When a Dragon Moves In

   When a Dragon Moves In is author Jodi Moore's debut picture book and illustrator Howard McWilliam's second picture book following I Need My Monster.  With summer only a few weeks away (here in Texas), I thought this would be the perfect fourth installation in our Blueberry Books.  You can forget about padded poems and accurate animal habitats for this one.  All the unnecessary fluff has been peeled away to reveal pure ingenuity of the imagination. 

I used to be a whole lot cooler...


   The other night our little family of four was just finishing up filling our bellies at a local pizza chain.  Following a trip to Home Depot and before a stop at Costco on the way home, there we sat in the thick of the suburbs- at a strip mall for dinner.  My sweet husband always takes the girls to the arcade after we're done eating and leaves me at the table to have a minute.  It's amazing how five minutes to myself can change help improve my attitude in those exhausting last three hours of the day.  Even if I'm just sitting at a table stacked high with dirty plates and crumpled napkins while apologizing to the busboy for the dropped morsels in a two-foot radius surrounding the high chair, it feels good to only worry about myself for a fleeting moment. 

   We had just finished dessert and I was cleaning the last few smudges of pizza and cinnamon rolls off of the girls' faces and fingers.  As usual, they were squirming and protesting, eager to get their little paws all over the 3000% profit-margin candy from "The Claw" game.  In all the commotion of my futile attempt to send clean girls into a filthy arcade, I made a cataclysmic mistake.  Baby wipe in hand, I stood up to let the girls pour out of the booth and watched as my husband raised to follow them.  Our eyes locked and I gave him a satisfied grin that said, "Yay!! We made it through the meal without an earth-shattering meltdown from either child and devoid of any snide comments being discreetly flung across the table out of pure exhaustion! Amazing!"  As I peered into his eyes, I noticed a little leftover on the corner of his mouth.  Without thinking and in slow-motion, my right hand began to lift.  As if ticking up the gigantic hill of a rollercoaster, it passed my hip and then my waist, was soon above my shoulder and past his chin only to SSSSWIIIIIPE.  Oh.  No.  I just wiped food off the face of my almost forty-year-old, remarkably muscular and exceedingly handsome husband with....... a........baby wipe.  Oh.  The horror.



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Tyrannosaurus Drip

   As our third to be named a Blueberry Book, Tyrannosaurus Drip is a brilliant tale written by Julia Donaldson about a tenderhearted, yet fearless, duckbill dinosaur trying to find his place after being born into a stark, harsh world. 

 

   Dinosaur books, movies, and toys are guaranteed crowd-pleasers.  Parents, grandparents, and children alike can all relate to the mystery and the magesty associated with the time of the dinosaurs.  Over the past few years, we have acquired numerous dinosaur DVDs, figurines, puzzles, puppets, and stuffed animals.  We even threw a "Dino-mite!" birthday party for Little Girl a few years ago.  Not since The Land Before Time has anything prehistoric captured the attention of my children quite like Tyrannosaurus Drip!

Tornadoes and Trifecta

   You know those days when you get a brief glimpse of what really matters, of what's really important in your life?  Today is one of those for me.  17 tornadoes + a 70th birthday + an awkward phone call = trifecta.

   The morning kicked off as usual- me chasing two giggling girls around the house with a hairbrush, getting a few swipes of their bedhead in before Little Girl inevitably slams Baby Girl into a wall trying to knock a coveted toy loose from her grip, which spurs Baby Girl to retaliate by quietly approaching Little Girl from behind, grabbing her ponytail until Little Girl's nose hits the ceiling and she drops said toy, then Baby Girl sweeps in, snatches the toy and disappears.  Livin' the dream.


A stolen moment while the girls go in opposite directions.  [Lumi Creative Studio]