Our landlord won't let us get a dog...

...so we put a leash on our two-year-old instead. I was embarrassed to have put a leash on my child like she's some sort of canine, but that went away in the first ten seconds.

The first ten seconds of her trying out the backpack with its "monkey tail"

Scarlet loves the monkey backpack and I love that she doesn't resent being steered away from oncoming traffic and that I don't have to constantly chase after her and pick her up. It has been increasingly more difficult to do that ever since I entered the third trimester.

Whenever Scarlet puts on her backpack, she expects to go somewhere. She insists on wearing it all day long regardless, but she also expects to go places. The backpack has apparently forced us all to be more active. Josh and Becca took her on a hike on Saturday. Then we went on a second hike later in the day that I could join in on. On Sunday we took her for a walk around the neighborhood. Yesterday we went on another hike for FHE. Today I took her for a walk during my lunch break. She has been more active than she's ever been before and it's thanks to that silly leash.

We discovered that using the stroller to get her places isn't very effective anymore because she grows restless and wants to run free. She also has no desire to live, so she doesn't pay any attention to sidewalks, streets, or oncoming traffic. The leash has cured us of all of those concerns. So if you are a parent of a toddler and feel the slight shame of having to kennel your child at night and serve dinner out of feeding bowls without utensils, don't be embarrassed! Go the extra mile and buy a leash for that kid as well. It'll make a world of difference.

Reading is Stressful

I can't read my books right now because they're stressing me out. In Middlemarch, the author worked for more than seven hundred pages to create the most complex entanglement of conflicts. There are exactly 130 pages left and I SERIOUSLY doubt she'll be able to resolve everything in such a short amount of time. In fact, the conflicts are so complex that many of them can't be resolved without affecting the happiness of other characters and their problems. I'm in such an agony over this conundrum and so terrified that the ending won't be as satisfyingly conclusive as I'd like it to be, that I can't seem to bring myself to finish the novel. And this is after six hard months of working through the book.

Then there's Gone With the Wind. My favorite movie ever, my favorite fictional character ever (Katie Scarlett), my favorite everything. I started reading this book and loved it so much that it was easy for me to get through the first four hundred pages and I kept telling Josh how enjoyable it was. Then things got tough for Scarlett and I'm not liking the personality change she's undergoing during this difficult time in her life. I'm worried that her little boy is too neglected and that there's something physically wrong with him as well. I'm scared to death that he's going to die and I can't seem to bring myself to read the next few hundred pages to find out. I'm not even halfway through the novel and I know the story so well that I know of other impending deaths that will make reading the rest of the book already difficult. But Scarlett's son doesn't exist in the movie so I have no idea his plight and I can't stand the thought that he'll die unloved and alone. It's breaking my heart. I had to put the book down and I haven't been able to pick it back up yet.

My third current novel is The Midwife's Tale. I have read the two sequel novels in this series but never the first book, so I was pretty happy to finally find it available at my library. The problem is that I've read the two sequels, so a big portion of this book's plot has already been recapped for me and I do NOT like what happens. Somewhere in the unread portion of the book there is an infant baby that is going to be murdered and the murderer is going to walk away free and that rankles me so deeply that I don't think I can bring myself to read about it at the moment.

So...I'm stuck. My books are too hard for me to emotionally cope with and that leaves me bored because I can't read. I suppose I could pick up a new book but what's the point? In my sensitive state, I'm sure I'll find something miserable about the story to latch on to, which will leave me unable to finish that book as well. In the meantime I've been looking at Netflix a LOT, trying to find *some* show or movie that entices me. Was tv always this stupid? Have I finally become an enlightened person who is too good for television? Ooh, never mind--there's a documentary on honey badgers**. Gotta go.


**Josh loves nature documentaries, so we legitimately watched this on Sunday night. I'm not proud of myself, but I was mildly entertained. Those honey badgers are crazy!

Scarlet Eats Noodles!

So last night Josh was the one with the craving--for Noodle and Co. We almost never go there because it never sounds appealing to me, but I had it at a work conference last week and decided it was pretty darn good, so we chose to splurge and buy dinner last night. We put Scarlet in the stroller and tossed a few library books in the back to return, and then went for a very beautiful spring walk through our neighborhoods. Noodles and Co. is about a twenty-minute walk from our apartment, so we got there fairly quickly, despite Scarlet literally NEEDING to stop and smell the flowers.

Josh was insistent that Scarlet get her own meal, which we almost never do because she just doesn't eat much and it's a waste of money to buy her food she won't eat. I deferred to Josh with a little bit of doubt in my mind, but I figured we could always just take Scarlet's leftovers home. Boy was I surprised when Scarlet downed her ENTIRE PLATE plus a breadstick. I was pretty floored. Scarlet enjoyed her meal so much, she could even be coaxed away from wandering over to other tables and eating on her dad's lap instead.

After dinner, we walked to the library on our way back home. Scarlet loves dancing and playing in the reading circle. We also let her play with the toy cars they have before picking up some books for ourselves and returning some old books. The weather was absolutely gorgeous the entire time we walked, with flower blossoms floating on the wind and brushing past our feet. It was a very relaxing evening.