Little Nanny Etticoat

I really, really love Nursery Rhymes: I'm discovering this through having a toddler. A good friend gave Starbeans a Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes book at his Meet the Baby party [as I botched it and accidentally bought a plane ticket to WA for his Baby Shower...whoops]. I enjoyed leafing through it at the time, but now we are full-bore into it. Starbeans requests it almost every evening and the more I read it, the more I enjoy it! A lot of the verses are so rhythmic, I find myself either singing or repeating them to myself at the strangest times. Little Nanny Etticoat is my current favorite -- it is just so fun to say. Our version has, "The longer she stands, the shorter she grows", to which I am partial.

Starbeans' favorites include:

• Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
• To Market, To Market
• Mary had a Little Lamb
• The Three Little Kittens

He regularly sings the first three and gets quite stirred up over the illustrations of the Three Little Kittens crying [over their lost mittens]. Last night while he was eating a snack before bedtime, he said, "May-yee wit" to me several times before I realized he was saying, "Mary went" as in, "Everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go" -- I had to ask him to repeat it several times before telling him that I didn't understand; he finally said, "Yittle yam" and the light bulb flashed.

If there is one thing about motherhood (aside from all the cuteness) that thrills me, it is knowing that I will be able to cultivate a love for verse and prose in my little one(s). I find that to be quite exciting. Have I told you before that I started my collection of children's books several years before Starbeans was even a twinkle? It's true. Almost all through thrift stores, I have amassed quite the collection. Mostly fairy tales, children's poetry, story books, fables, and science-based books [think bugs, trees, sea creatures, etc.] Of course, all being books that caught my eye or imagination. The one thing I didn't realize that I should have been looking for were: TRUCK BOOKS. The kid is crazed about truck books. A lot of the Richard Scarry books have all sorts of different illustrations that fit this need, but I've had to keep an eye out for vehicle-specific books at the library and thrift stores for the past half-year. Funny, because I would have never have guessed. I wonder what a girl would want that I didn't think of?