainly for my own records, but I keep
getting too chatty about individual titles and it's taking forever to
write.

The January Carnival of Children's Literature went up last week. I haven't had a chance to peruse the posts yet but it looks like a doozie.

Speaking of children's literature, I'm pretty excited about the new Kidlitosphere Central website that was just launched by a team of my favorite children's lit bloggers:

"KidLitosphere Central strives to provide
an avenue to good books and useful literary resources; to support
authors and publishers by connecting them with readers and book
reviewers; and to continue the growth of the society of bloggers in
children's and young adult literature."

Spread the word!