My parents cleaned out their attic again.

Among other things, this time, they found a box of my books and notebooks from college, and another box with my old Little House On The Prairie collection.

"Great!" Matt enthused. "Now we won't have to buy the set for Penny!"

I thought, But... they're mine!

The thought didn't last too long, though. I loved those books as a girl - I must have read them a dozen or more times - but their appeal now is more nostalgic than anything else. I might re-read them, just to see them again from an adult's perspective - and with far more interest in the history than I ever had as a child - but Penny is welcome to them, in all honesty.

On a whim, I pulled out the last book - The First Four Years. I never liked it much, as a kid. Disaster after disaster kept rolling by, and at the end of the book... it just stopped. There was no happy ending. No closure.

That kind of ending still drives me crazy.

But this time, I noticed something that had apparently escaped my notice as a kid: The preface.

Written by Laura Wilder's granddaughter, it summed up her life after that book, and mentioned at least one other book that wasn't part of my set. I must have read the preface before, but I had no memory of it, at all.

It makes me want to find a copy of the other books, to see what's in them. It makes me want to see Penny old enough to enjoy these books. It makes me want to start a list of Essential Children's Books, starting with all my old favorites, and add them all to Penny's wishlist.

It was a banner day for eating, for Penny, yesterday.

Out of curiosity, Matt pulled our little tupperware of baby ravioli (i.e., sauceless, to allow for finger-eating) out of the refrigerator and offered it to her.

Much to my surprise, she picked one up and stuffed it in her mouth.

Of course, she then gagged on it, because she's not really chewing up her food so much as mushing it up against the roof of her mouth, and the raviolis are thicker than what she's used to swallowing. But she consented to eat one more ravioli (in halves, this time) before throwing the rest on the floor.

And she actually ate some vegetables that weren't tomato! Granted, they came out of my beef stew, and were covered with tomato-based sauce... But she ate three or four green beans, and several slices of carrot, and a little potato!

Whoo! Yay, food!

--Liz