The Longest Shortest Time

We Can’t Stop: No Pooping Edition

Okay, just on the shortest end of another shortish longest shortest time over here. Last time I checked in about this, Sasha had bronchitis. That wound up blooming into an ear infection and on top of everything she got slammed with a stomach virus. She woke up vomiting three nights in a row. Shivering in the shower as we washed it off her face and out of her hair. My husband caught it, too. Remarkably, this time I escaped unscathed. Aside from sleep deprivation, of course—and the 5-inch scratch Sasha left across my chest when lashing out in frustration (my doctor looked at me with utter skepticism at a visit the other day when I answered that my 2-year-old did it). After the throwing up came the intense constipation. Which I never realized could be as awful as its opposite. Sasha was crawling around on the floor screaming in agony for a couple days straight. Reading was the only thing that would calm her down. So we snuggled under the covers in my bed. And on my prompt she’d take a sip of prune juice with each turn of the page.

I checked out a new stack of library books to keep myself from going crazy reading the same stories ad nauseum. As a result, we have a whole new “We Can’t Stop Reading” list. Here’s what’s in our current rotation:

I knew as soon as I saw Uri Shulevitz’s Snow that Sasha would be crazy for it. It starts with a boy noticing one tiny snowflake falling. Then two. Then three. As I mentioned in our last books post, Sasha is very attuned to schmutz and all things schmutz-like and I could just picture her pointing out the minuscule flakes in Shulevitz’s gorgeously gray watercolor skies. This activity quickly turned Snow into her new favorite. If your kid is detail-oriented, this one will likely be a hit.

The Snail and the Whale continues to delight but is drying out after an unfortunate encounter with prune juice.

Little Owl’s Night by Divya Srinivasan is now Sasha’s go-to bedtime book. Srinivasan’s publicist sent me this book many months ago, but back then Sasha still thought paper books were best for tearing to shreds and eating or throwing in the garbage, so I kept her far away from them. I recently pulled this one off the shelf for her and she was immediately entranced. One of her favorite things to do with this one is to find the snails that Skunk can’t.

Ludwig Bemelmans’s Madeline was one of my favorites as a little girl and Sasha seems to be very taken with it, too. But for very different reasons. I remember being obsessed with the crank on Madeline’s bed and the “crack on the ceiling that had the habit of sometimes looking like a rabbit.” Sasha, for perhaps obvious reasons, is drawn to the illustration of the man with a cast on his leg. And the reveal of Madeline’s scar.

Suzy Lee’s Wave has also captured Sasha’s imagination. She is a big fan of any book that includes a kid falling into the ocean (Harold and the Purple Crayon, Flotsam) and this wordless book is about just that. Sasha squeals with delight as the little girl in the book splashes in the waves, then yells with just as much glee, “Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh!” as an enormous wave comes crashing down on her. I picked this one up thanks to a recommendation from frequent commenter and children’s librarian, Kate. Thanks, Kate!

Anyone else got some favorite sick day books?